Transcription: The choices we make

Today, I've been working with a colleague, pursuing and refining an idea that I had while working on my AERA proposal. In essence, it addresses the matter of how explicit education researchers are about their approach to transcription development. The idea came out of repeated conclusions in the transcription literature that researchers need to be explicit about transcription matters - such as the choices they make in the development of a transcription. Basically, the argument in the literature is that all researchers make choices when they develop a transcript but that many do not make their choices explicit to others in the reporting of research, and they should.

Today we considered numerous dimensions of making choices apparent in relation to transcription. One thing that appeared salient is that researchers take care to explain choices in relation to numerous other aspects of research. For example, researchers explain how they approached interviews, what they considered in relation to questions, and how interviews should be conducted. Explanations related to decisions about how interviews were approached in research usually draw on literature about interviews, and researchers show understandings of the range of interviews and interview questions, and how these provide options and constraints that influence their selection of a specific approach to the conduct of interviews.

The idea that we played with today, is that approaches to transcript development do not reflect the same awareness of options in relation to transcription i.e. the range of ways that a transcript might be developed, nor suggest the need to explain choices and show familiarity with literature about transcription. The differing ways of approaching interviews and transcription of those confirm a claim in the literature that data collection is given more attention in qualitative research than the production of transcripts which become the focus for analysis. Thus transcripts, and the choices made in their development, are (perhaps) frequently skipped over.

The question becomes, is this a problem?