A Dissertation by GRACE HUI-CHIN LIN Submitted to the Office of ...

among the participants’ responses, the collected data, and the research results.
Lincoln and Guba (1985) identified to “video recording” and “written field notes”
were two of the best ways to ensure research conformability in qualitative data
collecting methods because the videotaped raw data and the written findings could be
preserved, reviewed, and examined by the field workers if any doubt in the findings
was found. Additionally, through the process of videotaping, this study became
authentic. The reason was that not a spoken word, facial expression, or body
language could be ignored in videotapes.
The following two reasons explained why qualitative data collected this way
were more conformable than the data collected by the other methods. When
compared with an email interview, using a video recorder made students narrate their
feelings without too much consideration, like when composing and writing answers
through an email, which contributed to elicit students’ true feelings of
communication strategies. When compared with the standardized survey interview,
videotaping allowed the learners to convey their perceptions from various personal
views and broader perspectives by responding freely rather than being limited within
many uniform questions. When compared with the interview in public, the interview
in a private room raised the accuracy of data. Because no other classmate was in the
same room when students were interviewed, the students’ statements could not be
misled or influenced. That is, everything they expressed would be consistent with
what they considered. Therefore, through two interviews, the researchers intended to
collect multi-patterns of students’ perceptions and displayed the qualitative data of
students’ diverse views more completely and conformably with their real reflections
for 5 learned communication strategies.
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