Analyzing Qualitative Data. Graham R Gibbs

consequence is that you will need to decide what level of transcription to use; whether you want to transcribe every pause, stress, pitch change and overlapping speech as well as every word spoken or whether a less detailed rendering is sufficient for your purpose.

       It is always best if you personally undertake the transcription, as you already know the subject matter well and are less likely to make mistakes, but also because it gives you a chance to start thinking about your analysis. There is now some new technology, such as OCR and voice recognition software, that might make the task easier. However, if you have the resources, you can pay a transcriber to do the work.

       Either way, the accuracy of the transcription is important. You need to check your own typing or check that done by your transcriber. It is very easy to make mistakes that can radically change the meaning.

       One way you can avoid a lot of transcription is to collect your data from the Internet. Data from emails, chat rooms, web pages, blogs and the like mean that someone else has already done the typing for you. However, you may still need to do some processing to convert the data into the form you need for your analysis or is needed for your CAQDAS project.

       Qualitative analysis uses lots of different kinds of data and creates lots of writing and documents during the process of analysis. So you need to get organized and keep all this material tidy and in places where you can easily find it when you need it.

      Further Reading

      The following works will extend the issues of this brief introduction in more detail.

      Bird, C.M. (2005) ‘How I stopped dreading and learned to love transcription’, Qualitative Inquiry, 11 (2): 226–48.

      Brinkmann, S. and Kvale, S. (2018) Doing Interviews (Book 2 of The SAGE Qualitative Research Kit, 2nd ed.). London: Sage.

      Park, J. and Zeanah, A.E. (2005) ‘An evaluation of voice recognition software for use in interview-based research: a research note’, Qualitative Research, 5 (2): 245–51.

      Poland, B.D. (2001) ‘Transcription quality’, in J.F. Gubrium and J.A. Holstein (eds), Handbook of Interview Research: Context and Method. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, pp. 629–49.

      Rapley, T. (2018) Doing Conversation, Discourse and Document Analysis (Book 7 of The SAGE Qualitative Research Kit, 2nd ed.). London: Sage.

      Salmons, J. (2016) Doing Qualitative Research Online. London: Sage.