In addition to transcriptions of peer response sessions and student drafts, stimulated recall interviews with participants provide an additional data source. In order to help conduct the kind of in-depth investigation that occurs in case studies, I chose to consider peer response from the
perspective of participants involved. These interviews “prompt participants to recall thoughts they had while performing a task or participating in an event” (Mackey and Gass, 2000, p. 17). While stimulated recall interviews have the potential to provide valuable insight into
participants’ experiences, they are not without limitations. As Mackey and Gass themselves admit, people are “sense-making beings” (p.5) by nature, and when asked to recall their thoughts and feelings, may create explanations. Likewise, Borg (2006) notes that these interviews may not prompt participants to express real thoughts, but rather encourage them to generalize or talk about possibilities. Despite their limitations, however, the importance of interviews with focal participants is highlighted by peer response studies like Zhu (2011), which describes the vastly different ways that students in the same writing classroom might approach and conceptualize peer response tasks.
Mackey and Gass suggest that stimulated recall interviews occur as soon as possible after the event, that a strong stimulus be used, and that participants receive minimal training (2000). I followed these tips as closely as possible when conducting my own stimulated recall interviews with participants. In the current study, stimuli used were recordings of peer response sessions and revised second drafts, which helped students recall their thoughts during peer response and their revision choices afterwards. I received transcripts of peer response sessions from research assistants by Wednesday afternoon (one day after the sessions occurred), and photocopies of first and second drafts on Thursday morning (the day that students turned in second drafts).
Participants completed stimulated recall interviews of approximately one hour on either
Thursday afternoon (the day they turned in revised drafts) or Friday, following the Tuesday peer response sessions. For two of the twenty-six interviews, however, it was not possible to meet with the student until the following Monday, due to illness and scheduling issues.
To prepare for stimulated recall interviews, I read student transcripts and noted segments that seemed important for further understanding how students shared control over the direction of the peer response task, and how they engaged with each other’s suggestions about revisions.
These two areas match Storch’s dimensions of equality and mutuality, and I marked up
transcripts with these concepts in mind so that I could further understand student participation in different patterns of interaction. Because coding transcripts for patterns of interaction was an intensive process, and involved a second coder (as described in Chapter Five), I did not code transcripts for these patterns before the stimulated recall interviews. Rather, I approached
transcripts with the general dimensions of mutuality and equality as guidance. For example, areas
of the transcript that I marked included things like discussions of a revision that seemed
collaborative, arguments or disagreements about revisions or about the task, and areas where the writer did not seem to understand the suggested revision. I also listened to recorded peer
response sessions and reviewed transcripts to record the minute and second of any areas of the recording that it did not seem necessary to listen to; these included procedural negotiations at the beginning and end, as well as parts where participants discussed things other than the peer response task. I used these notes to skip through irrelevant sections of the recording during the interview.
Before stimulated recall interviews, I also underlined any revisions that were made in the students’ second drafts, and made a copy of this for each participant to have during the
stimulated recall interview. On my own copy of the second draft, I made a note of any section of the transcript where the revision that had been made was discussed. I also examined the peer response transcript for any suggested revisions that were not made in the second draft, and marked the second draft in the place where the revision would have occurred. By following this
procedure, I had a marked-up second draft that showed where suggested revisions were made, and where these were absent.
I used both the transcript and the second drafts to guide any questions that I asked during stimulated recall interviews. The goal of these questions was to help me understand the
following: how the participant perceived the social dynamics at particular segments of the recording, how they felt about giving or receiving feedback at particular segments, how they understood their partner’s suggestions at particular segments, and how they decided to make (or not make) suggested revisions. I also, however, allowed students to stop the peer response recording at any moment where they felt they had something to say about what they were thinking or feeling at the time they were participating in the peer response session. Sometimes students stopped the recording at areas I had marked on the transcripts, but other times they did not. I prioritized student-initiated comments over asking my own questions, so sometimes (especially for longer peer response sessions), I was not able to ask the questions I had planned. In all cases but two, however, I was able to play the entire peer response recording during the interview.
For the interviews, participants met me at the Department of Applied Linguistics and I escorted them to a private room that I had arranged to use; these included meeting rooms and faculty members’ offices. I made small talk with participants as we walked to the interview room, and as we sat down, to make them feel at ease. Next, I read the stimulated recall protocol (Appendix H). This protocol informed participants that I would play their recorded peer response session on my laptop, and we would consult their revised draft, so that I could learn more about what they were thinking and feeling during the peer response session, and how they made
about the peer response session and about their revised drafts, but that they could also pause the recording any time they wanted to comment on something they were saying, thinking, or feeling. They could also pause the recording to tell me about making the revisions that their partner suggested. Before we began the session, I modeled how to press pause on my laptop, and then asked them to practice once.
Occasionally, when students paused the recording, we looked at their draft and talked about the corresponding revision before re-starting the recording. Other times, we listened to the recording first and then discussed the draft. In the beginning, most students seemed hesitant to pause the recording themselves, and to talk about what they had heard. Some asked permission to push stop, and others, after talking about the recording, asked me if their comments were what I wanted to hear. I responded by saying that any time they had something to say about their revisions or the recording, they should push stop, and that I wanted to learn more about their experiences, rather than look for a specific answer. After the first interview, all participants became more comfortable with the procedure.
I sent recorded files to transcribers after each day of interviews, and they returned stimulated recall transcripts to me within one week. Before the next interview, I reviewed the previous interview transcript, which sometimes informed the questions that I listed when marking up the transcript and draft.