To ensure a high-quality focus group or conference recording, actively minimize background noise. Close the door if you’re in a busy building and schedule your session during quiet hours, avoiding times of building work or cleaning. Additionally, consider equipping speakers with individual microphones to enhance speech clarity and prominence in the audio.

Begin by introducing your speakers. This is crucial for our typists to identify each speaker in the transcript. A brief introduction at the start allows the transcriptionist to immediately associate voices with names. In cases where speakers share similar characteristics such as sex, age, and accent, distinguishing them might be challenging. To address this, assign numbers to each speaker and instruct them to announce their number before commenting, like “Number one speaking.”

Also, think about the final transcript. If individual speaker identification is unnecessary, you might opt for a transcript without a specific speaker key. This approach is cost-effective and can expedite the transcription process, particularly if you’re working with tight deadlines.

Maintaining control during the session is essential. Transcriptionists struggle with transcribing overlapping conversations, and important comments might be lost if speakers talk over each other. Poor sound quality and overlapping speech could increase transcription costs due to the extra time required for deciphering the dialogue.

Finally, be prepared with the right equipment. For frequent focus groups or conferences, investing in specialized recording equipment is beneficial. Relying on a Dictaphone or a mobile phone’s voice recorder often results in lower quality recordings, which are harder to transcribe. Use your phone only as a last resort for audio recordings, such as dictation, since mobile phone recordings typically do not meet the quality needed for focus groups. It is also worth considering using video if you need all participants to be identified.