line numbers (some approaches recommend this, e.g. for cross-referencing) then use your word processor to set this up. Most have an option to do this automatically – you don’t have to do it manually (e.g. in Microsoft Word use the ‘Page Layout’ ribbon). N.B. If you are using CAQDAS then use that software to insert line numbers. Do not do it in your word processor before you import the files to your project.
2. Margins
Leave wide margins on the sheets for you to annotate and indicate coding ideas. Most people leave a wide margin on the right. Use the margin setting in your word processor (e.g. in Microsoft Word select all the text then move the margin tabs in the ruler).
3. Line spacing
Double-space the text (or use line-and-a-half spacing). Again this leaves room for underlining, comments and circling the text. (In Microsoft Word, use the ‘Home’ ribbon.)
Internet Data
One way to avoid most of the problems associated with transcription is to collect your data via the Internet. All textual data that can be gathered from the Internet – email messages, web pages, chat room dialogues, commercial news archives, etc. – come already in electronic form. No transcription is required. Most email is still plain text, so there is no problem just saving the messages as that. However, it is important to keep the header information too, so that you know who the message was from, who it was to, when it was sent and what topic it was about. Some emails are threaded. That is, messages on the same topic are linked together chronologically. You may want to preserve the threading in your files for analysis; for example, by putting all messages in the same thread in the same file, in chronological order.
Web pages present a different problem. You can of course just save the URL, the address of the page, and go to that page in your browser when you want to analyze it. But the page may change during your analysis (e.g. if it is a discussion group then more discussion might be added) or it may disappear. So, you might want a snapshot copy at the time you visit the page. Web pages are written not in plain text but in a mark-up language, e.g. HTML, so that they can be displayed in a formatted form in web browsers. They may also include various multimedia elements such as images, sounds and movies. You need to decide if you just need the text – in which case save the pages as plain text (an option in the ‘File: Save As …’ menu of the web browser) – or whether you want to save them as web pages (or web archives) including the multimedia elements. If you save them as web pages or as a web archive then you will need your web browser to open them again when you want to analyze them.
Most CAQDAS programs can import and code plain text files. But they cannot display the HTML files that your browser can display. If you want to include data from the web in your CAQDAS project then you will need to save the page as a pdf file (this is often an option in the print dialog). This preserves most of the visual elements in the web page, but will not keep any audio or video elements (though it might preserve the links to the live web version). Most CAQDAS programs can read pdf files and allow you to code them. The CAQDAS program NVivo has a plug in for the web browsers Internet Explorer and Chrome that enables you to capture web pages as pdf files and Twitter messages in a database format.
Even if you import all the web pages you want to analyze as pdfs into your CAQDAS project you will have lost the hyperlinks in them. Web pages typically contain hyperlinks to other web pages. They are therefore an excellent example of intertextuality, the linkage between and interdependence of documents. Thus it is a moot point whether the meaning of a web page is indicated just by the content of the page itself or whether you need to include some or all of the hyperlinked pages. Saving a site as a web archive may be one option, though this may not be able to deal with all the relevant hyperlinks such as those to external websites, and means it is hard to use CAQDAS.
In some cases, such as when selecting material from commercial news archives, even if you convert the files to plain text, you may need to undertake some processing and filtering to eliminate superfluous and irrelevant material. The process of selection may not be selective enough, as Seale found when he searched a commercial news archive for articles on cancer (Seale, 2002). A lot of the articles he received were about astrology and the star sign Cancer and not about the illness that he was interested in.
Meta-data
Put simply, meta-data is data about data. In the context of data preparation there are two important forms of meta-data to consider. First, there is information about your interviews, notes, etc., that records their provenance, an outline of their content and who they involve. Second, is information about the details of your data that you need for archiving, such as details of how the study was carried out and biographical information about your respondents.
Information about the provenance of a document is kept in a document summary or a cover sheet (so called because when transcripts were typewritten such data was kept on the separate, top or cover sheet of paper). If you are producing electronic transcripts (such as word processor files) then it is a simple matter to include this information at the start of your file. Typical contents are listed in Box 2.3.
BOX 2.3 Typical contents of meta-data documents
Document summary form or document description
Typically, this would summarize information about an interview and includes (as appropriate):
Date of interview.
Biographical details about the respondent.
Topic and circumstances of interview.
Name of interviewer.
Source of field notes relevant to interview.
Linked documents (e.g. previous and subsequent interviews).
Source of document (full reference).
Initial ideas for analysis.
Pseudonym of person interviewed and other anonymizing references.
Preparing for Archives
In some cases you may want to deposit your data into an archive so that others can use your work and possibly re-analyze it. In the UK there is an organization, the UK Data Service, that can advise on this. Their website, www.ukdataservice.ac.uk/deposit-data, contains detailed advice on what you need to do. As I mentioned above, you will need to anonymize the transcripts, but archives normally want to have the unanonymized originals too, along with details of how they were anonymized. Secondary users of the data are obliged to maintain anonymity as you have done. If material is particularly sensitive you can make the material closed for a certain period or restrict access to it.
Archives normally need all the various accompanying material you used. This includes documentation such as the cover sheets just discussed and field notes and other written or printed documents you have collected along with details of your sampling strategy, your interview schedules, etc. It may take some time and effort to get all these materials into a suitable state for depositing them. If you are required to archive your data (as projects funded by the ESRC are) then allow resources for this (see Rapley, 2018).
Getting Organized
In
