Researchers across the country often grapple with hours of recorded interviews, focus groups, and field notes in the form of audio recordings. These can provide valuable insights – if they can be converted into something easier to parse and analyze, like transcripts. Qualitative data transcription offers clear, accurate text that can help advance the work of researchers and businesses. However, most academic teams lack the time or resources to handle transcription in-house. So, why not turn to specialized qualitative research transcription companies?
In this article, you’ll learn how:
- Qualitative data transcription means turning recorded interviews and research conversations into written words. This helps researchers use the information more easily.
- Qualitative data transcripts help researchers study them closely, keep them forever, share them with teammates, prove their findings are factual, and make their research available to more people.
- Professional human transcriptionists can provide 99% accuracy, while AI only reaches about 62% accuracy.
What Is Qualitative Data?
Qualitative data is the “rich and descriptive” information that can’t be easily quantified. The research or qualitative data primarily focuses on meanings and understanding context. Its counterpart is quantitative data, which you can get from numbers or precise measurements.
In most scenarios, gathering qualitative data means sitting down with people for thorough interviews or focus groups and sometimes studying how a particular person or people behave in real-life situations. Qualitative data aims to understand people’s thought patterns about specific contexts, conditions, and situations, and it has vast applications in both science and business.
Researchers and market researchers often analyze this data using thematic analysis or grounded theory to spot patterns, which is handy when dealing with situations affecting the outcome.
What Is Qualitative Data Transcription?
Qualitative data transcription is relatively similar to other types of transcription, which means converting recordings into readable text documents – audio or video recordings of interviews, focus group discussions, observations, etc., since everything in qualitative data gathering is typically recorded.
However, depending on your research protocol and types of data needed, transcribing these recordings requires careful attention to verbal aspects and nonverbal cues like pauses, emotions, and other contextual elements.
Different types of transcription can be applied to qualitative research. If you’re the transcriber, you can choose whether to produce verbatim (write down every single utterance, false start, filler word, background, etc.), edited transcriptions (remove all speech disfluencies for better readability) based on the analytical approach being used, or other types of transcription process.
That said, if you’re delegating the task to someone, you better inform them about the type of transcriptions you need to avoid unnecessary back-and-forth.
Types of Qualitative Data That Require Transcription
There are various ways you can extract qualitative data; below are the ones that mostly require transcription.
| Data Types | Description |
| Interviews | One-on-one conversations between researcher and participant. Often structured with predetermined questions. |
| Focus Groups | Discussions with multiple participants sharing perspectives on a specific topic. |
| Oral Histories | Recorded narratives of personal experiences. Mostly talks about historical events. |
| Field Notes | Researchers’ audio-recorded observations during ethnographic studies. |
| Testimonials | First-person accounts of experiences. Primarily used in legal and medical research. |
| Meetings/Conferences | Organizational discussions requiring documentation. |
| Classroom Discussions | Educational interactions between teachers and students. |
| Therapy Sessions | Clinical conversations (with appropriate consent and confidentiality). |
| Narratives/Stories | Personal accounts shared by participants during research activities. |
Why Is Qualitative Data Transcription Important?
As someone who’s gotten involved in qualitative research in the past (and is now doing transcription work), I can say that transcribing research-related recordings is a lifesaver for many researchers. Let’s focus on the most significant benefits of qualitative data transcription.
Enables Thorough Analysis
Nothing beats quality data transcription to dig deep into your research. Having those transcripts means you can return to what people said or did during an observation as often as needed. This has proven critical when connecting the dots between different interviews.
Also, when you transcribe your recordings (from research), you can easily spot what you’d miss when listening to them. Something about reading vs. listening activates different parts of your brain and makes you notice something you didn’t know existed.
You could research how doctors talk to patients about treatments, and if you have transcripts of their discussion, you can easily compare how different doctors pause and phrase their explanations. Transcribing your qualitative research interviews also means you can search for a specific topic through keywords and jump right at it – no need to repeatedly listen to the recordings.
Creates a Permanent Record
Transcripts can be used as permanent research materials beyond the immediate study. This is why qualitative transcripts are the backbone of long-term research, and of course, researchers might need to revisit data years after gathering them.
Am I saying that audio and video recordings aren’t as helpful? Of course not. The real problems with these recordings are that you’ll have to be aware of preservation issues like sound quality degradation, outdated file formats, or worse, files getting corrupted.
On the other hand, all types of transcripts – especially qualitative for research – can be converted between formats, which means they can be maintained indefinitely.
The most valuable part of this permanence is that it creates an institutional memory for organizations doing rounds of qualitative research – new team members can access research and studies from the past and potentially get insights from them, not some fragmented data.
Facilitates Collaboration
Transcripts can be a common reference point for researchers to work with identical data. Anyone can independently code sections and compare various interpretations to strengthen the reliability of the analysis.
Also, with digital transcripts, team members can use highlight or comment functions in real time, which is handy for collaborative analysis from different locations.
For example, when researchers from different countries study how a mental health program works in various cultures, transcripts of this research let them compare challenges efficiently, even when team members work from other places.
Junior researchers can also get appropriate feedback on interpreting specific sections, as qualitative data transcripts can be used for training.
Supports Verification
Researchers can consider qualitative data transcripts as their research receipt. You can extract data from it or prove you didn’t just make things up. Suppose one participant claims they felt a certain way; you can back it up with their exact words in the transcripts. The readers can also see if the researchers’ conclusions match people’s.
Peer reviewers love this, too. They can check if you’re stretching the truth by comparing your ideas against the actual quotes. And when you’re presenting, nothing sells your point better than showing the audience the raw transcript alongside your fancy theory.
The most critical part of this advantage is that qualitative data transcripts keep researchers honest. It’s hard to twist someone’s words when they’re right there in black and white. In some rare instances, participants even review their transcripts – a process called member-checking to confirm that the researchers got their perspective right before analyzing everything.
Improves Accessibility
I firmly believe that research data should be accessible to anyone who needs it, which is why transcription is essential for qualitative research.
When we convert recorded interviews or research-related recordings into written text, we’re essentially opening doors for many people – students, educators, etc. – who might otherwise be left out.
There are situations where you can’t simply play an audio file. Maybe they’re in a quiet library or on a noisy train, but that problem disappears completely with transcripts.
Another HUGE advantage is speed or efficiency. Locating a single crucial quote within a two-hour recording can take just as long, making the process both time-consuming and frustrating.
On the other hand, if you have research transcripts, you can scan through and find what you need in minutes or even seconds if you know the right keywords to search.
How To Get Qualitative Data Transcription
Instead of sitting through hours of recordings and manually typing out everything like a madman, there are two options to get a transcript much more easily: research assistants or professional transcription companies.
Let’s discover the pros and cons of each as follows:
Having Your Assistants Do It
Having your research assistants transcribe qualitative data may seem straightforward and cost-efficient. However, before taking that route, consider a critical factor: time.
In my (admittedly vast) experience in the field, a professional transcriber takes three to four hours to transcribe an audio recording. It’ll take longer if it’s verbatim.
Academic experts agree. In a widely cited academic paper published in Oxford Academic’s Family Practice journal, author Julia Bailey says, “Transcribing takes a long time (at least 3 hours per hour of talk and up to 10 hours per hour with a fine level of detail including visual detail).”
She also explicitly states that, while junior researchers and assistants typically do transcription for qualitative studies, that “can be a mistake if the transcriber is inadequately trained or briefed.”
So, unless you hire a junior assistant with a deep background in transcription, you’ll have to allot for training, briefing, and equipment provisions – all of which take a big bite out of your limited resources.
Or, you could go with the other option, which is –
Outsource Transcription To The Pros
Qualitative and quantitative research can take massive amounts of time and effort. However, the role of transcription in qualitative research methods is an overall positive addition.
So, should you add hours upon hours of transcription tasks to your workload to reap the benefits?
Of course not. You can hire a professional transcription service to get all the advantages. A+ if you can get an accurate, professional, yet affordable provider, like Ditto Transcripts.
Why Not Get Transcription Software To Do Your Qualitative Data Transcription?
Artificial intelligence is an excellent blessing to researchers around the world. With it, pattern recognition, predictive analysis, experimental procedure automation, research data optimization, and enhanced simulation are undoubtedly faster.
Perceptive readers might notice that transcription is ostensibly absent on this list. Why is that?
According to our study, speech recognition and AI transcription accuracy is 61.92% – it may be acceptable for taking notes or setting up reminders.
However, for research projects, where accuracy reflects one’s skill and integrity, 61.92 might as well be zero percent.
Here are just some of the consequences of inaccurate qualitative research transcripts.
- Misinterpretation of Data
- Loss of Credibility
- Ethical Implications
- Flawed Analysis Process and Results
- Resource Wastage
- Publication and Dissemination Issues
- Legal Consequences
- Impact on Future Research
- Damage to Participant Relationships
- Compromised Decision Making
- Compromised Data Security
AI transcription work is at the mercy of background noise, overlapping speakers, different accents and dialects, and poor audio file quality. It cannot identify nuance and utilize context to create a more accurate verbatim transcription – things that come naturally to experienced human transcriptionists.
That’s why I always say humans are better at understanding humans. Ditto Transcripts offers 100% human-powered, U.S.-based transcription for any research, academic, or interview transcription requirements, and we guarantee 99% accuracy every time.
Looking For A Reliable Research Transcription Company? We’ve Got You Covered
We fully understand why transcription is the first step in the qualitative research process, and our transcriptionists are ready to uphold your studies’ precision and intellectual integrity.
You know you’re getting your money’s worth and more with Ditto. We offer faster deliveries for rush jobs and more economical prices to fit tighter budgets. Regardless of price, all our services come with our 99% accuracy guarantee, high-quality transcription, secure channels, and the best customer service in the industry.
Ditto Transcripts is a FINRA, HIPAA-compliant and CJIS-compliant Denver, Colorado-based transcription services company that provides fast, accurate, and affordable transcripts for individuals and institutions of all sizes. Call (720) 287-3710 today for a free quote and ask about our free five-day trial.