Step 10: Use a consistent format and set of conventions to transcribe interview audiotapes. Make any necessary clarifications to the typed transcripts. Tally any quantitative data. Plan an approach to analyzing the qualitative data that is consistent with the evaluation purpose and questions.

You decide to have the interview tapes professionally transcribed according to the conventions described in this module. Each hour-long interview will take as long as four hours to transcribe, for a total cost of $200 (at $50 per hour). With 42 teachers, you thus have budgeted $8,400 for interview transcription. When you get back the transcripts, you give them to the responsible interviewers for corrections.

You plan to analyze the interviews in terms of themes because you want to end up with a set of categories to guide revision of the curriculum packet along with some details concerning what any major modifications might look like. You anticipate that you will take a first pass through all the interview transcripts to generate a list of potential categories. Further analyses of the transcripts will focus on refining the list of categories and pulling related descriptions from teachers' comments to illustrate the potential qualities of each category.