Transcription Experiences & Their Significance To Us As Researchers

Written by Alexandra Andratis, Avery Beavers, and Erin McKenzie

Alexandra’s Experience

Over the past few months, I’ve been working on the CERIEL Project as a research assistant, where I’ve been transcribing interviews of people experiencing dementia, and helping make sense of participants’ experiences. Through this process, I’ve had the chance to spend time with a smaller group of participants’ stories in a really close and personal way, which is something that felt very different from other research I’ve done.

What stood out most to me was how people understand and talk about their diagnosis of dementia. Listening to their words made it clear that, even as their condition changes, many still prioritize autonomy and decision-making in their lives, even if it looks different from what they recalled before their diagnosis. Their experiences highlight something that is often overlooked: a strong sense of self that goes beyond memory.

As an interdisciplinary aging researcher, this work has been incredibly valuable. It challenged some of my assumptions and reinforced an important idea that people living with dementia are still capable of making decisions and expressing what matters to them. Transcribing these interviews was also very moving. People shared personal truths, talked about who they are, and reflected on what matters most in their lives. Being trusted with those stories was meaningful in a way that’s hard to fully put into words, and it’s something that will stay with me as I continue this work.

Avery’s Experience

Over the past year, I've been working with the CERIEL Project as a graduate research assistant, transcribing interviews with people living with dementia in a retirement living community. I had transcribed interviews with physicians for a previous project, so I expected something familiar, but this work asked something quite different of me.

With the physicians, the responses were immediate and easy to follow, and the meaning was usually clear on the first listen. With our participants in this study, it often was not. On a first pass I sometimes struggled to follow what someone was saying, and it could take two or three listens before a response made sense. That process pushed me to put myself in each participant's shoes, not only to understand what they meant but to convey it faithfully. Many were being asked about things they had never consciously reflected on, so I was often listening to someone make sense of their own experience in the moment. In IPA (interpretative phenomenological analysis) this is the double hermeneutic, where I as the researcher am trying to make sense of a participant who is actively trying to make sense of their own experience.

Because I worked from audio alone, I leaned heavily on the field notes from our principal investigator to compensate for the visual context I could not see. Those notes mattered a great deal. A heavier pause often meant a considered answer rather than a gut reaction, and sometimes a participant would say something positive and then, on further thought, something more introspective. Humor and sarcasm came up often as a way to make light of a difficult situation, and in most cases the interviewer named these cues in the moment, which made representing them in the transcript far easier. I kept to standard transcript conventions for this, noting pauses, marking who laughed, and flagging when something was said sarcastically.

The narratives themselves were rarely linear. Even within a semi-structured format, participants looped and circled, and often a later question expanded on an earlier one and shifted how I understood that first response. The tangent was sometimes the real answer. Emotional moments changed the audio too, since voices would drop, and quieter speech, sometimes shaped by frailty, meant relistening again and again.

This work has changed how I think about rigor and reflexivity. Rather than simply coding a transcript, IPA asks me to account for how I arrived at my understanding of what a participant meant, and constantly returning to the field notes and explaining my own interpretation added a more contemplative layer to the work. It is something that will stay with me as I continue in this field.

Erin’s Experience

I have likewise spent time transcribing interviews for our study on the meaning of personal autonomy for people living with dementia. Throughout my experience, I was struck by how seemingly minor moments in an interview can contribute meaningfully to the study findings. Even an offhand interaction unrelated to the research questions (i.e., a phone call interruption) can offer valuable insight into a participant’s thoughts, relationships, or current emotional state. For me, this reinforced the importance of transcribing as comprehensively as possible, including long pauses and ambient sounds, to preserve important contextual information.

I’d say one of the most challenging aspects of both transcription and interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA) is navigating the double hermeneutic, in which the researcher interprets the participant’s interpretation of their own experience. While this is inherent to qualitative research, interviews with people living with dementia can add another layer of complexity when some responses do not align neatly with the question being asked. In these situations, a trusted support person may sometimes help clarify meaning based on their close knowledge of the participant. When this is not available or desired by the participant, researcher reflexivity becomes especially important. Paying close attention to repetition, emphasis, and context, while making a concerted effort to examine personal biases and assumptions can help researchers remain as faithful as possible to intended meaning.

Overall, I found this experience both valuable and rewarding. Transcription requires patience, and IPA requires even more. Sometimes several days may be spent analyzing data from just one participant! Yet this slower pace is deliberate and a part of the process. Spending time with participants’ words allowed me to develop a deeper sense of who each participant was and how they understood their own experience of autonomy. This is not only essential to the integrity of our research, but also a way of honouring the unique perspectives of each individual who took the time to share their story with us.