ESRC Methods FestivalOpen Access Qualitative Data Analysis

Software

18th July 2006

Transparent Transcription?

Duncan BranleyGoldsmiths’ CollegeUniversity of London

© Duncan Branley

Goldsmiths’ College, University of London 2

Outline

• Thinking about transcribing?• Using Transcriber• Moving from Transcriber to

Qualitative Data Analysis (QDA) software: NVivo

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Before we begin...

• Write down what you think ‘transcription’ is in the context of social science research.

30 seconds:

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Transcribing: From What to What?

• What epistemological claims are you making when you transcribe?– Representing in textual form an audiovisual representation of

observation or interaction.– What’s your take on realism v interpretivism? Lapadat (2000)

• Listening to what?– Interviews, focus groups or ‘naturally occurring’ talk? Field

notes?• How has this been recorded – just audio or video too?

– Does that give you more information to select from?• Purpose: to make amenable to analysis. Requires

some degree of condensation and abstraction. – Don’t mask this – explain why you select what you do.– BE REFLEXIVE!

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Transcribing - Mechanics• Do it yourself:

– Transcribe cassettes in full: foot-pedal control or auto-rewind– Use Transcriber to tie your transcription to the sound files clause

by clause – cp sub-titles.– Both pre-suppose a fully able-bodied researcher

• Grundy et al (2003) – hearing impaired researcher• Have someone else create your transcriptions:

– Financial cost– Makes need for explicit instructions obvious – any different?– Impact on transcriptionist – Tilly (2003) – co-participation

• Transcription not a neutral process:– Decisions constrain your analysis– Report and discuss them – BE REFLEXIVE!

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Transcribing – Level of Detail• Do you need ‘complete’ transcriptions?• Summaries in Word or NVivo (with labelled proxy document) –

partial transcription.– Useful first step – in field and for familiarisation– Could create hybrid data – different analytical tools needed (van

der Veen, 2006).• How much information can you encode textually?

“It is not simply a matter of the more detail, the better; using a transcript that is more detailed than one needs is

like giving a few unnecessary decimal places on one’s statistics.”

(Macnaghten and Meyers, 2004: 74)• What do you need to explore your research questions?

– Seale and Silverman (1997) - different levels of detail in transcribing a medical interview enabled different interpretations to be made.

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First Steps with Transcriber

• Transcriber enables you to create your transcriptions while following your sound files on screen.

• Start Transcriber: you will be prompted to open an audio file – WAV or mp3

• Click on the play button and you’ll hear it.

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Transcriber window with new file open

Sound file as wave form

Transcription area

Play buttons

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Next Steps with Transcriber• While playing your audio file, when there’s a pause, press Enter and

you’ll create a ‘segment break’.

• When finished select Signal | Playback Mode | Loop on Segment – this enables you to replay each segment while you’re transcribing it.

• Press Tab to stop and start it and the up and down arrows to move between segments.

• When finished set back to continuous playback: Signal | Playback Mode | .. Continuous playback

• Create a new speaker: Segmentation | Create turn or Crtl-T

• Double-click the rose coloured buttons to enter a description.

• When finished File | Save as...– This will create a file with the same name as the audio file (by default), but

with the extension *.trs.

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Transcriber window with sound file fully

transcribed

Colour coded transcription

aligned with sound file

Report heading

Speaker heading

Segments of transcription

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Moving Transcriptions to NVivo

• Before you start Transcriber you must ensure have NVivoTxt.tcl installed in

C:\Program Files\DGA & LDC\Transcriber\converter

• File | Export | Export to NVivo Plain Text format.– This will create a plain text file with the same name as

the sound file you are working on – except with a .txt ending.

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Example Transcript Exported from Transcriber{T}brief-bbc-buchanan{D}Description: Report on BBC Radio Four's Today programme - August 1998. {D}Transcribed by Duncan Branley (using Transcriber http://www.ldc.upenn.edu/mirror/Transcriber/){D}Elapsed time of recording shown at start of each turn in minutes and seconds.{H1}Ordaining gay priests?{H2}Emily Buchanan{P}(0:0 - 0:7 = 0:7 duration) So individual Provinces can still go on er practicing how they have been and perhaps even

ordaining gay priests.{H1}Church Split?{H2}John Humphries{P}(0:7 - 0:11 = 0:4 duration) So it's not going to divide the Church, {P}[squeals]{P}{Drops coffee} it's not going to split the Church fatally?{H2}Emily Buchanan + John Humphries{P}(0:11 - 0:20 = 0:8 duration) {P}(music starts){H3}Speaker 1No I mean the fact that Conference has now voted overwhelmingly in favour of this final

resolution so the Church has stayed together.{H3}Speaker 2It is{P}(music ends){P}(shh other starts){H3}Speaker 1... a compromise.{H3}Speaker 2

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Importing into NVivo

• The characters in curly brackets {~} are tags which NVivo can recognise:– {T} – Document title– {D} – Document description– {Hn} – different heading styles– {P} – Plain text

• You can import this file into NVivo 2 and the text marked with these styles will be recognised.

• Create a new document by importing this file – using the 'Read marked-up title and description paragraphs' option.

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Automatically Coding in NVivo

• NVivo can see document structure.

• NVivo can use this to code for each turn-taker.

• Can use for structured, semi-structured and unstructured interviews.

Document formatted with Heading styles

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Section Coding by Title in NVivo (1)

1. Open the Document Explorer.

2. Highlight the “All Documents” folder, a Set or a single document.

3. From the menu bar select Set | Code Documents by Section… or Document | Code by Section… These both bring up the Section Coder.

4. You have two options – choose one or other:a. Code sections into Tree

Nodes using section numbers as addresses

b. Code sections by title

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Section Coding by Title in NVivo (2)5. You then have to nominate the

Parent Tree Node. You can either type it in or navigate to it by selecting the Choose button which brings up the Choose Node… dialoga. If you already have a node in

mind, then simply navigate to it.b. If you need to create one, you an

do so by clicking on the Create Node button (the button with the lined star). This creates a Tree Node with a default name of Tree Node (n).

c. Click on the Properties button to change the name and add a description. Click OK when finished.

d. Whichever method you have used, the node will appear in the box at the bottom of the Choose Node dialog box. Click OK.

6. The node will now appear in the box labelled Parent Tree Node (see previous slide). Click OK and section coding will begin: a progress bar will appear until it is completed.

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Transcriber: Further Details• Further details about using Transcriber with

NVivo can be found at

http://homepages.gold.ac.uk/duncan/

• Guidance on using it with a similar piece of software called Atlas-TI can be found in Alan Stockdale’s detailed guide ‘An approach to recording, transcribing, and preparing audio data for qualitative analysis’ available as a PDF from

http://caepp.edc.org/audio.html

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Free Software: FreeZip

• When downloading free software you might need to be able to decompress a zip file – A compressed file may contain one or many files and is used

to reduce download times over the internet and normally ends in *.zip.

• If you don’t already have such a programme, try the free utility FreeZip:

http://members.ozemail.com.au/~nulifetv/freezip/

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Free Software: Transcriber• Transcriber is free to download and use. For Windows

95/98/NT/2000/XP the latest easily installable version is 1.5.1. Ensure you select the BINARY version to download otherwise you will have to install the components separately.

http://trans.sourceforge.net/en/presentation.php

• To install, double-click the Transcriber-1.5.1-Windows.exe file you have downloaded and follow the instructions. You need to accept the licence agreement, the default installation location and all the other defaults and it will be ready for you to use.

• Transcriber is also available for Macs and computers running Linux.

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Free Software: NVivo export file for Transcriber

• You can download an NVivo Export file which enables you to produce plain text files with headings tagged from the transcriptions you create within Transcriber from

http://homepages.gold.ac.uk/duncan/

• Before starting Transcriber save it in

C:\Program Files\DGA & LDC\Transcriber\converter

– If you installed Transcriber in a different location from the default, please change appropriately.

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References 1• Charles Antaki, Michael Billig, Derek Edwards and Jonathan Potter

(2002) ‘Discourse Analysis Means Doing Analysis: A Critique Of Six Analytic Shortcomings’ Discourse Analysis Onlinehttp://www.shu.ac.uk/daol/articles/open/2002/002/antaki2002002-paper.html

• Duncan Branley (2004) ‘Making and Managing Audio Recordings’ in Clive Seale (ed) Researching Society and Culture (2nd edition): Sage, London pp 207-228

• Alan Bryman (2001) Social Research Methods (Oxford: OUP)

• Judith Green, Maria Franquiz and Carol Dixon (1997) ‘The myth of the objective transcript’ TESOL Quarterly, 31 (1) 172-176

• Annabelle L Grundy, Dawn E Pollon and Michelle K McGinn (2003) ‘The participant as transcriptionist: Methodological advantages of a collaborative and inclusive research practice’ International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 2 (2). Article 3. http://www.ualberta.ca/~iiqm/backissues/2_2/ html/grundyetal.html

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References 2• Judith C Lapadat (2000) ‘Problematizing transcription: Purpose, paradigm

and quality’ International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 3 (3), 203-219

• Phil Macnaghten and Greg Meyers (2004) ‘Focus Groups’ in Clive Seale et al Qualitative Research Practice (London: Sage)

• Clive Seale, Giampietro Gobo, Jaber F Gubrium and David Silverman (2004) Qualitative Research Practice (London: Sage)

• Clive Seale and David Silverman (1997) ‘Ensuring Rigour in Qualitative Research’ European Journal of Public Health 7(4) 379-384

• Susan A Tilley (2003) ‘Transcription work: learning through co-participation in research practices’ International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education (QSE), Nov/Dec 16 (6) 835-851

• Jon van der Veen (2006) ‘Lost in Transcription: Oral and Textual Readings of Interviews from Bruce County.’ Online working paper: http://megaprojects.fims.uwo.ca/transcription/default.htm