Why Transcribe in Qualitative Research?

When conducting qualitative research and interviews, transcription is a powerful tool for analyzing what has been said and summarizing responses. Transcription involves recording the conversation and subsequently writing down, word-for-word, what was said. It also includes identifying the speakers and attributing the dialogue to the correct individuals and timestamps.

Taking notes during the interview is an alternative, but it can make it harder to focus on the conversation, and important points may easily be missed. Therefore, transcription is often preferred because it allows you to go back and read exactly what the interviewee said.

Another risk of taking notes is that you might inadvertently insert your own interpretations and judgments into your notes, potentially compromising objectivity.

If you're looking for tips on how to record interviews, please take a look at this article.

Manual Transcription – Expensive and Time-Consuming

Once you've recorded an interview, you can listen to the conversation and transcribe what you and the interviewee said. Those who have done this know that it's a highly time-consuming and laborious task. However, it's essential when conducting qualitative comparisons and analyses. Transcribing an hour-long interview word for word can sometimes take as much as 5-6 hours, as it's often challenging to hear what was said, requiring frequent pauses and rewinding. You probably prefer to spend your time on more critical tasks.

If you'd rather allocate your time elsewhere, an alternative to manually transcribing interviews is to send the recordings to a transcription agency that can do the work for you. You'll receive high-quality, professional transcriptions and save the time you would have otherwise spent on transcribing. However, it's an expensive service and the lead times can be long, and in many cases, it takes several weeks for your transcriptions to be ready.

Klang Gets the Job Done Faster and More Affordable

With modern AI technology, automatic transcription has become so good that it can compete with human transcription and produce results at least comparable to professional transcription. At Klang, we use state-of-the-art technology and have developed our own AI model for the Swedish language, which can transcribe Swedish speech with very high precision, regardless of the dialect spoken in the interview.

Another advantage of using automatic transcription is that the turnaround times are very short. Once you've uploaded your recorded interview to Klang, you'll have a complete transcription in just a few minutes. What used to take hours or days now takes only minutes.

In addition to transcription, Klang can also distinguish between voices and identify who said what in an interview.

Try Klang for free today! If you need help getting started, feel free to schedule a meeting.