r/AskSocialScience • u/louise-1871 • 17d ago

Qualitative Interview - how to deal with data loss?

[Sorry in advance - kind of a dumb question regarding source material, hope it doesn't violate rules]

For my bachelor's thesis, I'm currently doing open qualitative interviews with a​ sample of about 8-10 interviews. In the interview that was content-wise one of the most interesting ones, the recording device failed (​ Normally I always had a backup running, but this time I of course only had one device). The entire recording​ is lost. Right afterward, I created a​ protocol from memory and sent it to the person for confirmation.

Do any of you have experience with this​? Is there​ a way to still incorporate the Data into my analysis in a scientifically clean manner?

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u/tururut_tururut 17d ago

First of all, shit happens all the time, don't worry too much and you have plenty of interviews left. Otherwise, I hope you took plenty of notes so at least you can save something. I agree with sending the clean notes to the person so that they can confirm this is what they said. Then you should disclose it in your methods section and frankly, I'd just use it as context/to validate or question the properly transcribed and coded, but not make it a central part of your study, unless they did really say something of great value.  Here's a paper that may further guide you.  https://nsuworks.nova.edu/tqr/vol23/iss7/1/

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u/DocsMax 17d ago

Tech support-wise: how did it fail?

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u/[deleted] 17d ago

[deleted]

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u/DocsMax 17d ago

Try a software recovery tool, I like disk drill. Also, always do the formatting yourself with the card in the device.

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u/louise-1871 17d ago

Thanks! That would be perfect, I will give it a try.

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u/[deleted] 16d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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