What is it?  A written verbatim record of every word said during the course of qualitative research fieldwork. Typically transcripts include timestamps and a record of who was speaking during the interview or focus group sessions.

When is it best used? It is used to inform the researcher during the process of report writing whether it is a topline report or a full report.. It allows for full analysis of the output, often through tagging the transcript to organize the learnings into affinity maps or themes. Reading through transcripts ensures that the analysis is based on an accurate record of what occured, rather than memory or summary notes captured by a note taker. Studying the transcripts can inspire new realizations or ideas.

What does it entail?  The live research is captured via an audio or video recording, and this is then uploaded to a transcription or video platform/service. The act of transcribing the recording can be done by humans or automatically through machine learning. For now, human transcription is far more accurate compared to automatic. Sometimes, researchers transcribe their own sessions. 

Interchangeable term: Transcriptions

Use in a sentence: Customer experience research Using transcripts ensures that all of our data will be represented accurately and equally.

Related terms: Verbatim, written record, text output, documentation

Visual: No

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