Although extremely tedious, the school of thought, for any in-depth qualitative research in the social sciences, was and still remains that, transcribing an interview yourself would help you understand the data better, picking up on insights and patterns. Historically, this was the responsibility of the graduate student or junior researcher, almost like an induction process into the field. Thus, transforming transcription into a relatively mechanical process - you write down everything you hear. Such decisions, along with removing or leaving in non-linguistic sounds like laughs and sighs, could influence both the direction of the study, as well as the results.Īrguably, the easiest way to transcribe would be to leave in all the sounds, delaying any decision on ‘cleaning’ the data, until the transcription is complete. Collins subsequently decided to correct the broken English of certain Italian physicists in a debate they were having with American physicists, because in written form, those expressions would greatly reduce the perceived validity of their arguments or their credibility as experts. This is exactly what a few researchers asked British sociologist Harry Collins to do, after he transcribed entire conversations on gravitational wave detection verbatim. If I were to get interviewed, I would definitely ask the researcher to remove all the ‘ers’ and ‘uhms’ from the transcript. There is no right way of transcribing interviews or other types of recordings for research in the social sciences.
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