School of Emergent Priorities researchers coded what drivers actually say when they report a noise to a breakdown line, and found one catch-all category absorbing 14 of the 34 descriptor families and 41.2 per cent of calls.
Nine months, 384 recorded calls and 96 roadside interviews, reduced to a lexicon of 1,180 phrases for a sound
A lexicon of 1,180 phrases for the noise a car makes has been deposited with the Indicator Commons, the product of nine months spent listening to people describe a breakdown down a phone line.
Describing the Noise, released today by the School of Emergent Priorities, codes 384 recorded calls to a motoring club’s breakdown line across six dispatch centres, together with 96 follow-up interviews conducted at the roadside. The phrases reduce to 34 descriptor families. The dispatch tree that receives them admits eleven categories, of which one, “noise, unspecified”, absorbs fourteen families and 41.2 per cent of coded calls.
People find the words for it standing on a verge in the dark, which is not the condition anyone writes a category list for. We wanted the list to have met them.
— Dr Fenna Okoro, Senior Lecturer and Convenor, Horizon Register
The coding ran over four rounds with six coders and an adjudication panel, the category list and coding frame fixed before the first round and unrevised afterwards.
Associate Professor Kwame Lindqvist, Director of the Master of Priority Studies, said the taxonomy was “the sort of result that raises more questions than it settles, which the School is glad to have raised”.
The Office of Research Outputs regards the lexicon as a durable addition to the University’s descriptive infrastructure. A recommended-phrasing card has been issued to member drivers, and quarterly attestation against the lexicon is under consideration.
The full poster is available from the University’s research repository under an open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.zreb2r.