I am transcribing interviews and I encounter some curse words that I would like to avoid in transcriptions. I do not find them important in the context of further analysis. I would keep them in my materials, but I would like to avoid them in the thesis quotations and the publication... How shoudl I proceed? Can I write e.g. "This is ... crazy!" or what should I write?
Maria - it's always best to avoid 'doctoring' narrative, qualitative transcripts and this is a potential form of data 'bias or manipulation'. However, you state that the 'swearing' words are not important in context. If that is the case, although I include swear words because they are often representative of how 'strongly' someone feels about something. Especially in 'un-natural' interviews, participants are more often likely to swear when they are emotional etc - rather than swearing naturally if they are in a normal social conversation with friends.
You can report more like 'field notes' if you want to avoid the actual swear word i.e. you can add 'emphasis' i.e. participant 'crying', laughing loudly, swearing etc instead.
I'll second Dean's answer. Don't change the text but you can censor using any of a variety of techniques. I found this elsewhere:
In research, you should quote them verbatim. Editing, or censoring, swearing is wrongly representing your research subjects and is thus a form of scientific misconduct. If you need to edit the quote for specific audience you must make it clear that you have done so:
It's just so [obscenity] slow, it really [obscenities] me off.
With a note saying that you have edited the text to remove swear words.
Dear Dean and Colton, thank you very much for your advice. I felt it would be better to include these words... even if I dislike them... I apprecciate your help.
Maria
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