Quality Transcription Services for Researchers

January 27, 2015 11:42 am
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Client Industry Focus: Qualitative Researchers and Academics

Alexandra Lee is a PhD researcher at the University of Auckland and UC Berkeley, focusing on the role of architects in disaster recovery. She conducts field interviews with industry expert and community stakeholders in areas affected by earthquakes, floods and other natural disasters, including Haiti, New Orleans and Christchurch. Like many qualitative researchers, Alexandra records all her interviews on an iPhone and later uses them in her analysis.

The Challenge

The large amount of time required to transcribe interviews by hand prevented Alexandra from progressing her research and analyzing results. However the cost to have a professional transcriber with a perfect level of accuracy was too high. Not being a professional transcriber, it took her a whole day to transcribe interviews that ranged between 1 to 1 ½ hours, which was not sustainable. Alexandra had a particular need for two specific solutions:

	Recording interviews in the field: It’s often difficult to organize a time for interview with high-profile community and business leaders, and being prepared at short notice is key to getting access to busy people. Having a convenient and high quality recording device helps researchers be mobile.
	Perfect transcript of interviews: Researchers know that “Garbage In” equals “Garbage Out” and place high value on perfect accuracy of the text transcripts. Ms. Lee wanted perfect transcription of results to import into NVivo for coding, and to run further automated analytics and statistical models in SPSS.

The Solution

To conduct detailed interviews in the field, Alexandra relied on one device that she had with her at all times – her iPhone. The TranscribeMe app turned it into a powerful recorder and transcription system in one, available anytime at her fingertips. On the other hand, the TranscribeMe website allowed for finished transcripts to be downloaded in Word and XML formats, perfect for import into coding and analytics software such as NVivo and SPSS.

The Result

Ms. Lee found that TranscribeMe offered an unbeatable transcription service for academics and researchers:

	Accuracy:	High quality, accurate transcripts (98%-100% accuracy)
	Speed:	Fast turnaround time (24-48 hours)
	Availability:	Round the clock availability. No downtime, and very responsive
	Simple to use:	Files are uploaded directly from the web browser or with a smartphone app
	Confidentiality:	Unprecedented confidentiality using innovative speech processing technology
	Bonus:	The ability to identify male and female speakers in complex classroom environments with multiple speakers

TranscribeMe utilizes a best-in-class hybrid model that combines speech recognition algorithms with real human transcribers. This allows for a highly accurate transcript that is delivered in a fraction of the time taken by manual transcribers, and accessible through a simple iPhone or Android application. Having access to word-for-word perfect transcripts let Alexandra focus directly on her research thesis, and helped her gain meaningful intelligence from the data, fast.

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