Hi, guys. I'm a new PhD student. Yesterday, I saw a PhD fellow did his transcript work, using eyes, ears, feet, fingers... He listened the tape and enter them into the computer sentence by sentence. He told me then he would code and category. It's really a hard work. He told me everyone did like this. I'm very confused. Are there any software help us transcript interview infromation from tape to ASCII code or Word format, etc?

CAQDAS (Computer assisted qualitative data analysis software) helps you code and retrieve data although you still have to do the transcription yourself (a proper transcribing machine makes this alot easier -ask your university if they can supply you with one). I'm using N6 software at the moment -it doesnt interpret the data for you (i.e.you still have to do all the thinking!) but it certainly makes organising it alot easier. But be warned: it's a lot more expensive than buying a tube of glue and some scissors!

P.s. if you're rich enough you can always get someone to do the transcribing for you, but they'll probably make loads of mistakes and potentially distort the research simply because they werent there at the time of data collection

Hiya, thanks. I thought it was necessary to transcribe each interview tape. Now, I know a bit more, whether they need to be transcribed depends on your methodology.