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Qualitative Data and Analysis Tools: Recording and Transcription
Why take the time to care about recording and transcription?
Recording and transcription tools are ubiquitous today. However, not all tools are well suited to the needs of qualitative research. For example, many widely-used transcription tools are designed to support accessibility of videos for users with disabilities by creating closed captions. Other recording and transcribing platforms come with privacy risks that may not be appropriate for sensitive data from human subjects. This page provides some basic discussion of key concerns for recording and transcribing software.
In many cases, a smartphone, tablet or computer may suffice for recording needs - but focus groups, busy settings, and other more complex situations may benefit from other hardware. For assistance finding and using specialized recording hardware, please contact the University Libraries Technology Lending Desk. They provide consultation and equipment loans, including a variety of audio and video capture options.
Recording and Transcribing Software
Zoom
Virginia Tech's Zoom service can be used to administer and record online interviews and focus groups, whether video or audio-only. Recordings can be manually set to record to the local computer or save to My Media (Canvas or VT Video), or settings can be adjusted to automatically record meetings. Meetings recorded to the cloud are now automatically transcribed by the Zoom service, whose captions are not easily exportable as text files. However, auto-transcription can be requested for free in the Kaltura service by going to "Actions-Caption & Enrich" from the media page in Kaltura, which creates editable and exportable captions. While English is the default language for auto-transcription, machine transcription for a video can be requested at no cost in a variety of other languages from within My Media. Zoom and Kaltura are compliant with research data protection protocols and approved for research use at Virginia Tech.
Other Recording Options
In addition to Zoom or specialized hardware, audio or video can be recorded digitally with voice recorder apps, including those typically pre-installed on smartphones and tablets. Before using applications that send recorded data to remote servers (e.g. the cloud) for human subjects research, please check Cobblestone and seek Institutional Review Board guidance to ensure software are approved and data are adequately protected.
Other Transcription Options
A variety of services provide machine-generated transcriptions at low or no cost. Other services (such as rev.com and verb.it) employ human transcribers, typically achieving a higher level of accuracy but at significantly increased cost. Before using applications that send recorded data to remote servers (e.g. the cloud) for human subjects research, please check Cobblestone and seek Institutional Review Board guidance to ensure software are approved and data are adequately protected. Multiple transcription tools, including otter.ai and NVivo transcription, are not recommended by IT for Virginia Tech researchers (details in Cobblestone) as of April 2024.
Hand transcription is always an option as well, but tends to be much slower than editing machine-generated transcripts unless the language being used has many slang and regional words or the speech and recording are particularly difficult to understand and process.
For further assistance selecting recording or transcription software, please contact dataservices@vt.edu.