My co-principal investigator and I will be interviewing approximately fifty people for up to an hour each by telephone or skype.
We are looking for recommendations for PC compatible equipment that would enable us to record the interviews digitally and then transcribe them. We are hoping not to have to invest hundreds of dollars in equipment.
Also, what is the process for recording Skyped interviews?
Many thanks.
Hi! I have used an extremely practical approach. iPhones microphones are quite good for interviewing with the default voice memos app, I put mine close to the laptop speakers to record some Skype interviews that I conducted for my master thesis and the audio quality for both the interviewee's voice and mine was very good (and this was done with an iPhone 3GS, more recent models might be even better for this). Maybe you can try this, no need to buy anything extra. Hope it helps! Just be sure to inform your participants that you are going to be recording the interviews in this way. It is important to include this in consent forms for ethical and privacy reasons and I suspect this is why Skype does not support (so far as I know) a native option to record calls...
THank you. Unfortunately I do not have an Iphone....And yes! Recording is included in the verbal consent process that was approved by our IRB.
Did you then transcribe the interviews, also using the IPhone? Or did you transfer the data to another program for that? Or didn't you transcribe?
You might get the same result with another smartphone, they have surprisingly good microphones... I transcribe interviews the old fashioned way, there are many improvements in speech recognition but it is still a long way for them to be good for this purpose. Even so, I have heard some good things about this software http://www.nuance.com/dragon/index.htm
Thanks.....A former student has recommended the Olympus VN-722PC for the digital recorder. I can get an inexpensive adaptor for the phone. I"m still not clear about how to transcribe once I have the recordings. I used a tape and a foot pedal, back in the day. This is supposed to be better but I don't understand the mechanics of it.
Juan, thank you. I am familiar with Dragonspeak. I guess the main issue is that it "trains" to a voice over time, and so is not so great with multiple voices....
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