Conducting qualitative interviews – 4 basic tips
Recording interviews is the ultimate prerequisite for writing them down and then analyzing them. It doesn’t matter whether you transcribe manually or use automatic speech recognition. Here are four basic tips on the topics of recording quality, transcription rules, data protection and software.
Test recording quality very critically
What appears to be “good” recording quality on a quick listen may prove to be problematic or difficult to transcribe on closer listening. So please be super critical when it comes to recording quality. We speak from our own painful experience: the slightest beep or noise can get on your nerves when typing for hours and cost valuable concentration. Speech recognition becomes almost useless with poor or mediocre recordings, and only with really good recordings do you start to save time. Therefore, especially with cell phone recordings, make two 2-minute test recordings beforehand and transcribe them manually and convert them into text using automatic speech recognition. In this way, you can quickly determine whether the recording quality produced in this way is also suitable for interview material.
By the way: We have put together a list of how to create really good recordings for group interviews. These tips also apply to individual interviews: to the recording tips
Apply transcription rules
Before transcribing for a scientific project, you should always use a scientific rule system that defines how and what you actually transcribe from what you hear. Because it can make a crucial difference whether you transcribe the answer to the question “Are you happy?” as “yes” or in more detail as “umm puh sigh (3 second pause) (crosses arms) so hmm joah sigh”. Transcription rules prescribe what must be transcribed and how. There are different rules, and you choose these to suit your own research question. The more the content is simple, the simpler the rule system is usually chosen. You can find a very widespread system, the content-semantic transcription system, in our practice book free of charge and citable for reading from p. 21. There you will also find information on more complex rules. And finally, you will learn to love transcription – and if not, here are a few suggestions: “…how I learned to love transcription” describes Cindy M. Bird here.
Observe data protection
Most interviews contain personal data and are therefore subject to data protection. A simple consent to the question “May I record you?” is NOT sufficient here. And, of course, Dropbox or unencrypted sending by e-mail are also taboo. You can download a template for a GDPR-compliant declaration of consent and a data protection checklist for interview recordings from our website.
to the data protection checklist
Using transcription software
In most cases, you will not be able to avoid typing everything yourself. But then you should not do this with the media player and Word, because important functions that speed up the process are missing here. Make your life easier and use slowdown, automatic return, time stamps and keyboard shortcuts. This saves a lot of time.
With good recording quality, you can save time with f4x voice recognition. f4x generates an initial text draft, which then only needs to be corrected. This results in a clear time saving with good recording quality, but the correction time should not be underestimated.
