3

Currently, I am working on my thesis which I write in LaTeX. Part of the research is qualitative. Now I stumble upon an 'issue'. As you may know, it is required to include an interview transcript in the thesis as reference material. The interviews should be coded as well. I have completed all transcripts, but have to do the analysis part still.

Can somebody give me some advice on how to deal with (coded) interview transcripts in LaTeX? I mean, the analysis part can be done outside LaTeX. Yet, I am wondering what is the smartest way to deal with these huge amount of texts and also lay-out wise. Are there any useful packages or anything else that can make the process a bit easier?

Thanks in advance!

Example of how I want to code the interviews (this is done in Word, however I would like to do it in LaTeX) enter image description here

  • Welcome to TeX.SE! What kind of coding do you do in the interviews? Some kind of linguistic annotation? Or adding remarks? Or timestamps? Maybe you could give a small example of how part of a coded interview transcript would look. – Marijn Jul 14 '20 at 14:29
  • Thanks for your reply Marijn! Good questions. The idea is that I will use open coding, which means adding codes (in a seperate column) next to the text that belong to a certain topic. In addition to that, in the most ideal situation, I would highlight the text with a certain colour that corresponds with the code. The transcript only considers the speech and the name of the persons that spoke during the interviews, so anything else like timestamps is not relevant. I have added an example to the question post. – Fastbanana Jul 14 '20 at 14:48

1 Answers1

7

A simple solution may be to use margin notes (the \marginnote command from the marginnote package) together with highlighting (the \hl command from the soul package). You can define a new command with three arguments for the color, the main text to be highlighted, and the note:

\newcommand{\codedtext}[3]{%
\sethlcolor{#1}%
\marginnote{\hl{#3}}\hl{#2}%
}

Because margin notes are typeset in the margin, the page gets a bit asymmetric. To address this you can load the geometry package to set the left margin smaller than the right margin, and to increase the width of the margin notes. The example picture also seems to have 1.5 line spacing for the main text and 1.0 line spacing for the notes, which you can accomplish using the setspace package.

If you want to include an interview as part of a larger document then you probably don't want the margins of regular pages in the document affected by the settings for the interviews. With geometry you can change the settings for each page, which will be in effect for all following pages until you change the settings again. For some reason the straightforward way of applying this, i.e., set default settings in the preamble, change for interview pages, and reset afterwards, did not work in the example (the margins were not correctly calculated). However, the other way around does work, so put the special settings in the preamble, immediately change them for the first page, restore the default settings for the interview pages, and reapply the changes for the pages after the interview page(s).

MWE:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{xcolor}
\usepackage{soul}
\usepackage{marginnote}
\usepackage{setspace}
% margin settings for interview pages
\usepackage[left=1in,right=2.5in,marginparwidth=1.5in]{geometry}

\newcommand{\codedtext}[3]{% \sethlcolor{#1}% \marginnote{\setstretch{1}\hl{#3}}\hl{#2}% }

\begin{document} % margin settings for regular pages \newgeometry{left=1in,right=1in,marginparwidth=1in} This is a normal page with margins set by the \texttt{\textbackslash newgeometry} command. This settings will be in effect until \texttt{\textbackslash restoregeometry} is used. The following page shows a coded interview with adjusted margins. \newpage % restore to margin settings defined in preamble \restoregeometry \onehalfspacing \noindent\textbf{Data}\marginnote{\textbf{Codes}}\ \rule{1.3\textwidth}{1pt} \textbf{(Q1) Moderator:} What do you think about the apparel industry in Sri Lanka? Who are the customers, competitors, suppliers and influential parties and \textit{what} is their influence on the business and management controls of the business?\ \textbf{Finance Director:} Global competition and \codedtext{yellow}{GSP plus [Generalized System of Preferences] and the Trans-Pacific Trade Partnership have a direct impact on our operations, and on management controls}{Global statutory rules}. More than \codedtext{green}{60% of Sri Lankan apparel exports are to the United States and other Western countries. Our operations and controls have to focus on their domands in order to survive in the market.}{Customer regulatory demands} In the meantime, \codedtext{pink}{competition in the industry is increasing from emerging countries like Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. So, our controls have always to focus on reducing costs and producing products at competitive prices.}{Influence of changing market conditions} The economic environment of our country too is not supportive of the apparel industry because other industries such as tourism and hospitality are growing. Thus finding \codedtext{cyan}{labour for the apparel industry will be difficult in about another five years because they expect}{Facing changes in the local industry}

\newpage \newgeometry{left=1in,right=1in,marginparwidth=1in} This page has the same margins as the first page.

\end{document}

Result (run twice for the notes to be positioned correctly):

enter image description here

Marijn
  • 37,699
  • Wow Marijn, I am actually suprised how sleeks this looks. This does the job exactly the way I imagined it. Thank you so much for your help! :-) – Fastbanana Jul 15 '20 at 18:35