The focus group method of inquiry has become immensely popular and influential in contemporary qualitative research. Focus groups have been used in a wide variety of ways, from developing advertising campaigns for toothpaste to managing images of public figures, including presidents of the United States. We, however, specialize in providing focus group transcription services to academic researches.
Focus groups are an exploratory research tool – a ‘structured group process’ to explore people’s thoughts and feelings and obtain detailed information about a particular topic or issue (Sherraden, 2001). With respect to research questions, the focus group can be used in addressing issues associated with nearly any theoretical or applied problem (Kleiber, 2004).
Focus Group Transcription Services
Focus group discussions and group interviews are usually held at the start of the research process to broaden the research field, identify key issues, develop emergent themes and developing interview schedules. Focus group discussions offer a quick and efficient way to begin your research process. The discussions, which may or may not be moderated, are recorded, transcribed and analyzed for themes and key issues in the research area. Such recordings may stretch on for hours on end, with people frequently talking out of turn, cross-talking or talking inaudibly.
Ordinarily, transcribers struggle to maintain quality due to the nature of recordings. At Weloty, our transcribers can be counted upon to deliver the most accurate transcripts, based on customer’s choice of full verbatim transcription or intelligent verbatim transcription. We’ll do the heavy lifting and let you focus on the post-research analysis vital to referencing, summarizing and completion your thesis research project.
Focus Group Transcription Formats
We differentiate between facilitators and interviewees for standard focus group transcription. However not between individual interviewees other than by gender. This means that interviewees will be designated simply as Male or Female. This style is preferred by the majority of researchers who use our focus group transcription services as they are more interested in the content of the discussion as a whole in their dissertation and thesis research projects.
If you would like speakers to be differentiated, let us know and we’ll be happy to oblige you. Our transcripts will identify who is speaking by inserting an identifier down the left hand side each time they speak. If you require names to be used, rather than numeric identifiers (i.e. Male 1, Male 2, Female 1, Female 2 et al), you’ll need to provide a speaker log with your audio. This allows us to ensure that speaker identification is as accurate as possible. Where no speaker log is provided, please understand that we can only differentiate numerically on a best attempts basis and that this may not be possible for large focus groups.
Weloty
Our quality standards, pricing policy and timely service delivery have made us the transcription provider of choice for focus group transcription services. Moreover, Weloty provide focus group transcription services for files in any digital audio format and for discussions involving any number of participants. On your request, we can format focus group research transcripts for Nvivo and Atlas ti to exploit the software analysis capabilities. Get in touch with us and let us help you start analyzing your focus group discussions.
References.
- Kleiber, Pamela B. 2004. Focus Groups: More Than a Method of Qualitative Inquiry. In Foundations for Research: Methods of Inquiry in Education and the Social Sciences. Kathleen deMarrais Stephen D. Lapan (Eds). (87-102)
- Sherraden, Phil (2001). What is a focus group? Understanding and use focus groups.