The Transcript Reading Process

The transcript reading process has been an exercise I have not yet come across in any other course during my time at Colby. Throughout my experience thus far I have realized how much value qualitative data adds to a specific study. These interviews and transcripts I have looked at add a perspective that one can’t always gain from quantitative data. Furthermore, quantitative data can often be skewed or manipulated so it can prove a certain point. Whereas qualitative data is more realistic, in this case personal, and significant to the conversation. My findings up to this point, when looking at the qualitative data, has allowed my group and me to have very productive conversations surrounding what takes place in elite schools in Chile. 

For this research project, my group decided to split up the transcripts and then come back together to talk about any recurring themes we discovered. I specifically focused on the alumni transcripts from the Croft school in Chile while my peers honed in on current students. Both transcripts that I read had numerous similarities as well as several differences. Just between these two interviews, certain themes like becoming leaders or leadership, student-teacher relationships, and the idea of the Croft school feeling like a “bubble” came to the surface. This was important to realize while reading these transcripts because of the concept of triangulation. Triangulation implies that multiple sources discuss the same theme to make it a valid finding. The merging of information from different sources and perspectives helps further solidify a point explained within the qualitative data. Not only did my two alumni sources have similar thoughts about the school and the education system, but so did the student interviews that my group members read. That made it clear that these themes are important discoveries. 

 Another principal aspect of reading these specific transcripts from the students in Chile was the subtle language barrier between the interviewer and interviewees. Although the Croft school does a majority of its learning in English, a few of the questions asked regarding “global citizenship” or “global citizens” left the interviewees a little confused. This could be due to Croft school not spending much time explaining what global citizenship is or a genuine misunderstanding of the question asked. For example, there were parts in the transcripts that state “Spanish translation needed” and then a time in the audio recording. For this project explicitly that could potentially make clear understandings and interpretations more difficult. However, this didn’t occur too often but was something that stood out to me when digging into the qualitative data. 

Ultimately, I enjoyed getting the opportunity to listen and read the transcripts between the interviewer and the alumni from the Croft school. These transcripts have allowed me to form a better understanding of how the school functioned as well as how students felt about their time there. Numbers could never explain in such detail how impactful a school like the Croft school is on the students that come through it. Although it is by no means an easy thing to read transcripts, it is quite neat when certain concepts or ideas start to connect to ideas that your peers also saw in the transcripts that they read. This exercise has taught me how significant qualitative research is in studies that need more than just quantitative knowledge.