Qualitative interviews can be tricky to record as well as transcribe, especially if the interviews are conducted in an outdoor or noisy location. A little bit of planning and some simple precautions can go a long way in improving the clarity of the recordings as well as the accuracy of your transcripts.
1. Use Professional Recording Gear
The two most common problems with qualitative interview recordings are –
i) Low volume due to the speakers’ distance from the recording device, and
ii) Background/surrounding noise coming out too loud on the recording.
Both lead to an enormous amount of data loss.
To avoid these problems, choose a good digital voice recorder and a pair of lavalier microphones to record the interviews – one for the interviewee and one for yourself (ideally).
Test your equipment a couple of times before the interview and make sure you carry lots of spare batteries. If it’s going to be a telephonic interview then make a test call and check the recording quality – you can do this with the interviewee or a friend.
2. Take the Help of an Interpreter
If the interviewee has a particularly heavy accent or is mumbling their responses then even the most skillful transcriptionist won’t be able to understand what they’re saying.
There are three solutions to this problem –
i) Take along an Interpreter
This person can be a professional Interpreter or someone from the interviewee’s community who will repeat their responses into a recording device.
ii) Repeat the responses yourself
If you can clearly understand the interviewee’s responses, you can repeat their responses yourself into the recorder – without the help of an interpreter.
iii) Take copious notes
If repeating responses disrupts the flow of the conversation, you can take notes on your laptop or notebook and share these with your transcriptionist later.
The idea is to ensure that you don’t lose any part of your interviewees’ responses because of issues related to accent, rate of speech, volume, clarity etc.
3. Choose a Quiet Location
Background noise – such as cars passing by, children laughing, sounds at a dinner table, people talking at neighboring tables – all these tend to drown voices of the speakers on a recording. Wherever possible, try to choose a closed room for your qualitative interviews.
4. Provide Guidelines to the Interviewee
Rate of speech is a big factor in clarity of speech. Before beginning a qualitative interview, tell the interviewee that you would be recording the call/conversation and request them to speak slowly and loudly, directly into the voice recorder or microphone.
5. Ask Speakers to Identify Themselves
If there are multiple interviewees on a single qualitative interview, it can become hard to identify the different speakers when replaying the audio or while transcribing.
To avoid this, ask each speaker to mention their name before answering, for example “This is Tom, my view on this subject is a little different…”
These steps will improve the quality of your recordings and ultimately help you glean more information from your qualitative research interviews.
Read more:
Best Voice Recorders for Interviews and Lectures
How to Transcribe an Interview – A Complete Guide
Happy recording!
Paul Woods says
Great post – this was something I was very worried about before starting my data collection for my Masters degree. How can I ensure that the audio quality is good enough so I can make transcription as simple as possible for myself, or a third party like yours so I can start coding my data as soon as possible! I wrote a post about how I used a digital voice recorder to capture the stories of my first few research participants – http://www.thebestvoicerecorder.com/recording-qualitative-research-interviews/
The one thing I forgot to do for the first couple of interviews, which is on your list is to ask that the subject speaks slowly! That interview took about 3 times longer to transcribe than the other ones because I just couldn’t keep up with what she was saying!
Vinti Vaid says
Thanks Paul. I read your post and you’ve nailed it terms of choosing equipment and location.
Another way to improve audio quality for transcription is to paraphrase the interviewee’s words when they say something not too clearly. This way you will not only record your interpretation of their words, but will also (in all probability) lead the interviewee to give a more detailed and clearer response. I find that the paraphrasing technique improves transcribers’ understanding of what’s being said, which naturally improves transcription accuracy.
You may find some more useful tips in this post: https://indianscribes.com/6-ground-rules-for-recording-an-interview/
Also, if you plan to transcribe the interviews yourself, have you chosen the playback software yet? I recommend Express Scribe (free version available here: http://www.nch.com.au/scribe/ ). The software has in-built keyboard shortcuts that improve transcription speed. It plays almost all major file formats (including MP3 and WAV formats that Zoom H4n delivers) and comes with speed adjustment options. A very handy tool for transcription.