Transcription
Transcription is a necessary part of most qualitative research, although it is often expensive and time consuming.
The easiest way of getting a transcription done is to send your recordings to a transcription service. Typically these services charge by the page or by the minute. While easy, this is also the most expensive approach and may require additional IRB clearance. It is also not necessarily the most accurate approach. Commercial services charge by the page rather than by the hour, so their motivation is to produce pages as quickly as possible. With increased speed also comes increased error pretty often. You will have more control over the process if you hire someone who is a good typist and pay them by the hour. Grad students with good ears who can touch-type make excellent transcribers in my experience. More on below.
Whether you find your own transcriber or send it to a service, a good rule of thumb is that it will take three to four hours to transcribe each hour of recording. There is very little that you can do about that. Speech recognition software is not yet at the point where it can transcribe an interview for you. I have been waiting since the mid-90s for speach recognition to get that good, but so far, no luck.
James Drisko, who lectures on the use of qualitative data analysis software, has a unique approach to getting his transcripts. His method involves listening to the recording wearing headphones, and then repeating what he hears into speech recognition software. Speach recognition software is not good for transcribing recordings, but is pretty good at recognizing an individual voice. Dr. Drisco's software is good at recognizing his speach, and types whatever he speaks in the microphone directly to a transcript. Since he does not need his hands to type, they are free to manipulate the recorder. I have never found anyone else who uses this method, but it seems quite good. The downside is that this requires special software, setup and to time to "train" the speech software to recognize your speech. The upside is no carpal tunnel complaints!
Transcription software and foot pedals
Most transcription involves typing on a keyboard. Since very few people can type as fast as normal speech, the typist also needs to manipulate the recording (at least stop, play and rewind). It’s best if they can do this without taking their hands off the “home” keyboard. In general that means getting a foot pedal. The simplest start and stop the recording. Some can “rewind” or “fast forward,” as well.
Here is the method I use:
Start with a good, clean digital recording. There are hand-held recorders for under $100 on the market now that can make high quality MP3s or even CD-quality recordings. Olympus makes the best "PCM" recorders that I have used. I have also used a Zoom H1 for my projects, which can make recordings that are nearly as good. When I got it, the H1 was much cheaper and also one of the easiest to use, but other manufacturers are following suit. There are excellent reviews of recorders at the Audiotranskription web site and it’s probably worth checking out to find out what’s best right now. I recommend a device that can record at CD quality--even if you only use it at MP3 quality. Olympus, MAudio, Sony, Tascam, Zoom and a few other manufacturers make good ones.
If you are not a good typist, I recommend hiring someone who is. The main qualifications are good ears, the ability to write with good spelling, grammar and punctuation. I test them, to see how well they write. I pay by the hour. I tell them explicitly that I am looking for accuracy, not speed. If they are good and quick, I give them more transcripts to do. If not, I don't. Simple. I have used students whenever possible, and they work great. Carol Stepick (half of a qualitative research powerhouse couple), and I have never looked back.
You want to make it as easy as possible for your transcriber, particularly when you are paying by the hour. Set them up with transcription software and foot pedals. Basic transcription software is a fancy MP3 player that loads your recording and allows the recording to be controlled with a foot pedal. Good ones will allow you to slow down or speed up the recording, and some also include a simple word processor.
My favorites are ExpressScribe or F4.* My least favorites are the ones that come from the people that make recordes (eg. Phillips, Sony, etc.) because they tend to lock you into their proprietary recording format and pedals. There are plenty of others out there that are good. I used one called Start-Stop for a while, which worked very well. I now use ExpressScribe and F4 are free (or at least cheap), they work very well, and give you a number of pedal options. F4 is one of the only programs specifically created with qualitative data analysis in mind, and works well with several qualitative data analysis packages, including Atlas.ti. Any good program will allow you to slow down the recording so that the words come at roughly the speed the transcriber can type. They also allow for the use of a foot pedal.
If you are doing one or two transcripts, you may not need foot pedals--at least with Express Scribe or F4. You can start, stop, rewind and fast forward using the "F" keys on your keyboard. I have never mastered this, but some of my students say it's not too bad. If you are hunt-and-peck typist, this may work just as well for you as foog pedals. Or you might want to explore the "Drisco" approach which is likely to be faster. Generally, however, if you are a touch typist, foot pedals are the way to go for controlling the recording.
If you hire someone you will want to give them foot pedals. If they don't want to use the footpedals, find someone else. That may sound harsh, but a touch-typist with footpedals will be much faster than one without them, and paying by the hour, it will add up.
Foot pedals control the recording using foot commands so that typists do not need to take their hands off the keyboard. At a minimum, the pedal will stop, start, and rewind the recording. Better ones also fast forward. For those of you who will use Atlas.ti or MAXQDA to aid in data analysis, F4 has a nice additional feature. Either with an F key or with a foot-pedal, you can insert a “time-stamp.” This allows Atlas.ti or MAXQDA to automatically synchronize your audio recording with the transcribed text.
You can buy commercially available USB foot pedals for about $80 on the internet. The ExpressScribe or F4 sites both have links to reasonably priced pedals. Be warned that these pedals will generally only work with one program.
Making Pedals
I hate to spend so much on pedals and am somewhat handy. The Express Scribe site, described an approach to making a pedal, and I could not resist trying it. It turned out to be relatively easy. You can also make pedals that plug into the serial port or a USB port. If you are not afraid of a little soldering, that's actually an even better approach0. If not, the $80 are well worth it ;-)
I have made a couple of serial port pedals. They are cheap and relatively easy to make, especially if you have an old dictation pedal around that you can modify. The Express Scribe site describes how to make a serial port pedal.
http://www.nch.com.au/scribe/pedalwiring.html
This approach works fine, but not all computers have a serial port. Laptops generally do not have them. I do not recommend the USB-to-serial converters sold at most computer stores. These can be tricky to set up, and while I have made them work, I don't think it's worth the time and effort--particularly if you are setting it up for your transcriber rather than yourself.
The Express Scribe site also suggests some ways of adapting usb, serial or game port pedals that you may already have at home.
http://www.nch.com.au/scribe/pedals.html
You may be able to teach your comtputer to use these, but it's not very practicle if you are going to have a transcriber do the work for you.
For me, the best approach has been to make a USB pedal. The approach I describe below will work with virtually any windows computer, it's cheap and it has been easy for my transcribers to use. It's no harder to make than they serial approach, but it does require you to be a bit handy with a soldering iron or know someone who is.
One nice feature of the approach below is that they will work with both Express Scribe and F4. I make it a point to buy very little in making these, and try to "repurpose" almost everything that goes into them.
If interested, see "for the real geek" below.
For the real geek:
I have put a link below to a couple of wiring diagrams that I created for cannibalizing some old Dell keyboards. They're relatively easy to find. They're pretty easy to modify. I have mapped out wiring diagrams for Dell L-100, RT7D50 and SK-8115 keyboards. Surprisingly, all three models look the same. If you have to buy one on ebay, the SK-8115 are the easiest to modify, I have found. The process is the same no matter what the brand or series of board, so if you have an old USB keyboard lying around you can use it, you'll just need to map out the keys. It's basically just like what is shown in the video below. I can send more detail to anyone interested.
Here's how I did one of mine:
Making a USB transcription pedal for use with ExpressScribe (PDF file)
Should you have any better ideas or experiences, please let me know! I am especially looking for an easier way to make the box that is still cheap ;-)
Transcription software : ExpressScribe or F4
*The free version of F4 is no longer useful for transcription of research transcripts. The "Plus" version will work, and is relatively cheap, but not free, unfortunately!