I agree with my colleagues (except in the issue of using "volunteers". All work should be payed. Using other people's time without compensation (learning only shouldn't be one in my opinion) is also an ethical issue Jeremie Richard). In similar situations I've used Audacity (a free audio editing tool). It allows you add notes to the graphic representation of sound files and save them as project files. Maybe that's the droid you're looking for ;)

Hi Maddison,

Based on my knowledge of qualitative and thematic analysis, transcribing qualitative data is essential for a thorough and rigorous analysis of your findings. If you are to submit your work for publications, reviewers may think you were trying to cut corners by not transcribing your work and you may have missed important information or themes by simply listening to the audio as opposed to taking the time to transcribe and read over the transcriptions. Qualitative research is an iterative process that takes time and each step matters. If time is a constraint, you can possibly find volunteers to help you with transcription if possible. However, if you do this you have to keep in mind ethical issues such as confidentiality of the data.

Jeremie

Thank you!

To effectively analyse rich, qualitative data you really need transcriptions of you ( presumably) interviews before you can thematically explore the data. I hope that makes sense.

I agree with my colleagues (except in the issue of using "volunteers". All work should be payed. Using other people's time without compensation (learning only shouldn't be one in my opinion) is also an ethical issue Jeremie Richard). In similar situations I've used Audacity (a free audio editing tool). It allows you add notes to the graphic representation of sound files and save them as project files. Maybe that's the droid you're looking for ;)

Do you know any software that assists with transcription? I've got about 7 hours of interviews and I'm an undergrad so don't want to spend lots of money!

Hi Miguel Alonso-Cambrón . Simply to respond to your comment. I agree with you that volunteering may not always been perceived as "ethical". However, there are other implications to discuss with having volunteers help with research that informed my previous comment. If you are conducting research as an undergraduate or graduate student (such as myself), you may not always have funds available to allocate for this type of work (or are even getting payed yourself). Furthermore, if someone is willing to help, consents fully, and desires to gather additional experience, I see no reason why not. If you are so inclined, there is also the potential to include them as an author on the publication if they did a significant portion of the work not only in transcribing but also in analysis. Just as reviewers are not payed for the work they do in reviewing articles for journals, not everything in research requires monetary compensation.

As for software assisting with transcription, various programs that allow you to listen to audio at 0.5 speed and rewind recordings with ease. This could be of great assistance. Most qualitative research software that I know of help with data analysis once the transcription has already been done (e.g. NVivo, Open Code 3.6, CAQDAS).

Hello Maddison Currie

I share the opinion of the colleagues who preceded me. Transcription is very advisable. However, if you do not want to do this task, several qualitative analysis softwares allow you to do the coding based on the audio file. For example, when an audio segment is relevant, you mark that section of the audio and you could associated it with a code. It is also possible to do something similar with video files.

Hello Maddison-Currie

If you possibly can I think you need to transcribe one of the interviews for the experience. I learnt a lot about the challenges of transcription from doing this myself even though I paid to have the majority of my interviews transcribed.

In terms of whether there are software packages that can create transcripts of interviews, there are a number of threads here on that topic. Recently, I have seen claims that newer programs can indeed do this with a relatively low error rate, but I personally remain dubious.

Note that this is different from what Jorge Cruz-Cárdenas suggests, which is directly coding the audio file without transcription. The problem there is that reading text is much faster than listening to audio. In particular, you can quickly skim back and forth over large bodies of text, but with the audio you have to play the relevant segment in a linear fashion.

I agree with colleagues above that it would be better to work with full transcripts rather than audios. If money is not a constraint you could have some intreview audios professionally transcribed and do the rest yourself Or get another trusty fellow student to help you. In my opinion 7 hrs of audio is very doable - I transcribed over 90hrs of audio myself - though I got started after each interview.

Hi Maddison,

With Maxqda, you can code directly into the video or audio file (with codes and memos, as you would code a text document), and later transcribe only the sections that are of interest or useful.

I agree that you should do some transcription work, but it may be ok not to transcribe everything, though.

The transcription tool in Maxqda is quite good, with a couple of useful tools to transcribe faster : there are a rewind interval, useful keyboard shortcuts, and an automatic stamp for the speaker's names.

More explanations here :

https://www.maxqda.com/help-max18/19-analyzing-videos/the-multimedia-browser

Amélie Dumarcher is correct that this is an option, which is offered by a number of other qualitative data analysis programs, in addition to MAX.