Tips for Working with Your Transcriptionist

Use a good quality tape recorder with an appropriate microphone. You may want to consult with your A/V department in choosing your equipment. Read the manual and know how to clean the recording head.

Practice using your equipment. Know what it is and is not capable of. Learn how to position the microphone and reduce background noise.

If you are doing group interviews, have an observer maintain a list of speakers so that your transcriptionist can easily identify each voice.

Check the quality of the sound on your audio tapes BEFORE passing them on to your transcriptionist. Poor quality sound can double or even triple the time it takes to do the transcription. (It is sometimes possible to improve on a poor quality recording but this adds another step in the process.)

Offer a comfortable, secure place to work. Check and clean the heads on your transcription machine. Provide a headset for use with the machine. This makes for easier listening and preserves confidentiality.

Describe the nature of the work BEFORE the transcriptionist agrees to do it. Talk about the potential implications of repeated listening to painful and/or sensitive material. Discuss the need for confidentiality and the measures that you will take to provide ongoing support to your transcriptionist.

Outline the research objectives and provide information about the topic of the interview (e.g., pamphlets about specific diseases). Provide a list of terminology (with correct and phonetic spelling) if there are words that your transcriptionist might be unfamiliar with.

Provide suitably detailed warnings about especially difficult interviews. Where possible, offer a selection of tapes, some difficult and some not.

If the material is extremely distressing and/or the respondent is describing illicit activities, consider with–holding some interviews and doing the transcription yourself.

Talk about strategies for listening to difficult material. Consider the difference between listening repeatedly to small segments of the tape in a disjointed fashion (during initial transcription) and listening to the whole story (during editing and checking).

Set realistic goals for completion of the work and respect your transcriptionist’s need to spread out the work and/or take frequent breaks when working with especially sensitive and/or painful material.

Be responsible for your end. Check the transcript and correct mishearings or other systematic problems as early on as possible. Give positive as well as corrective feedback about the quality of the work and the time it takes.

Talk with your transcriptionist, on the telephone or in person, at regular intervals. Allow plenty of time for debriefing after difficult interviews. This also helps to protect confidentiality. Do NOT give your transcriptionist a large number of tapes at once and disappear for weeks on end!

Ask your transcriptionist to keep a list of feelings or questions about the work and/or issues for discussion. Clarify that this is an important part of the work process. Treat what you learn as valuable data in and of itself.

Expect that your transcriptionist will have opinions about the materials. Learn to listen non-judgementally, just as you do with research subjects. Where appropriate, incorporate what you learn into your analysis.

Consider of the implications of transcription in your application for ethical review.

Acknowledge your transcriptionist and her/his labour in your conference presentations and publications.