The Potential of Self Recorded Audio Tape for Data Collection in Distance Education.

The collection of data by face-to-face interviews and questionnaires is common and literature in these areas is extensive; but few cases are reported in which respondents have been provided with a blank audio cassette tape, interview schedule, or open-ended questionnaire items, and been invited to record their own comments and forward these to the researcher. This paper begins to redress this imbalance by reporting two studies using a technique involving self-recorded audio cassette tape used along with conventional qualitative data collection methods. The studies involved 2 groups of 64 and 40 students, respectively who were taking courses given by the British Open University in Milton Keynes, England. In the first study, face-to-face interviews and open-ended questionnaire items were compared with the audio-taped responses. In the second study, the three data collection methods were supplemented by the use of telephone interviews. A review of two other studies using self-reported audiotapes supports the findings of these studies, which demonstrate that the use of self-recorded audiotapes is straightforward and presents few problems in subsequent analysis. Some of the limitations of the technique are discussed. (Contains 8 references.) (SLD)