June 28, 2024

How Do You Incorporate an Interview in a Dissertation

The first step to writing a dissertation is to conduct in-depth research, and one of the ways to get the data for the assignment is to conduct a series of interviews with people who have experience in your field of research. But how do you incorporate an interview in a dissertation?

There’s a high chance your instructor hasn’t touched on this topic yet, and therefore it’s highly likely that you don’t know what they expect to see.

Fortunately, including interviews in your dissertation isn’t difficult at all. In this guide, you’ll learn the right way to include interviews in your thesis or dissertation assignment.

How to Incorporate an Interview in a Dissertation

There are two steps to include an interview in a dissertation project. You first have to transcribe the interview and then add the written transcript to your document.

Transcribing Your Interview

Transcribing an interview takes time, but it’s the only option you have if you must include an interview in your dissertation. You can use a transcription software to do the work yourself, or hire a transcription service to save time.

To transcribe an interview to include in your dissertation:

  • Choose your transcription method
  • Determine which transcription software to use
  • Transcribe the audio
  • Analyze the transcript and then

Here’s a further explanation for these steps for better understanding and more clarity:

Choose Your Transcription Method

There are three forms of transcription methods, and the one you choose to use depends on what you would like to achieve.

  • Verbatim transcription: This is where you write every word and expression of emotions of the interview. Note that this transcription method is suitable in the type of research where you’re interested in what someone said and how they said what they said.
  • Intelligent verbatim transcription: Here, you write every word you here, but you filter out fillers that don’t add value to the text. Feel free to enhance readability by shortening long paragraphs, fixing broken sentences, and correcting grammar mistakes. By using this method, you assume that you’re not interested in expression of hesitation and emotion because you lose them in the process.
  • Edited transcription: This is an edited version of the intelligent verbatim transcript. Here’s where you remove fillers and irrelevance sentences from the transcript to enhance the relevance of the story.

Choose a Transcription Software

Now that you’ve determined your transcription method, it’s the next step is to choose a software solution that you can use to convert speech to text.

While transcribing takes time, developers are working around the clock to develop solutions that can make the process easy.

With the availability of transcription software solutions that work well, you can speed up the transcription process and have your transcript ready within the shortest time possible.

When choosing a transcription software for the interview for your dissertation, it’s important to choose an option that guarantees conversion accuracy.

Therefore, you should consider a transcription software that’s not only easy to use but also accurate when it comes to converting speech to text.

Examples of transcription software that you can use include:

  • Happy Scribe: We recommend this software because it features a clean, user-friendly editor. In addition to easily recognizing the speaker, Happy Scribe can omit fillers and correct the use of periods and capitalization. The only problem with it is that it doesn’t insert punctuations except for periods.
  • Trint: Trint transcription software has a very simple interface, so it should be easy to figure out. It can ignore music from videos and it has a decent level of speaker recognition. Like Happy Scribe, Trint won’t insert punctuation in the transcript except for periods.
  • Transcribe: The Transcribe software is another cheaper solution with great speaker recognition. The best thing about this software is that it even includes punctuation and can places commas where appropriate.

Transcribe the Audio

This should be a no brainer because you’ve already figured out what transcription method you would like to use.

We do like to recommend the edited transcription option because it omits fillers and irrelevant sentences to enhance clarity, relevance, and accuracy.

You may have to alter the transcript if the quality of the audio of the interview wasn’t up to the best standard.

You can also make changes to the transcript if you feel like the conversation would come out well with additional clarification.

Analyze the Transcript

The final step in transcribing an interview for your dissertation is to analyze the transcript using the coding and categorizing technique.

The technique looks at the link between keywords and the answers given to the questions, which is what makes it possible for you to find the connection between the answers that different respondents give.

Adding Your Interview to the Dissertation

Here’s where you take the transcribed version of the interview and add it to the appendix section of your dissertation.

Depending on the length of the interview, the appendix can be small or extremely large.

Shorter interviews won’t make the appendix long, so it’s fine to include it as part of the dissertation assignment.

Longer interviews, on the other hand, can easily make the appendix extremely large.

In such a case, it’s important to consult your supervisor to determine whether it would be fine to submit the appendix as a separate document.

Conclusion

Once you add an interview to the appendix section of your paper, you’re free to refer to them in the body section of the dissertation by paraphrasing.

Note that you will need to quote the interview if you have copied the words of the interviewee word-by-word. You might have to go back to the interview to get some interesting quotes to include in your dissertation.

One last thing you need to consider is the name of the interviewee. First, ask the interviewee if it would be okay to mention their names in your paper. Some people prefer to be anonymous, especially if they’ve shared personal information with you. Second, determine whether adding the name of the interviewee would add value to the dissertation.

About the author 

Antony W

Antony W is a professional writer and coach at Help for Assessment. He spends countless hours every day researching and writing great content filled with expert advice on how to write engaging essays, research papers, and assignments.

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