Academic Consulting

Academic Consulting has an excellent track record for providing high-quality transcription services. We specialise in research transcription, and are well-attuned to the specific transcription requirements of researchers. Advantages of using our service include:

• Transcripts are charged by the length of the recording time. This means that there are no nasty surprises when the bill arrives, and that you know exactly how much to request when applying for grants.
• Transcripts can be provided in a suitable format for import into QSR NVivo.
• Transcripts are quality controlled by a second staff member before being returned.
• All data files (both recordings and transcripts) are stored in a secure environment.
• Our transcription staff are extremely well qualified, and have completed well over 1,000 hours of recordings.

Booking a Transcription

If you would like to book a transcription job, please fill in our transcription enquiry form.

Current Price List

Please download our latest price list. Prices for both complete verbatim and intelligent verbatim are provided. For information on these types of transcription, please consult our knowledge base article. Please note that prices are subject to change.

Turn-Around Time

Transcriptions are usually able to be returned within 7-12 working days, with the exception of very heavily booked periods. Fast turn around of transcripts (either 48 or 72 hours) is possible, but must be booked in advanced and surcharges will apply.

File Delivery

Recordings can be delivered by:

• CD/DVD
• An Internet file transfer facility provided by your institution (e.g. The University of Auckland’s Web Dropoff Box at https://webdropoff.auckland.ac.nz)
• Academic Consulting’s Internet transfer facility
• Micro-cassette tapes must be delivered in person where at all possible (unless a back-up copy of the recording has been made before sending by mail or courier).

Confidentiality Agreements

Academic Consulting staff are well versed in issues concerning confidentiality, and have clauses in their contracts that assure information is kept in confidence. We are also willing to sign confidentiality agreements for your research project. Please let us know if you would like to use our standard confidentiality agreement.

What to Expect in your Transcripts

Transcript Formatting

We have a default transcript format that we use, based on our experience analysing transcripts with NVivo. This includes:

• A header indicating the recording length and filename, Transcribers name, Quality  Control  Assistants name,  and  any  relevant comments  regarding  the  recording  or  transcript  that  might  be  useful  to  the Researcher
• Speaker  names  entered  on  a  separate  line  to  the  response  and  formatted with  a  Heading 2 style (this allows for Autocoding to be later conducted in NVivo)
• Arial 12 point text for spoken text
• Document language set to NZ English

We  also  have  specific  conventions/rules  we  apply  for  things  such  as  capitalisation, formatting of quotes, spellings of slang words, formatting of numbers etc.  Our conventions for  identifying  unclear words  or  unknown  terminology are provided.

Speaker Names

• We enter speaker names as ‘Researcher’ and ‘Participant’, or in the case of focus groups, ‘Participant 1’, ‘Participant 2’ etc. If you would like us to indicate speakers with their actual names, these must be provided to us before we start your transcription.
• For  focus  groups we  will  attempt  to  identify  up  to  six  speakers. However, we are only able  to do  this  if each speaker  introduces  themselves at  the beginning of  the  recording. It would also assist if participants are regularly referred to by name throughout the recording.
• If you have a focus group with more than six speakers, or one  in which participants do not introduce  themselves,  please  discuss  with  us  the  viability  of  identifying  speakers  when making your booking.

Useful Resources

Making the most of Transcription Services

Instructions for using our File Transfer facility

Booking a Transcription

If you would like to book a transcription job, please fill in our transcription enquiry form.

Please contact us on 09 623 7000 or email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it if you have any questions regarding our transcription services.