2020/09/01 by Adrian Leemann, Péter Jeszenszky, Carina Steiner +2 · 1 voice · 2 citations
Arts and Humanities · Computer Science · Engineering · Medicine · Psychology · Social Sciences · #Applied psychology #Computer science #Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) #Data collection #Digital Communication and Language #Engineering #Focus Groups and Qualitative Methods #Internet privacy #Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies #Medicine #Multimedia #Presentation (obstetrics) #Psychology #Social distance #Sociology #Videoconferencing #Zoom
paper · pdf · doi:10.1515/lingvan-2020-0061
openalex publication_date 2020/09/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/02
Abstract Linguistic data collection typically involves conducting interviews with participants in close proximity. The safety precautions related to the COVID-19 pandemic brought such data collection to an abrupt halt: Social distancing forced linguistic fieldwork into involuntary hibernation in many parts of the world. Such hardship, however, can inspire innovation. In this contribution, we present an approach that – we believe – enables a reliable switch from in-person, face-to-face interviews to virtual, online data collection. In this approach, participants remain at home and navigate a smartphone application, enabling high-quality audio recordings and multisensory presentation of linguistic material, while they are being supervised via videoconferencing (Zoom 2020 https://zoom.us/ (accessed 11 August 2020)). The smartphone app and the infrastructure presented are open source, accessible, and adaptable to researchers’ specific needs. To explore whether participants’ experiences of in-person data collection are different from participation in a virtual setting, we conducted a study with 36 participants. Overall, findings revealed a substantial degree of overlap in interview experience, setting a methodological baseline for future work. We end this contribution by discussing the benefits and pitfalls of this new approach.