More first time transcription questions

[Aisha Amir Ahmed]

Dear all,

From the discussion at http://www.methodspace.com/forum/topics/firsttime-transcribing
I managed to locate transcription software. I’m in the process of now exploring the f4 software recommended there.

However, I’m wondering how to go about formatting the transcript. From what little I’ve been able to find online, there appear to be a number of different formats. Are there any “standard” features of transcripts? Like line numbers and/or time markers? Anything that I should definitely avoid? My interviews are one-on-one with a single interviewee, just at different times.

I’m looking to do a project in the narrative inquiry tradition, although I’m still a bit unclear on how exactly this will unfold.

Thanks in advance for any help you can offer.

[Tabassum Ferdous]

Hi Aisha
For your narrative inquiry, you also need to count your reflective journal, field notes and information around you as data along with the interview transcript. ‘Handling qualitative data’ by Lyn Richards 2005, Sage Publication would be a very helpful book.

[Hazel Burke]

Hi Aisha
We’ve just produced a toolkit on transcribing qualitative data to help with some of the problems that you are coming up against. It’s available free on our website – there’s a document with some general advice and useful tips, plus you can also watch a little demo of how to add line numbers in Word. One extra tip about formatting, if you are planning to archive the data, would be to check if the archive has any particular requirements or preferences for this we always include certain header information like interviewee name (pseudonym), interviewer name, date of interview, interview reference number.
Hazel
PS One of my colleagues recently put together a bunch of resources on narrative analysis – you might like this, or you might not need it but just in case you can find it at: Narrative Analysis resources

[Julia Thornton]

Hi, My understanding is that transcription conventions depend on your discipline – eg linguists have all sorts of conventions for showing verbal inflections and anthropologists show pauses and other “body language”. It depends on what you want to get out of the transcript. I have found Transana which is sort of open source (small fee) software to be a very useful application for analysing transcripts. It allows qualitative analysis as well as keeping the audio with the text. It is actually designed for video analysis but works just as well for audio on its own.

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