An increasing number of professionals are discovering the convenience and necessity of research transcription. In many cases, they decide to save themselves the headache of transcribing their research themselves by outsourcing to research transcription services.
To support their cases, stories and other conclusions, experts and researchers often record interviews, focus groups, social interactions, witness statements, observations, surveys, group discussions and more. Once they’ve conducted this vital research, they’re left with hours of audio and video files to organize, study and index. In other words, it’s time to transcribe all that information they’ve gathered. That’s a lot of time spent on a tedious, exacting job. They can do it themselves, appoint a staff member – or outsource to a research transcription services provider.
Why should you transcribe your research?
Experts in the legal, medical and academic fields; students; writers; businesses and more consider research transcription a best practice. If you think you might not need transcripts at all, consider these compelling reasons first:
Full transcripts contain every word, as it was spoken. You have a hard copy of every interview, focus group, social interaction, witness statement, observation, survey, group discussion, etc. It helps you to index your exact contents and support your final product. There’re no disagreements or false memories on what was said, who said it or the meaning behind the words.
Fact checking is also much more efficient with a transcript. Research is meant to support a case, study or conclusion. It’s important to ensure your statements are accurate. This is much easier to accomplish if you have a hard copy for reference. Along these same lines, it helps to avoid out-of-context misunderstandings during the editing process.
You can share the information more easily among your peers and staff.Everyone has their own copy for personal reference. Text files are also smaller than audio and video files. Your recipient’s storage space is not overwhelmed by large audio and video files.
Additionally, it’s less time-consuming to review text rather than hours of audio and video files. Your originals are still available, but with text, you can skim through and mark up printed information at a much faster rate. You can quickly review your correlating notes and edits.
For similar reasons, you may also receive requests from clients and customers for text copies of your supporting research. They’ll want to see how you reached your conclusions or formed your case, but they won’t want to wade through hours of footage to do it. The same goes for those with accessibility or multilingual needs.
Having your research transcribed means you’re already halfway to creating related materials and products, such as letters, reports, books and more. You’ll have the information readily available to help you script correlated webinar or podcasts. If you upload to your online presence as digital content, you’ll also increase your rankings on popular search engines.
What are the benefits of outsourcing research transcription services?
If you’ve decided you need to transcribe your research, you may think it’ll be better to either eat the time and do it yourself, or hand it off to one of your peers or employees. Although it may seem like you could save some money with the DIY or in-house approach, there are actually several benefits to outsourcing your research transcriptions.
• Savings: In-house transcription services require huge investments. You’re looking at paying the wages, benefits and overhead on employees dedicated to full-time transcription. These same employees will likely be on the permanent payroll, even when your transcription needs go through their typical peaks and valleys. They’ll put wear and tear on your equipment and IT department. By outsourcing, you only pay for what you need, when you need it.
• Experience: Transcription is a niche skill set and there are a limited number of people with the required skills. Your co-worker or employee may be a wonderful typist, but chances are they are not specially trained for transcription. Outsourcing to qualified professionals ensures better quality and results. You’ll want to find a transcriber who is:
- Accurate: Most research transcription services promise 98% or higher accuracy.
- Fast: The average transcriptionist can multitask and has a typing speed of 50+ WPM.
- Has excellent hearing: This may seem obvious, but a trained transcriber can interpret and understand the words, even when the language is muffled or accented.
- Committed: Research transcription services guarantee completed work, on time.
- Confidential: They also understand the importance of keeping a client’s information confidential.
• Focus: By outsourcing your research transcription to those with specialized skills, you’re freeing up your own staff to use their strengths where needed. You can direct your team to tackle the tasks for which they’re best suited rather than a side job that’ll take valuable time – and probably quite a bit of it. No one works quickly on unfamiliar work. You can use your resources and employees more appropriately, allowing them to focus on core business activities and generating more productivity and profitability.
• Flexibility: During those peaks and valleys, you don’t have to worry about managing a fluctuating workload among your own staff. When you have increased volumes and tighter deadlines, a reliable transcription provider can help you through the crunch. They’ll also be able to handle a wide range of file formats, as well as last minute requests and changes.
• Customization: Research transcription services offer tailored services so you can ensure you’re meeting the standards of your industry.
Transcription services can be used for lectures, presentations, seminars, research work, interviews, focus groups, dissertations, group discussions, conferences – the possibilities are limitless.Whether you need audio-to-text, text-to-text or language translation cum transcription, those services are available.
