Transcription Consultancy

Why?

Are you a researcher with a qualitative project?

Are you an awarder of research grants with questions around the cost-efficacy of qualitative research?

Would you like some advice around how to set up your interviews to obtain quality audio recordings?

Are you trying to decide how to budget for transcription? 

Have you misjudged the capabilities of computer-generated transcription tools? 

Do you feel you have over-spent on human-ear transcription?

Do you feel researchers request too much for transcription in their application?

Do you understand the various methods of transcription, how they are charged and why?

For Researchers

We can help you plan your project, advising on technical and human aspects of your interviews, ensuring you achieve clear, quality audio recordings.

We can discuss and evaluate methods of transcription suitable for your study, taking into account the type and nature of your study, human and technical factors, time and staffing constraints and of course, your budget.

We consider human-ear transcription to be gold standard.

However, improvements in the capability of computer-generated transcription tools, plus the variety now available, has made the situation more confusing. You may not have the budget to have all interviews transcribed professionally but if you are going to use a computer-generated transcription tool it is essential to understand its limitations and applications before you start transcribing. It is so important and yet so difficult to choose wisely. It is so important and yet also so difficult to judge results-value-cost of transcription methods and it may be that multiple methods of transcription across your project return "best results."

Following discussion and evaluation, we will produce a report detailing our recommendations for transcription methods customised to your project. When you are applying for funds, you can use our report to breakdown and justify the budget allocation for transcription. 



For Awarding Bodies

You may feel the return on qualitative research is not as solid as the return on quantitative research projects, where numerical analysis seems to indicate direct outcomes more definitively.

Qualitative research should not be considered lesser than quantitative research. The stories behind figures give us greater understanding of the patterns we see.

When you are deciding which projects to fund, it can feel difficult to award to qualitative projects if you do not fully understand the reasons behind or variance of the sums research teams request of you. The costs of computer-generated transcription tools compared to human-ear transcription can seem attractive, until researchers cannot reliably use those transcripts to draw results from. How can you even produce clear guidance to researchers on how you are prepared to fund transcription?

The nature of your funding body will influence the type of project that will apply. Taking this into account, we can help you evaluate methods and situations, technical, human and ethical considerations, producing a guidance document to assist you in allocating funds and researchers in applying for your support.



Consultancy Fee

Our consultancy service is charged as a one-off fee (per project for researchers or per revision for awarding bodies) of £180.