I am just conducting my interviews and trying to transcribe which I am way behind on. My tutors recommended that I pay someone to do some of them for me. If I was on their salaries I could think about it, but paying around £80 for an hour of transcription is a killer, esp as I have around 50 hours to do! So, can anyone give me any tips, recommend any software, or anything that will help.

So far I have: a foot pedal, and am using ExpressScribe. I find that having something on in the background that doesnt need sound helps, e.g. a football match etc... but this is not always practical!

Please help!

Thanks.

S

I always recommend 'transcription buddy' you can download it free from download.com for a 30 day free trial. (if you uninstall it after this period, then you can download it again for another 30 day trial - I have used it like this for 3 years).

Its great because you can add autmotic pauses. So rather than manually pressing pause/play all the time you can set it so for example, it plays 15 secs, rewinds 6 secs, pauses 4 secs and then plays 15secs again, so you continually loop round gradually progressing through the interview without having to touch anything. You can adjust these times depending on the speed of the speaker.

I had to transcribe hours and hours of material and it is a nightmare - no way around it i'm afraid!

I was lucky and my supervisor was able to find funding for some of my focus groups to be transcribed by a transcription service and it was a much welcome relief! If you can afford for a few sessions it I would recommend it, particularly for the sessions which are more difficult to transcibe (e.g. people talking over each other).

I would also try and break it up a bit - e.g. transcribe for a few hours then read an article

Good Luck!

Thanks. But my one of my supervisors really put me off as well when she said transcribing doesn't really count as workign, so I have left it to do in my spare time, but it has piled up!

I asked an MSc student to do it for me for about £30 for 30-40 min interviews. I had done most of mine by then though, so they only did about 5

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I had undergrads do mine... my sup sorted out the funding though. Before I got the funding, my boyfriend helped me in his spare time. you could ask a close friend or family member if they wouldn't mind helping, and provide dinner and a beer as compensation?? cheaper than paying someone.

Oh the plus side for you though, if you do it yourself, at least you know it's done properly. Some of mine was pretty shocking and I had to go through and re-transcribe some as huge bits were missed out, or just made no sense.

50 hours is a lot so good luck!! Transcribing was the worst part of my research. I've pretty much repressed the pain of it now though...

It's a shame your supervisor was so negative. Transcribing is a nightmare, but at the same time it was one of the most crucial stages of my thesis. I spent so much time with the data I began to see themes developing, noticed things I hadn't done in the focus groups, and believe it was one of the most important stages of analysis - it's where it all begins! It was awful - lonely and tedious - but it was so important for me.

Don't let your supervisor put you off my saying it's not work. I literally spent weeks - doing full time hours - doing nothing but transcription and I had about 20 hours of focus groups to do so I personally think you will struggle doing it all in your spare time. Basically - it IS work and it's hard work too

Thanks DrSeeker!

Hey Jinio! Glad to hear I am not the only person in transcribing hell! I am just about up to date with transcribing the interviews I have done so far and have started my analysis over the last few weeks. I have to say, it is extremely helpful when you come to the analysis if you have transcribed them yourself- it is good to hear things back a few times and become very familiar with what was said, how it was said, and it what context etc. It is a killer though- break it up with something else, just a few hours of transcription can be hellish! If you do decide to use a transcribing service I would try to get a recommendation from someone- a couple of people on the same team as me used one last year and said that the quality was so awful that they had to send it back and eventually demand a refund, so beware! I'm sure there are some good ones out there though. Good luck with it! KB

Thanks all. It is just nice knowing we are all in the same boat. I am roping my wife into helping me, so hopefully will cut my hours down a bit. I think I want to do it myself. This was the idea in the first place. I even said so in my methodology chapter, and stated the same thing as all of you have said, i.e. familiarisation of data. I am going to try and do a couple of hours in the morning and a couple in the evening if I can, and maybe dediucate a day on the weekend to it. Wish me luck!

Hi Jinio

Yes, I agree with the others - it's best to do it yourself if youcan, as you'll get to know your material very well and see themes developing. In the long run this will help to cut down your analysis time, as you'll be really familiar with your material and know where relevant bits of data are. While transcribing is an awful process, because it is so mechanical it allows your mind to quietly tick away, thinking about your material, which is really useful. And your sup is wrong - this most definitely is work!