InfoGuides: QUALitative Research & Tools: FAQs

What Can Computers Help With?

What can computers help you do?

Organize data, memos, and work from teams
Apply multiple codes to text segments, even overlapping
See all the codes (automatically generated)
- See which codes were used the most, or across the most data sources
Retrieve all the text labeled with the same code (e.g., to view only one topic or question)
- Makes it easier to identify additional elements of themes as sub-codes
- In most software you can retrieve text based on advanced searches such as overlapping or nearby codes
Change the codes as your understanding evolves
- Rename, combine, or remove
[Re-]organize the codes to reflect relationships or analysis
- Group and/or arrange hierarchically (with child or sub-codes)

Video: What Qualitative Data Analysis software can and can’t do for you, 9min (squaremethodology)
Video: Choosing Qualitative Data Analysis Software: Qualitative Research Methods (Mod-U) (4.5 min)
- Do you even want to use CAQDAS software?
- Do all the software have the same abilities?
- Does software automate analysis?
- How much do they cost?

How Do I Transcribe Audio/Video?

Computer Transcription

Computers are getting much better at transcribing human speech, but are still not perfect.

Suggestions to Improve Automated Transcription Quality

Computer software usually does better with slow, enunciated speech without an accent.

If you have an accent but your participants do not, you might try playing the original audio and see how it works.
If you do not have an accent, it may be easiest to listen to the audio on headphones and speak it aloud to an automated transcription app, which also lets you add punctuation and speaker names and modify your voice to improve accuracy.

Privacy Issues

All automated transcription requires having data on the internet. If your audio has any personal or sensitive information, you must be especially careful using these tools.

The paid NVivo Transcription service advertises HIPPA compliance.
If you re-speak the audio, you may be able to avoid personal information by substituting it with aliases or other keywords.
You may be able to use automated transcription for parts of the audio and hand type other parts.
Subscription services approved for institutional data at Indiana University

Major Qualitative Software packages such as NVivo, Atlas.ti, and MAXQDA have their own transcription services. Some free time usually comes with the software license, but additional time is paid.

Free Online Transcription

Google Voice Typing (Google Doc)
Microsoft Transcribe (Office365 Word)
Google Live Transcribe (Android App)
Zoom Audio Transcription (Zoom)
- Requires a Business, Education, or Enterprise license with cloud recording enabled.
  - Mason Zoom accounts have this but free personal accounts do not.
- Ensure that Audio transcription is enabled before starting the interview and that you record the meeting on Zoom Cloud. It will be available after the meeting on your Zoom account along with a media file containing the meeting recording

Free Offline

For researchers who have concerns about uploading their data to an internet-based server, there are new AI-based tools that offer offline transcriptions that run locally on their computers.

Pro	No data is sent to the internet.
Con	Require faster computers to achieve the best and quicker results, resulting in longer processing times on older and slower computers.

noScribe (Windows and macOS)
- Open-source
- Includes automatic speaker detection and understands about 99 languages (as of October, 2023)
- Offers an editor to manually correct the auto-transcripts
aTrain (Windows)
- Includes automatic speaker detection and understands about 57 languages (as of October, 2023)
- Provides MAXQDA and ATLAS.ti compatible output

QUALitative Research & Tools