How Transcription in Research Can Benefit Your Research Project
Whether someone is conducting a research project during their education or career, interviews are likely to play an important role in the information they need to obtain. If a project requires qualitative research, interviewing subjects can help researchers learn more about their thoughts and opinions. Researchers can get the information they need directly from the source and have the opportunity to ask them the exact questions that will provide the most relevant responses. To make interviews even more beneficial during a qualitative research project, transcription services are necessary.
Transcription in research can be highly beneficial when conducting research and performing interviews.
Research Transcription Makes it Easy to Find Data
Any research project can involve many lengthy interviews. Researchers may obtain important information needed for their projects, but they need to be able to access this easily later on. When this is the case, it’s easy for researchers to lose track of what interviewees said and when. While researchers may take notes during interviews and research sessions, this isn’t entirely accurate. When compared to a transcript, notes can leave out significant information.
Transcripts allow researchers to review exactly what was said by whom and at what point in the interview it occurred. Professional transcription services guarantee accuracy that personal notes can’t. There is no doubt whether the data recorded from an interview is reliable. Researchers can feel confident they’ve obtained what they need for their project and to provide to others.
Transcribe Interviews with Stakeholders
Researchers are not the only ones affected by their projects. Various stakeholders above them need to guide the project and have a say in what the researcher can do. Of course, researchers must fully understand what is expected of them to provide the right results. There may be multiple meetings and interviews with different stakeholders and teams who have a hand in the project. What is said in these sessions is information that researchers can’t afford to lose.
Understanding what others expect from the project is essential for ensuring it is going in the right direction. With a transcript of these interviews, researchers will always be able to reflect on what was said. These transcripts can be used for reference throughout the project and help hold everyone accountable for their expected contributions.
Start Improving Qualitative Research Projects Through Transcription Today
With so much information involved in qualitative research projects, researchers need to know what resources are available to help them stay on track and meet their goals. For researchers who don’t already make transcription a part of their process, now is the time to learn what a difference this can make in how efficiently a project runs.
How to improve research transcription
At FFTranscription, we know that what makes our transcription services stand out in the academic world, market research industry, legal industry, and the medical market is that we use our best asset – our people, our transcribers, and our QA team. We asked our team to share with our clients their thoughts on how you can help us help you!
Here are five great tips from our team of transcription professionals that will ensure you receive the most accurate, best-in-class transcripts for every industry:
1. The Baby in the Background
Too often, clients and moderators overlook respondents having too much background noise when being interviewed (dogs/kids/etc….). This can make transcribing audio files difficult, resulting in a less-than-satisfactory transcript.
To assist with background noise, making sure both moderators and respondents use headphones (preferably with a microphone) during sessions can improve audio clarity, resulting in higher transcript accuracy.
2. There’s No Such Thing as TMI
Providing our team with as much reference material as possible is highly beneficial! Including materials such as discussion guides can help with terminology and spelling accuracy throughout your transcript. Additional information provided to us, such as an interview schedule, will also greatly benefit our team. This helps us better coordinate resources we feel necessary to accomplish our goal of getting transcripts back to you in the most accurate and timely fashion.
3. One person at a time, please
Let’s face it – we all get excited when discussing topics or products we enjoy. But multiple people talking at once makes for a messy transcript. As a moderator, ensuring that each person waits their turn to speak can significantly decrease crosstalk throughout an interview, thus assisting in speech being more accurately captured in a completed transcript.
4. LOUDER for the People in the Back!
As a moderator, make sure all speakers are audible – speaking loudly, clearly, and with enunciation helps us immensely.
Being mindful of the “quiet mumbler” respondents and asking them to speak up or speak more clearly will reduce the number of inaudible audio in your transcript.
5. A Drop of Water is Better Than a Flood
Don’t wait to get started! We begin transcribing as soon as we receive audio, so there’s no need to hold off sending us audio files until the last interview has been completed for a project. The sooner we have audio, the sooner you will get your transcript.
Sending audio to us on a rolling basis as soon as it’s available helps guarantee that larger projects with multiple interview files are transcribed and completed faster. This can be significant for clients with pressing deadlines for reviewing and turning around research results to complete a project.
At FFTranscription, our team of transcription professionals will provide you with accurate, secure, and professional transcripts for every industry. Whether it’s for marketing research, the medical sector, academics, or legal transcription, we can handle all of your transcription needs. Since 2003, we have successfully transcribed over 33 million minutes for our happy clients, and we’re ready to help you.
Find out how Focus Forward can help researchers with our transcription services today.
