I have begun the process of transcribing my class project interview. I originally planned to use Transana - a new program for me. It is not, in my opinion, extremely intuitive, and weeding through the directions and the demo took some time. I can see why so many electronic devices come with 'quick start' guides because people just want to be able to use something! I did find a quick start guide of sorts online although by that time I had already worked out how to start transcribing. There is a lot more to Transana than transcription - it has organization and retrieval capabilities - at about 1/10 the price of NVivo, it appears to be good value for the price. Unfortunately for me, almost a deal breaker is the seeming inability for me to use my foot pedal. It appears that it would work on a Windows OS but I purchased and installed a copy on my MacBook. Transana is one of those single license things, so I will have to invest the cost of a second copy to install it on a Windows computer (or a Windows OS on one of my Macs). There are fine keyboard shortcuts to pause and rewind, but I have, over time, developed a sort of a 'flow' with a foot pedal.
I attribute my comfort with the pedal to two things. First, I am a fairly experienced typist. I took typing initially in 10th grade (won a speed medal - although I have always struggled somewhat with accuracy); typed most of my own papers in college (getting things to the quality level to be able to hire a typist was an issue for me as I tended to be continually editing. This forced me into typing my own work); had a job doing data entry (names and addresses, and had no number pad); had a job doing numeric entry (with a number pad); and, shortly after I began working full time, started to use word processing programs to compose business communications on a regular basis. I consider myself an 'old school' typist - I have used a fully manual typewriter, some basic electric typewriters, but never one of the word processing types - I jumped from typewriter to dummy terminal. The second reason I think I have an affinity for the foot pedal is that I used to be (and still once in a while am) a pianist. I spent many hours playing during my teens up until my second year of college when I changed what had been a major in music to...something else (I had a few preliminaries before settling in on communication). For me, the feel of coordinating hands and feet is pretty natural. What I tend to do is press the pedal, begin typing, go until the recording is several seconds ahead of me, let up the pedal, continue to type, and press the pedal again just before I have completed that passage. This results in mostly 'pauseless' typing. I may also be helped by the fact that I learned to drive on a manual transmission car. I used to try to get lines perfect before going on, but it slowed me down too much. I have settled into a practice of getting as much as I can with little to no repetition of the recording. I will usually get through at a rate of about 20 minutes in an hour. Then I do a second listen in almost 'real time' (my first listen is usually slowed down to 85-90% of actual speed), and pause as little as I can (usually do not need to pause that much because I have most of the words down), and make corrections. This process - 20 mins per hour plus 1 additional listen at just over actual time - has allowed me to produce accurate simple transcripts. It will not work with more complex transcripts although it does offer a place to start. Where I expect Tranana to help is in creating a more complex transcript, but, for now, I am going to type it out using F5 which works well with my Mac and my foot pedal.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorI am Sheryl L. Chatfield, Ph.D, C.T.R.S. I am a member of the faculty in the College of Public Health at Kent State University. I also Co-coordinate the Graduate Certificate in Qualitative Research and I am a member of the Design Innovation Team at Kent State. Archives
February 2024
Categories
|