Can I kill one of my research subjects now? Prittyplease?
I'm going through data in the backlog of stuff from my data collection sessions that I've yet to transcribe, and am delighted to discover that two of the sessions have no voice track. (One of the tasks I get my research subjects to do involves responding verbally to sounds played over a headset that they wear while they drive.) Checking my booking schedule, I realise that these two sessions occurred one directly after the other. It looks like the mic switch on the headset got turned off by one of my helpful subjects, who DIDN'T BOTHER TO TELL ME (??!!??) that he'd turned it off. GRRRR!!!
Luckily another (helpful! observant! wonderful!) subject spotted that the switch was off when he put the headset on, and pointed it out to me before I lost too much data. At the time I thought it must have just gotten knocked to the Off position as I got it out of my bag and set it up in the car then, since at the time I was almost-up-to-date with my data prep and hadn't had any problems with the voice tracks thus far. But in retrospect, that seems unlikely since it's a tiny recessed switch that is quite fiddly to adjust.
What on earth would posess someone to turn off the mic and then not bloody tell me they've done so? Is there some alternate universe where this might be a helpful or sensible thing to do?
Luckily another (helpful! observant! wonderful!) subject spotted that the switch was off when he put the headset on, and pointed it out to me before I lost too much data. At the time I thought it must have just gotten knocked to the Off position as I got it out of my bag and set it up in the car then, since at the time I was almost-up-to-date with my data prep and hadn't had any problems with the voice tracks thus far. But in retrospect, that seems unlikely since it's a tiny recessed switch that is quite fiddly to adjust.
What on earth would posess someone to turn off the mic and then not bloody tell me they've done so? Is there some alternate universe where this might be a helpful or sensible thing to do?