How to do a transcription of qualitative interviews?
The transcription of qualitative or quantitative interviews is one of the services that many journalists or researchers need to perform professionally, faithfully and truthfully.
The transcription is very useful because it allows you to have a better understanding of the opinions and motivations of each interviewee and helps you to review each response in an agile way, allowing you to develop hypotheses for a potential investigation.
Characteristics of qualitative interviews:
The qualitative interview usually goes from open to structured. As research progresses and knowledge increases, it is possible to achieve greater precision in the questions. However, flexibility should always be privileged so that the interviewees feel free to express their points of view and value judgments without being led by the researcher or interviewer.
Of course, the choice remains with the interviewer and his needs regarding the research topic.
Characteristics of quantitative interviews:
In the quantitative interview, a sequence of structured questions is used to collect and analyze data (age, weight, travel miles, temperature, etcetera). To answer research questions and test previously established hypotheses, certain tools are used, such as: numerical measurement, counting and statistics in order to establish patterns of behavior in a population.
In the quantitative interview, the quantitative criterion, which serves as the instrument of the questionnaire, forces the interviewee to limit his own answers, teaches him to control himself. If he wanted to deepen his own ideas, he cannot do it. In these cases, the interviewer’s voice rises above the interviewee’s.
Characteristics of the transcription of qualitative and quantitative interviews:
- The speakers are identified each time they intervene.
- It is preferable to use a clean verbatim transcription to make the text more fluent and easier to understand.
- Since qualitative interviews seek the particular vision of the person, their feelings, emotions on a topic, it is important that these emotions are reflected in the transcription.
- In case of expressions of joy, disgust, sadness, among others, they are also reflected in the transcription with specific labels.
What types of interview transcriptions do we do?
1. Structured
As the name suggests, everything that happens in the meeting is programmed and studied, the sequence of questions, the tone of the conversation, the different topics to be discussed, and so on. In these interviews, there is no room for improvisation or personalization.
2. Open / Free
This would be the opposite case to the previous one. In this situation the interviewer comes to the interview with very clear objectives and information that he’s looking for, however, no script is followed and improvisation is the protagonist.
3. Mixed or Semi-structured
By its name it is deduced that it is a mixture of the previous two. The interviewer will apply a mixed strategy that consists, on the one hand, of the realization of open questions to the interviewee where it is personalized and improvised, and on the other a series of predetermined questions will be followed with which the relevant aspects can be deepened. Perhaps it is considered the most complete since it covers the shortcomings of both.
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