free software designed for transcription work that enables you to control the playback as you type. For example, one program allows you to type into a text box as you hear the recording and then pause and restart the speech using a function key. The advantage of digital recordings is that the pause is instantaneous and no words are lost when you restart the playback and there is little need for rewinding. However, some programs do allow you to set an automatic rewind. Half a second or a second is usually enough to make sure you don’t miss anything. Another program allows you to split the speech into short phrases that are easier to control while transcribing. Some software will work with a foot pedal (connected via a USB cable) to stop and start the playback. If you are a good audio typist, this is a good gadget as you can keep your fingers on the keyboard while stopping and starting. Another useful facility in the software for those who are less rapid typists is the ability to replay at a slow speed, and pitch adjust at the same time. So the recording sounds normal but is just played much more slowly. This can be very useful for making accurate transcriptions. Transcription software is available for both Windows and Mac and includes: Express Scribe (free) and F4Transkript and F5Transkript. Several of the CAQDAS programs also offer these transcription functions.
Audio typist
Employing someone else to do the transcription, if you can afford it, is a good option, especially if the recordings are easily understandable or the notes and documents that need transcribing are easy to read. It is best if the typist you are employing knows something about the subject matter and the context of the interviews. Also make sure they know what kind of level of transcription you require. Check their work early on to make sure it is in the format you want. The last thing you want is to pay a lot of money for very detailed transcriptions that you do not need. No matter who you use, you will still need to check through the document produced against the recording or original text to eliminate mistakes. However, this is not all lost time as, again, reading the transcript (and listening to the recording) will be an opportunity to begin your analysis.
Don’t forget that the typist will be listening to or reading all your data. As Gregory et al. (1997) remind us, they are ‘vulnerable’ persons. If the content of your data is emotionally loaded and sensitive, you might want to consider including your transcribers in the scope of your ethical considerations and you may wish to offer some debriefing to support them.
OCR and speech recognition software
In recent years two new technologies have become available that can help the transcription process. If you have some typed or printed documents that you need to get an electronic copy of, then optical character recognition (OCR) software used with a scanner will help. Provided the original paper copy is good quality and that standard fonts like Courier are used for the typescript, then the software will work well in producing word processor files from the paper copies. Save your text as plain text because the layout, fonts, etc., that formatted text gives you are seldom of much relevance to your analysis.
A more recent technology that is sometimes used by qualitative researchers is speech recognition software. This takes speech spoken into a special, high-quality microphone and converts it into a word-processor file. The software can be used with natural speech and it can also cope with versions of English, such as UK English, Southeast Asian and Indian English, as well as some non-English languages, such as Spanish. However, it always needs to be trained to recognize the speech of one particular user and needs very good quality sound or sound recordings (ideally .WAV files). For these reasons it cannot be used directly with poor quality recordings of respondents and especially recordings of focus groups. However, what some enterprising researchers have done is to set up an audio player or computer with a pair of headphones with which they can listen to the recording. Then as the recording plays they pause after each phrase and dictate into the speech recognition software, rather in the manner of a parallel translator. The accuracy can be variable, but it is generally sufficient for a first draft transcription that can then be checked against the recording properly. Speech recognition is a computationally intensive task and all programs need fairly powerful computers. Check before you buy.
Accuracy
No matter how the transcription is produced, OCR, speech recognition or human typist, it will need checking against the original. Errors arise for a variety of reasons. First, there are simple typing errors, misspellings and so on. Most of these can be picked up using the spelling checker and grammar checker built into most word processors. Nevertheless, in most cases you will want to record exactly what the respondent said, even if it is ungrammatical. Other, and often more insidious errors arise because the transcriber has misheard what was said on the recording. Sometimes this is because the recording was made in a noisy place or it has picked up the sound of the recorder mechanism and it is hard to make out what is said. In face-to-face speech humans are very good at filtering out such noises, but recordings don’t and then we experience more difficulty hearing over the background. But even where the sound is good there are many cases where the transcriber has heard one thing whereas the respondent said something else. Hearing exactly what is said involves understanding and interpretation. Sometimes the right sound is heard but the interpretation is wrong, as in the UK comedian Ronnie Barker’s classic comedy sketch on the confusion between ‘four candles’ and ‘fork handles’. More often than not, though, it is in the process of interpretation that something different is heard from what was actually said. Table 2.1 lists some of the errors of interpretation found by a Canadian researcher using audio typists to transcribe interviews on trade union activities.
Table 2.1
From email from Carl Cuneo, 16 June 1994, QUALRS-L Listserv
Various things can be done to minimize these errors. It helps to have as good a quality sound as possible. So use good equipment. But no matter how good the sound, there is always going to be a need for interpretation and understanding of what is heard. The best way to reduce errors here is to make sure that the transcriber understands the context and subject matter he or she is transcribing and is used to the accent, cadence and rhythm of the speakers. Therefore, transcribers may need training to help them become familiar with the subject matter. This is one of the biggest advantages of doing your own transcription. You will know the context of the interview, and, I hope, be familiar with the subject matter.
You should also use your word processor to check the spellings in your text. Not only should common words be spelled correctly, but proper names and dialect and jargon terms should also be spelled consistently. This means that if you are using software to assist your analysis you can use the search facility in it without having to worry about alternative spellings.
Printing the Transcript
Even if you intend to use CAQDAS for managing all your analysis you may still want to print out your transcripts because it is easier to check them, you can show them to respondents for checking and because you want to do some analysis using the printed copy. One thing to decide about at this stage is whether you are going to use CAQDAS for your main analysis or for keeping the definitive record of your analysis – especially your coding. If you are doing either, then you should ensure that your printouts are the same as the text that appears on screen when you have imported transcripts into your CAQDAS program. That way you make it easier to transfer into the software any notes you have written on the transcripts. In this case it is best to import your transcripts into the CAQDAS program and use that program to print them out.
If you do not intend to use CAQDAS then you can print directly from your word processor. There are three things to consider.
1. Line numbers
If
