Reporting of transcription practices in ESRC funded research projects

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Abstract

This paper focuses on how transcription practices are reported in End of Award reports of ESRC funded social science and educational research projects. There is a growing body of literature discussing various aspects of transcription practices in both educational research (e.g. Tilley 2003) and social science research (e.g. Bird 2005, Lapadat 2000). However, there appears to have been no survey of transcription practices as these appear or are reported in the research community (on any level). Moreover, previous research by the author and a colleague indicates that there is often a lack of transparency in the reporting of transcription practices in published research (Stelma & Cameron 2007). The specific aim of the paper is to map out the different aspects of transcription practices which are reported and which are not reported, and then to relate these observations to fundamental issues discussed in the literature on transcription. The paper also discusses how educational research reports compare, in this regard, to the larger set of social science reports sampled by the research. Transcription is understood as the transformation of audio streams of speech into written text (however this may be achieved). The paper looks at all full End of Award reports that include the lexical item ???transcription??? (including also possible derivatives such as transcribe, transcribing and so on). This sampling method has helped identify approximately 700 reports submitted to the ESRC in the period from 2005 to 2008 (earlier years are not available electronically). This includes data on the reporting of transcription practices across a wide set of research methods, including interviews, narrative, observation, think-aloud, focus groups, and various forms of context-based recorded interaction (e.g. classrooms). The choice of ESRC End of Award reports as data is deliberate in this exploratory project as these provide:??? a manageable and standardized corpus of research writing;??? a view on high quality research reflecting the emergent research priorities of UK higher education;??? a broad view on a set of related disciplines, rather than a narrow view on a single disciplinary area. The exploration of the data is guided by the following two specific research questions:1. How are transcription practices reported in final research reports submitted to the ESRC?2. Based on this reporting, what we can learn about the status of transcription processes across the various disciplines represented in the corpus of ESRC reports?The discussion responding to both research questions includes an interpretation of the data based on insights evident in the growing body of social science and educational research literature on transcription practice. This includes literature on transcription consistency (e.g. intra and inter-transcriber checks), benefits of doing transcription ???yourself???, the employment of assistants to do transcription, accounts of developing transcription skills, and more. The audience can, therefore, expect to gain some insight into this growing body of literature. The paper responds to the first research question fairly directly, presenting an overview of how transcription practices are reported, coupled with a sense of frequency and interpretation informed by the literature. The following is a pre-view of aspects that appear to be reported with some frequency. Each aspect includes an illustrative extract of data.Transcription as helpful but costly/time-consuming:It was regrettable that limitations of the non-staff budget available under this Fellowship scheme meant that no funding was available for transcribing interviews; although doing it myself has some advantages, time constraints make it impossible to do them all. (RES-000-27-0117*)Transcription conventions:Clearly, far more detailed specifications can be provided regarded [sic] transcription, such as the inclusion or not of non-verbal utterances, background noises, and conventions for transcribing accents, non-standard usage, grammatical errors, and so on. (RES-346-25-3019*)Transcription accuracy:Subsequent minor corrections to the transcription have been made by Astrid Schepman and Robin Lickley during the course of working with the speech files. (R000237447*)Transcription and use of technology:We did not, as originally planned, transcribe interviews in full, instead using the facility in Atlas.ti to analyse audio files, then producing written summaries. (RES-166-25-0051*)Transcription as an integral and potentially influential part of the research process:A member of the research team carried out transcription to become immersed in the data. This enabled us to check for representativeness in the transcription and also to perform an analysis of what `gets lost in transcription' (Clarke 2007). (RES-148-25-0003*)* = ESRC Grant reference number.The discussion of the second research question (see above) focuses on educational research reports in particular, seeking then to situate transcription practices in educational research within the broader context of economic and social research. As a ???snap-shot??? of how transcription practices are reported in a sample of high quality research writing that reflects the emergent research priorities of UK higher education, the findings should have relevance for researchers on all levels of the educational research community. That is, educational researchers, from MA and PhD level up to experienced Principal Investigators, should have an opportunity to gauge and reflect on their own transcription practices and how they report these. References:Bird, C. M. (2005). How I stopped dreading and learned to love transcription. Qualitative Inquiry 11 (2): 226-248.Lapadat, J. C. (2000). Problematizing transcription: purpose, paradigm and quality. International Journal of Social Research Methodology 3 (3): 203-219.Stelma, J.H. and Cameron, L.C. (2007). Intonation units in spoken interaction: Developing transcription skills. Text & Talk 27(3): 361-393.Tilley, S. A. (2003). ???Challenging??? research practices: Turning a critical lens on the work of transcription. Qualitative Inquiry 9 (5): 750-773.

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Transcription

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