AI transcription for in-person research interviews

For interview work the requirement is not a good transcript — it is a transcript you can check against the audio. AI transcription is accurate enough to be an excellent working reference and not accurate enough to quote from unverified, and the discipline that follows is the same one tape required: never publish a quote you have not heard. Choose on whether the tool keeps the source recording accessible alongside the text, on battery, and on how it behaves in a noisy room. Consent is a professional standard here, not a preference.

The working method

01 / Disclose at the top, before the substance

Not midway. Most subjects consent readily when it is framed as accuracy, which it is. For academic work the protocol is set by your institution’s ethics board and is usually more specific than "they said yes".

02 / Treat the transcript as an index, not a source

The practical workflow is to read the transcript to find the moment, then listen to that moment before you use it. AI transcription errors are not random noise — they tend to produce plausible words, which is precisely why reading alone will not catch them.

03 / Noise is where accuracy goes

A café, a factory floor, a crowded lobby. Accuracy drops with ambient noise, overlapping speech and strong accents, and vendor benchmarks are not measured in those conditions. Test in the rooms you actually work in before you rely on it.

04 / Qualitative research has a bottleneck this removes

Verbatim transcription of research interviews is slow and expensive and sits between collection and analysis. A working transcript available immediately compresses that, as long as the quality-control pass still happens — AI output is a draft of your data, not your data.

05 / Keep the audio

Whatever you use, the recording is the record. A transcript without the audio behind it cannot be checked by you, your editor or anyone reviewing the work later.

Questions

What is the best device for recording in-person interviews?

Choose on three things: whether the source audio stays accessible next to the transcript, battery life against your longest working day, and behaviour in noise. We make a pen that records to its own storage for up to 18 hours and keeps the audio alongside the text; a dedicated field recorder is also a perfectly good answer, particularly for broadcast-quality audio.

Is AI transcription accurate enough for journalism?

As a working reference, yes. For publication, no quote should be used without checking it against the recording. Errors tend to be plausible rather than obviously wrong, which is what makes reading alone unsafe.

How do researchers transcribe qualitative interviews efficiently?

An AI transcript gives you an immediate working draft, and the review pass replaces the transcription pass. The time saving is real; the quality-control step is not optional, because the transcript is your primary data.

Do I need consent to record an interview?

Yes, as a professional standard and in most jurisdictions as a legal one. Disclose at the outset, before substantive discussion. Academic work additionally follows the ethics board protocol for recording human subjects.

Can I use this for phone interviews?

A device records the room, so a speakerphone call works and a handset call does not. For phone and video interviews a software recorder is the better tool, and using each where it fits is the usual answer.

Recording someone without their knowledge is a legal and ethical problem in most jurisdictions and a professional one everywhere. The standard practice — tell the subject at the outset, before substantive discussion — exists for good reason and no tool changes it. Scriben is recording people know about. You say what the pen is and what it does, they agree, and then it stays out of the way for the rest of the conversation — that second half is the product, and it only works after the first. Recording law varies by jurisdiction and by profession: see recording people lawfully before you start.

AI transcription for in-person interviews