Okay, so this idea of exploratory research really did not sink in for me until this week when we did our pilot studies. The wide variation we saw in behavior among different calling pairs made me realize that there is no way we can go into this study with a preset criteria that we will look for and analyze. Rather, we’ll have to go in with an open mind, observe the patterns, and from there, determine what data to collect and in what manner. I suspect the bulk of our findings will be qualitative, which bugs me, as a quantitative-oriented person. Of course, studies like this will set up and inspire future quantitative work that can provide more conclusive findings. But, laying the groundwork for a completely unexplored area is tough; one shouldn’t expect to id the problems and id the solutions all in one short study.

It’s been a high-key struggle bus determining what time frames we will use to measure speech behaviors. Everything we’ve thought of so far seems wishy-washy, not uniform due to the highly variable nature of natural conversation. Guess we’ll just have to wait until we do our actual study to see what makes the most sense. I am kind of afraid we will run out of time to do any substantial analysis since we are going in without a detailed plan. But then again, where’s the fun in research without risk and uncertainty ;)

Good news is that Isabelle and I have all our materials ready to go for the experiment. All that’s left is to run it and figure out the methods afterwards. Seems backwards, I know but perhaps this is the strat to glean the most valuable nuggets of info.