An actinometric optical emission spectroscopy (AOES) study of the trends in the concentrations of the plasma species H, CH, CO, OH, and CN in film-producing glow discharges of mixtures of isopropanol and nitrogen was undertaken. Conventional AOES was used to obtain the trends in the plasma concentrations of these species as a function of the proportion of nitrogen in the feed, R-n. A dynamic variant of actinometry in which trends in the concentrations of plasma species are measured as a function of time following the cutting of one of the principal gas flows was also employed to investigate the relative importance of gas phase and plasma/polymer-surface interactions in the production of the species of interest. Each of the above-mentioned species is produced, to some degree, by plasma/polymer-surface reactions. As revealed by transmission infrared spectroscopy, the films deposited contain C-H, C=O, and O-H groups. For R-n > 0, the films become nitrogenated, with both N-H and C=N groups being present. As revealed by transmission ultraviolet-visible spectroscopy, both the optical gap and the refractive index of the deposited films decrease as R-n is increased.