Transcribing is converting speech to text word for word. Transcribing is a common practice when conducting interviews because it enables you to perform analysis.
How to transcribe an interview in five steps:
Before you start transcribing, you first need to determine what transcription method you want to use. The best method depends on the goal of your transcription.
Write down every single word, including pauses, the expression of emotions such as laughter, stuttering, and hesitations such as ‘uh’.
This type of transcription is mostly used in the legal profession or in research where you’re not only interested in what is said but also how it is said.
Write down every word, but without irrelevant fillers like ‘um’, ‘yeah’, and ‘you know’. To improve readability, you can also fix grammar mistakes, broken sentences, and long paragraphs.
This method is more readable than verbatim transcription, but some data – such as emotions, pauses and hesitation – is lost in the process.
A summarised and edited version of an intelligent verbatim transcript. In addition to omitting fillers like ‘you know’, irrelevant sentences can be omitted if it doesn’t change the meaning of the story.
If the audio quality is bad or the conversation itself needs clarification, you are allowed to make changes in the transcript. For instance:
There are no rules for formatting and structuring a transcript. However, most transcripts contain the following information:
