Focus group transcription

Great listening skills are key when it comes to transcribing focus groups!

At Business Friend, we are experienced in transcribing recordings with multiple speakers, such as focus groups. We understand how participants can often talk over each other in their eagerness to get their opinion across, and have become skilled at identifying who is saying what when this does happen.

Focus groups are often used in both market research and academic research and it’s important to capture what each person says to ensure accurate data can be analysed. We take time at the beginning of the recording to familiarise ourselves with the participants’ voices and accents to ensure we identify each speaker correctly throughout the transcript. However, if individual identification of participants is not important for your project, we offer a discount to reflect this, as identification is one of the time-consuming factors in focus group transcription.

As with all our audio transcription services, Business Friend’s standard focus group template includes time stamping every 10 minutes, with more frequent timestamping available if required. And although our professional transcription team are dedicated to researching any unclear words or phrases, if we are still unsure, then any inaudibles or phonetic guesses will be put in square brackets and timestamped to help clients find the original point in the recording, rather than risk incorrect guesses slipping through the net.

Preparing for the recording of your focus group can really improve the quality of the transcript you receive. We recommend reading our Recording Focus Groups article for tips on this, as if your transcription service provider receives a good quality recording, this will help them to produce a good quality transcript!

Business Friend understands the importance of confidentiality when transcribing focus groups. Some participants may wish to remain anonymous, therefore, we can anonymise their speech during the transcription process by replacing personal names with [name], and local places or companies with [place] and [organisation] if required. Business Friend’s Privacy Policy provides information and reassurance that we adhere to strict confidentiality practices, and our File Transfer service uses military grade 128-bit AES encryption, although we can receive files from via other methods if required. We can also password protect documents before returning them to you.

For information on how to use Business Friend’s audio transcription service, please see How We Work. To receive a quote for transcribing your focus group, please use our Quote Request Form or Contact Us with your requirements. You can also use our Transcription Calculator (below) as a useful guide.

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