transcription of interviews/focus groups

ali-t

do any of you have experience of any companies that charge a reasonable price to type up tapes of interviews/focus groups that can be used as transcripts for research?

Given that time is so precious and that I am working F/T, am self employed part time and undertaking an Masters I am thinking I would prefer not to spend time transcribing tapes when I could be working on other aspects of my research.

I am looking for a good deal and a reputation for accuracy and would appreciate any recommendations. TIA

dmg24

Could you not ask/ advertise for another student to do it? If I wasn't in the same situation I would happily do it for you!

ali-t

I hadn't thought of that. I suppose there would be loads glad of the money. I am on a tight timescale and thought I would have more leeway if I got a company to do it who would turn it round in 24 hours. The only problem I might have is people undestanding the local dialect!

When I was looking last night the average cost is £1-3 per audio minute for transcription so each hour might cost about £100. I just don't want to be stressing over an admin task when there is enough stressing to do with analysing the data etc.

dmg24

If you are friendly with any of the lecturers they may be able to recommend someone, either a professional or another student. I am quite obsessive about spelling and grammar, so can understand your wanting to be sure of standards before giving someone the task!

[Deleted User]

ouch that is a lot of money!

i transcribed five, hour(ish)-long, interviews earlier this year, took me an hour of typing per 10 minutes of talking..

we were allocated £75 to spend on our dissertation, my supervisor said pay my ppts £7.50 each adn then use the rest for transcription, so you must be able to get it cheaper than that otherwise the maths doesn't add up. (i actually decided to pay £10 to my ppts each and type it up myself - but I had the time).

i hope you find something.. def think another student would be the cheapest option but if they type at the same speed as me you'd be waiting at least a week, and i'm quite a fast typer... good luck!!!

ali-t

I had a meeting with my ltutor today and he sounded quite surprised when I mentioned it. I will keep hunting for someone fairly cheap with good reviews. I figure I can earn more as an hourly rate in my job and doing freelance work than I would be paying someone to do it so it is a good trade off (got to keep telling myself that!)

[Deleted User]

well if it makes you feel any better, i was very poorly when i tried to do this so it took me weeks (maybe months - have blocked it from my memory!) to do and i did regret not finding someone else to do it for me. but very proud when i finished it all!! will def give you more time to do actual important stuff like analysis so i think it is a good idea if you can afford it. good luck with it all, let me know if you find anywhere good! :-)

The_One_Who

Transcription is a very, very time-consuming task, especially if going for full transcription rather than the partial of just the important or relevant parts. If you can get it done for under one hour per every fifteen minutes of speech, I think you are doing quite well.

Whilst it is time-consuming, I found transcribing it myself allowed me to start thinking of links and how it could all fit together. So it cut down a little bit on the coding process.

[Deleted User]

The_One_Who wrote: »

Transcription is a very, very time-consuming task, especially if going for full transcription rather than the partial of just the important or relevant parts. If you can get it done for under one hour per every fifteen minutes of speech, I think you are doing quite well.

Whilst it is time-consuming, I found transcribing it myself allowed me to start thinking of links and how it could all fit together. So it cut down a little bit on the coding process.

yeah mine was full transcription with all of the "erm"s and "ah"s in haha! It is time consuming you are right. I agree with you about the last part too, I found it really helpful to start thinking and linking themes too, but also seeing things that i'd not picked up on during the interviews themselves. and hearing the emotion again etc... I think if you can't transcribe them then I would definitely recommend reading through the transcripts once they are done, accompanied by the audio recording of their voices which will aid you in making notes etc on the transcripts.

edit: also remember about ethics - is it ethical to have someone else hear the interviews? have your ppts consented to this?