This week, I have not conducted any interviews. I have been in contact with two possible subjects for interviewing. One is a pretty prominent figure in the world of sabermetrics and another is a blogger for a popular blog that uses and writes a lot about sabermetrics. Both are what I would consider to be pretty nice finds. But of course, there’s always some kind of rub. Both would much rather do an interview over email, and obviously, this presents issues. One of the subjects is in Florida, so basically, I don’t think I really have a choice. If he doesn’t want to be interviewed over the phone, then it’s not like i can offer to meet him somewhere. The other is closer by, where I could possibly drive to talk to him. His problem is that he just had a baby and obviously, new born babies aren’t conducive to making schedules.

I’m not totally against email interviews, but I do think that there is a tradeoff and that the information has to be handled differently. The first problem is that I am going to have to write a lengthy spiel about informed consent and confidentiality. I guess, ultimately, I don’t mind. But I am worried about presenting my subjects with three pages worth of reading before I even ask a question.

Secondly, the email interviews might be less efficient. The way I would envision it, I would send a questionnaire to the subject, they would take some time to fill it out. I would guess that this would take about a week, and then they would send it back to me. If I need more clarification, then I would send another email back and then again, the person would respond Read the rest of this entry »

Ever turn on your portable hard drive that was working perfectly the day before, only to hear it make a knocking noise that it definitely wasn’t making before?  Well, pray you never do.  Those of you have heard this noise know that it means there is some kind of mechanical failure with the hard drive, which means that the only way is to send it to a lab where they have a clean room with guys in hazmat outfits who put the read head back into place, and then send it back to you for 1200 freakin’ dollars.

Thankfully, for once in my life, I was overly careful with my data and everything I need for the dissertation is backed up via my gmail account.  Sure I lost a bunch of movies, and the last three episodes of Dexter and Heroes which I haven’t been able to watch yet.  But seriously, thank the lord that I didn’t lose any interviews or transcripts.

Anyways, I begin phase two of interviewing on Thursday.  I’m interviewing an actual MLB statistician and I am very excited about starting this part of the project.  After all, I think this is where I will really be able to get at the process by which sabermetrics becomes incorporated into mainstream knowledge.  So right now, I need to come up with an interview guide.  There will certainly be some overlap with the interview guide I have been using, but there are going to be less questions about the role sabermetrics plays in a normal life and obviously more questions about the reception of sabermetrics within an actual baseball franchise.  I’ll report back on Friday with some details of the interview.