Benefits of Using Automatic Transcription Software in Research
Researchers usually work with a great amount of data. Of course, working with written data is not easy, but what about hours of audio and video content that you need to listen to and take notes? Too much time and effort spent on it can make the research process even more time-consuming, exhausting, and fail you in meeting deadlines. Especially carrying qualitative research requires quite a number of audio/video interviews and observations. Conducting interviews is one thing, but listening to those audios for hours can be frustrating for most researchers. This is when audio transcription can be handy. Transcription was done manually by human transcribers for decades, but it takes hours, even a full day, to transcribe an hour-long file by hand. There is an automatic transcription software functioning with the help of a speech recognition technology that can do the job for you in a few minutes. Let’s look at the importance of automatic transcription for the researchers in the following ways:
1. Save time, money, and effort to capture every detail
As mentioned above, automatic transcription software lets you transcribe a file in just a short period of time rather than long hours or even days. You may repeat the same audio/video again and again to catch a little but rather important detail, whereas if you have a transcript, all the text, in other words, all the details will be in front of you. The software lets you make notes on the transcript using a modern text editor on which you can click on any word or sentence, and it will play that part of the audio. Another important feature is the ‘’search with keywords’’ function that you don’t have with simple audio/video files. Automatic transcription service like Voicedocs offers all these features for ten-to-twenty times lower amount of money than human transcribers.
2. Easily connect the trends in your research
The aforementioned search option of this software allows you to connect all the dots. It is generally accepted that, while doing research, you get a conclusion if you have the same repeated feedback, themes, or trends. The keyword search option makes it easier to see the trends if you have any. It also helps to draw accurate conclusions you might otherwise not have because there is a big chance you will miss some important context while listening to audio. The only thing required from you is to record your interviews or observations in a place without too much background noise, so the speech recognition accuracy is as high as possible.
3. Make your research accessible to everyone
After finishing with research and publishing the results, you might want to share all the details. A transcript is a text file which means you can make a book out of it quite easily. Putting some headings, categorizing all the information, and giving it a clear structure gives you a book that you can share with fellow researchers or even give to libraries so future researchers can benefit from it.
Automatic transcription technology brings a number of advantages with it. To summarize all the points mentioned above, automatic transcription saves your time and money, increases your research accuracy, and makes your research accessible to everyone who might be interested in it. You can do the transcription by yourself or even hire a human transcriber, but the time and money required for it are usually not worth it, especially if you are working under a tight schedule.