Transcribe focus groups

A focus group is a recording problem before it is a transcription problem. Six or eight people around a table, one microphone, laughter and the occasional interruption: the audio is as hard as speech gets. A good transcript starts with good placement of the microphone, and a good analysis starts with accepting that the machine's first pass will need a human to finish it.

Scribewren separates the voices and timestamps each turn, so you spend your time on the parts that need judgement. Rename the speakers as you learn who is who, tag the passages that answer each question in your guide, and listen again wherever the labels look doubtful. Where two people speak at once, the transcript will rarely capture both, which is why the playback link on every line matters.

From transcript to themes

Once the text is checked, export it to your analysis tool or a document and begin coding. Because the timestamps are preserved, every quote can be traced back to its moment in the session, which makes reporting quotations to a client or committee far easier to defend.