As a master’s student, Dr. Jessica Freeman asked me to help her transcribe interviews on research she was working on around grandparents raising grandchildren, or grandfamilies. Transcribing was an entirely new experience since I was new to research, so it gave me a great opportunity to dive into the world of interview methodology. After transcribing hours of interviews, I began talking with Jessica about some themes I saw in the research. From there, we started talking about writing a paper together on the topic.
A few years later, our paper “Grandma or Mommy: Familial Labels as Constructs of Identity in Grandfamilies” was published in the Journal of Intergenerational Relationships. While this paper doesn’t fit into my larger researcher interests about media production, it was a great introduction to the field of qualitative research for me, and I’m really proud of how the article turned out. A previous version of the article received the top paper award at the 2017 NCA national conference.
Ryan Stoldt 