When most people conduct qualitative research, they usually dismiss any recordings for audio purposes as being just “transcribed”. While this is technically correct, as a lot of people use meeting transcription services and research transcription, the impact of transcription in qualitative research hasn’t been properly defined.
The truth is that a lot of people consider transcription to be an integral part of qualitative research, as it directly enhances the efficiency and overall efficacy of the results. It’s rapidly becoming the norm to integrate transcription properly into qualitative research.
Ethical Research
The prevailing opinion among experts is that researchers have a responsibility to include the person who transcribed the data in the investigation itself as part of a full commitment to transparent and ethical research.
Furthermore, it should be noted what type of transcription was performed, whether it’s full or intelligent verbatim, as well as what considerations went into choosing that style.
Why is This the Case?
So, the main thing that a lot of people are curious about is why this sort of thing is important. Why do you need to include information about the transcription process in your methodology?
Ultimately, the reason for noting transcription properly in the methodology is the fact that a lot of decision-making goes into transcription, and a lot of it is also subjective.
Choosing what style to include, as well as including colloquialisms, slang, and other industry-relevant terms, are all subjective decisions made by the transcription team who created the document. Therefore, there is a strong argument. This could have an impact on the overall outcome of the investigation or simply change the way that the data is interpreted.
If the transcription that you create omits certain slang or colloquialisms, for example, this could impact the way that somebody goes about using the information given during a meeting to conduct research. As a result, the results of the investigation are skewed by transcription services.
Now, that’s not to assign any blame to any person who helped out with the investigation, whether they were responsible for the transcription or the research, but it’s just the truth. When somebody else is involved in the process, or even you yourself, set out to transcribe a document, the decisions that you make during the transcription process change the way that the finished product is interpreted.
Final Thoughts
So, the bottom line is that not only do you need effective transcription services, but you also need to reference them in qualitative research. It’s becoming the prevailing theory of many experts in both fields; the transcription needs to be much more emphasised during the methodology, which is no bad thing. If you do transcription services, then please let us help.
Singapore Transcription is one of the industry leaders for transcribing documents for research purposes. We would be happy to assist you in creating unbiased, objective documents that properly reflect the original audio.