how to quote interviews in research paper

APA Citation Style, 7th edition: Interview

• General Style Guidelines
• One Author or Editor
• Two Authors or Editors
• Three to Five Authors or Editors
• Article or Chapter in an Edited Book
• Article in a Reference Book
• Edition other than the First
• Translation
• Government Publication
• Journal Article with 1 Author
• Journal Article with 2 Authors
• Journal Article with 3–20 Authors
• Journal Article 21 or more Authors
• Magazine Article
• Newspaper Article
• Basic Web Page
• Web page from a University site
• Web Page with No Author
• Entry in a Reference Work
• Government Document
• Film and Television
• Youtube Video
• Audio Podcast
• Electronic Image
• Twitter/Instagram
• Lecture/PPT
• Conferences
• Secondary Sources
• Citation Support
• Avoiding Plagiarism
• Formatting Your Paper

Helpful Tip!

NOTE: If you recorded the interview or Skype meeting and posted it online (i.e. YouTube, web site) you can then include the reference and direct the reader to the audio or video file that captured the interview. See: APA S tyle: Personal Communications  OR Quotations from Research Participants . 

An Interview

Important Note: Personal interviews are not included in the reference list because they do not provide recoverable data . Cite them IN TEXT ONLY.

Personal Communication Includes letters, phone calls, email messages, and interviews.

General Format

In-Text Citation (Paraphrase):

(Interviewee First Initial. Second Initial. Surname, personal communication, Month Day, Year)

In-Text Citation (Quotation):

References:

Not included

(J. Brown, personal communication, April 27, 2010)

Subject Guide

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APA Citations (7th ed.)

• General Formatting
• Professional Paper Elements - Title Page
• Student Paper Elements - Title Page
• In-text Citation Basics
• In-text Citation Author Rules
• Citing Multiple Works
• Personal Communications
• Classroom or Intranet Resources
• Secondary Sources
• Periodicals
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• Edited Book Chapters and Entries in Reference Works
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• Conference Sessions and Presentations
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What is an Interview?

An interview is a dialogue or exchange of information between people.

There are three types of interviews as sources:

• Published interviews
• Personal interviews
• Research participant interviews

Published interviews may appear in magazines, newspapers, podcasts, YouTube videos, etc.

Personal interviews  are those you conduct as a means of obtaining information to support a point in your paper. These types of interviews cannot be recovered.

Research participant interviews  are those you conducted as part of your methodology.

See p. 259 of the manual for more information.

How to Cite Published Interviews

To cite a published interview, follow the format for the reference type (e.g., magazine article, podcast episode). 

In-text citation:

     (Roberts & Lee, 2017)

How to Cite Personal Interviews

Readers cannot recover personal interviews. Because of this, cite a personal interview as a personal communication.

     (J. Vargas, personal communication, November 20, 2012)

How to Cite Research Participant Interviews

Research participant interviews do not require a citation in APA because your do not cite your own work in the paper in which it is first being reported.

Information gathered from participants can be presented in discussed in a paper according to these guidelines:

• Present a quotation of fewer than 40 words in quotation marks within the text
• Present a quotation of 40 words or more in block quotation
• State in the text that the quotations are from participants
• Abide by the ethical agreements regarding confidentiality and/or anonymity. Obtain consent from your participants to include their information in your report. You may need to assign participants a pseudonym, obscure identifying information, or present information in the aggregate. See p. 278 of the manual for more information and examples.
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APA Citations (7th ed.)

• General Formatting
• Student Paper Elements - Title Page
• Professional Paper Elements - Title Page
• In-text Citation Basics
• In-text Citation Author Rules
• Citing Multiple Works
• Personal Communications
• Classroom or Intranet Resources
• Secondary Sources
• Periodicals
• Books & Reference Works
• Edited Book Chapters & Entries in Reference Works
• Reports & Gray Literature
• Conference Sessions & Presentations
• Dissertations & Theses
• Data Sets & Software
• Tests, Scales, & Inventories
• Audiovisual Works
• Audio Works
• Visual Works
• Social Media
• Webpages & Websites
• Artificial Intelligence
• Basics & Formatting
• Avoiding Plagiarism

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What is an Interview?

An interview is a dialogue or exchange of information between people.

There are three types of interviews as sources:

• Published interviews
• Personal interviews
• Research participant interviews

Published interviews  may appear in magazines, newspapers, podcasts, YouTube videos, etc.

Personal interviews  are those you conduct as a means of obtaining information to support a point in your paper. These types of interviews cannot be recovered.

Research participant interviews  are those you conducted as part of your methodology.

Citing Published Interviews

To cite a published interview, follow the format for the reference type (e.g., magazine article, podcast episode). 

In-text citation:

     (Shea & Ericson, 2021)

Citing Personal Interviews

Readers cannot recover personal interviews. Because of this, cite a personal interview as a personal communication.

     (A. Tolliver, personal communication, September 15, 2021)

Citing Research Participant Interviews

Research participant interviews do not require a citation in APA because you do not cite your own work in the paper in which it is first being reported.

Information gathered from participants can be presented and discussed in a paper according to these guidelines:

• Present a quotation of fewer than 40 words in quotation marks within the text
• Present a quotation of 40 words or more in block quotation
• State in the text that the quotations are from participants
• Abide by the ethical agreements regarding confidentiality and/or anonymity. Obtain consent from your participants to include their information in your report. You may need to assign participants a pseudonym, obscure identifying information, or present information in the aggregate.

See p. 278 of the manual for more information and examples.

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APA Interview Citation

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How to Reference an Interview in APA

Use the following template to cite an interview using the APA citation format. We also provide style guides for the MLA and Chicago styles. To have your bibliography or works cited list automatically made for you, check out our free APA citation maker .

Once you’re finished with your citations, we can also help you with creating an APA title page .

Important Note on Personal Interviews:

• A personal interview should NOT be included in a reference list in APA. They are not considered recoverable data (they cannot be found by a researcher). You should reference personal interviews as in-text citations instead.
• Example: (J. Doe, personal communication, December 12, 2004)

That being said, there is a general structure if you want to cite a personal interview as part of your APA works cited list:

Author, A. (Year, Month Date). Interview type.

APA format example:

Marino, B. (2014, October 18). Personal Interview.

For more information on how to cite in APA, check out the APA Style Guide .

←Back to APA Citation Guide

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As per Sections 8.7 and 8.9 of the APA Publication Manual , 7 th edition, personal interviews are treated as personal communication. Since personal communication cannot be recovered by readers, APA recommends using personal communication only when a recoverable source of communication is not available.

And since personal communications cannot be recovered by readers, they are also not included in the reference list. Instead, the in-text citation for personal communication, including personal interviews, is much more detailed than other APA in-text citations.

When citing a personal interview in an in-text citation, include the first initial and surname of the person interviewed, “personal communication,” and the full date of the interview, rather than just the year.

The following templates and examples show how to cite a personal interview in an in-text citation in APA style.

Narrative citation: Interviewee’s First Initial Surname (personal communication, Month Day Year)

Parenthetical citation: (Interviewee’s First Initial Surname, personal communication, Month Day Year)

Narrative citation: A.J. Forrester (personal communication, May 9, 2014)

Parenthetical citation: (A.J. Forrester, personal communication, May 9, 2014)

Personal interviews should be treated the same way as personal communications, since neither can be recovered by readers. Since these sources cannot be retrieved, there is no need to provide an entry for them in the reference list. A personal interview should just have an in-text citation and NOT an accompanying reference list entry.

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How to Cite an Interview in APA Format

Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

Amanda Tust is a fact-checker, researcher, and writer with a Master of Science in Journalism from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism.

 10'000 Hours/Getty Images

How to Cite an Interview

How to note the type of interview, when to use an interview, before you do an interview.

The reference list of a paper in APA contains a list of sources cited in the paper that can be located by readers. While much of your research may come from books, professional journals, newspapers, and online databases, sometimes you may find yourself needing information from other sources, like interviews.

But if you use information or quotations from an interview with a source, you still must cite the source, how the information was collected, and when the interview was conducted.

So how do you cite a personal interview in APA format?

Because these interviews are not something that can be located by a reader in any published source or searchable database, they should not be included in your reference section.

When you include details gathered from a personal interview in an academic or professional paper, you should cite the information parenthetically in the main body of your text in a format similar to that of other in-text citations.

There are some basic things you should include in an APA interview citation:

• The first initial and last name of the interviewee
• The date the interview took place
• A note indicating the type of interview

Here is the basic structure you should use:

In the body of your paper, this would look like:

However, i you you include the name of the interview subject in-text to introduce or paraphrase a quote, you do not need to list the source’s name again parenthetically.

For example:

The APA offers some guidelines for how to cite different types of interviews:

• Personal interviews: If your interview was conducted in person or via text or telephone, you should cite the information as a ‘personal communication.’ 
• Emails: Because emails are not retrievable by other readers, the APA considers them to be personal communications. Emails should be cited in-text just as other interview sources and should not be included in your reference list.
• Class lectures: Like emails, information taken from a class lecture, guest lecture, or group discussion cannot be accessed by other readers, so it should be cited as personal communication.
• Research interviews: If you are interviewing a research subject, you will need to preserve the participant’s anonymity for ethical reasons. When referring to a specific participant, whether by summarizing their results or directly quoting their comments, you should be careful not to provide any identifying information. You might simply state that the individual is a research participant, or you can refer to them by non-identifying letters or nicknames (i.e. Student A, Participant B, etc.).

There are several reasons why you might conduct an interview to gather information for your paper. For example:

• You have further questions that you want to ask an expert or researcher 
• Written information on a topic is scant
• You find an expert who can offer specific insights on a topic you cannot find elsewhere

There are some things that you should consider before you reach out to an expert for an interview. First and foremost, do not interview someone about information that is easily available in published sources . You are responsible for conducting background research on a topic and establishing a familiarity with the topic before the interview.

Once you have done a thorough literature review and it becomes clear that there are knowledge gaps in the publicly available information, you may consider reaching out to an expert for additional insight.

When reaching out to a possible interview subject, be sure to approach them respectfully. Make sure to:

• Be observant of their time constraints
• Be willing to interview the subject’s schedule
• Conduct the interview in the manner that best suits the subject’s needs, whether it is by phone, or text
• Have questions prepared in advance
• Send a follow-up note or email thanking them for their time

While APA format dictates that you should not include unpublished interview sources in your reference list, it is important to cite these sources in the text of your paper. By doing so, you will ensure your readers have an understanding of where you got your information. These citations also help readers better appreciate the unique insights these sources add to your arguments.

American Psychological Association. Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (6th ed.). Washington DC: The American Psychological Association; 2010.

By Kendra Cherry, MSEd Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

Using an interview in a research paper

Consultant contributor: Viviane Ugalde

Using an interview can be an effective primary source for some papers and research projects. Finding an expert in the field or some other person who has knowledge of your topic can allow for you to gather unique information not available elsewhere.

There are four steps to using an interview as a source for your research.

• Know where and how to start.
• Know how to write a good question.
• Know how to conduct an interview.
• Know how to incorporate the interview into your document or project.

Step one: Where to start

First, you should determine your goals and ask yourself these questions:

• Who are the local experts on topic?
• How can I contact these people?
• Does anyone know them to help me setup the interviews?
• Are their phone numbers in the phone book or can I find them on the Internet?

Once you answer these questions and pick your interviewee, get their basic information such as their name, title, and other general details. If you reach out and your interview does not participate, don’t be discouraged. Keep looking for other interview contacts.

Step two: How to write a good question

When you have confirmed an interview, it is not time to come up with questions.

• Learning as much as you can about the person before the interview can help you create questions specific to your interview subject.
• Doing research about your interviewee’s past experience in your topic, or any texts that they have written would be great background research.

When you start to think of questions, write down more questions than you think you’ll need, and prioritize them as you go. Any good questions will answer the 5W and H questions. Asking Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How questions that you need answered for your paper, will help you form a question to ask your interviewee.

When writing a good question, try thinking of something that will help your argument.

• Is your interviewee an advocate for you position?
• Are they in any programs that are related to your research?
• How much experience do they have?

From broad questions like these, you can begin to narrow down to more specific and open-ended questions.

Step three: The interview

If at all possible, arrange to conduct the interview at the subject’s workplace. It will make them more comfortable, and you can write about their surroundings.

• Begin the interview with some small talk in order to give both of you the chance to get comfortable with one another
• Develop rapport that will make the interview easier for both of you.
• Ask open-ended questions
• Keep the conversation moving
• Stay on topic
• The more silence in the room, the more honest the answer.
• If an interesting subject comes up that is related to your research, ask a follow-up or an additional question about it.
• Ask if you can stay in contact with your interview subject in case there are any additional questions you have.

Step four: Incorporating the interview

When picking the material out of your interview, remember that people rarely speak perfectly. There will be many slang words and pauses that you can take out, as long as it does not change the meaning of the material you are using.

As you introduce your interview in the paper, start with a transition such as “according to” or other attributions. You should also be specific to the type of interview you are working with. This way, you will build a stronger ethos in your paper .

The body of your essay should clearly set up the quote or paraphrase you use from the interview responses,. Be careful not to stick a quote from the interview into the body of your essay because it sounds good. When deciding what to quote in your paper, think about what dialogue from the interview would add the most color to your interview. Quotes that illustrate what your interviewer sounded like, or what their personality is are always the best quotes to choose from.

Once you have done that, proofread your essay. Make sure the quotes you used don’t make up the majority of your paper. The interview quotes are supposed to support your argument; you are not supposed to support the interview.

For example, let’s say that you are arguing that free education is better than not. For your argument, you interview a local politician who is on your side of the argument. Rather than using a large quote that explains the stance of both sides, and why the politician chose this side, your quote is there to support the information you’ve already given. Whatever the politician says should prove what you argue, and not give new information.

Step five: Examples of citing your interviews 

Smith, Jane. Personal interview. 19 May 2018.

(E. Robbins, personal communication, January 4, 2018).

Smith also claimed that many of her students had difficulties with APA style (personal communication, November 3, 2018).

Reference list

Daly, C. & Leighton W. (2017). Interviewing a Source: Tips. Journalists Resource.

Driscoll, D. (2018 ). Interviewing. Purdue University

Hayden, K. (2012). How to Conduct an Interview to Write a Paper . Bright Hub Education, Bright Hub Inc.

Hose, C. (2017). How to Incorporate Interviews into Essays. Leaf Group Education.

Magnesi, J. (2017). How to Interview Someone for an Article or Research Paper. Career Trend, Leaf group Media.

Purdue Online Writing Lab Purdue OWL® College of Liberal Arts

Interviews and Personal Communication

Welcome to the Purdue OWL

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In citations for interviews and personal communications, the name of the person interviewed or the person from whom the communication is received should be listed first. This is followed by the name of the interviewer or recipient, if given, and supplemented by details regarding the place and date of the interview/communication. Unpublished interviews and personal communications (such as face-to-face or telephone conversations, letters, emails, or text messages) are best cited in-text or in notes rather than in the bibliography. Published interviews should be cited like periodical articles or book chapters.

Interviews with anonymous sources can be cited without including the name of the source–e.g. “anonymous informant #3” or “recreational psilocybin user”–but you must explain in the text why you are not giving the name of your source.

Unpublished Interviews

Note: If the interview is unpublished, but there is a transcript or recording available, you should include information as to where said transcript/recording can be found. This can be as simple as a URL, or as complex as a location in an institutional archive; the latter is shown in the example below.

Published or Broadcast Interviews

An interview published in a print medium is cited much like a periodical, as seen in the first example. An interview broadcast on television, radio, or similar has its own format, as follows:

This is shown in the second example.

Personal Communications

Personal communications are usually referenced within the text or a note. They rarely appear as bibliographic entries. Do not include the e-mail address or other contact information through which the communication was conducted unless it is necessary and you have the source’s permission.

• Study and research support
• Referencing
• Leeds Harvard referencing examples

Leeds Harvard: Interview

Reference examples.

Family name, INITIAL(S) (of interviewee). Year. Interview with (name of interviewer). Date, location.

Thompson, D. 2016. Interview with J. Smith . 4 August, Leeds.

Interviews you conducted yourself

If you have carried out several interviews that you are using as primary research data for analysis in a research project, then it is not necessary to provide references for each of them in your reference list. You should check with your tutor about the most appropriate way to present the interviews in your work, for example including transcripts in appendices. You may also need to seek permission from the interviewee(s).

If you have interviewed someone and want to include a quote from this as evidence to support an argument you are making in an essay (i.e. not as data for analysis in a research project), then you should reference this as shown in the example above.

Citation examples

Author and date.

When the author name is not mentioned in the text, the citation consists of the author’s name and the year of publication in brackets.

It was emphasised that citations in the text should be consistent (Jones, 2017).

If you have already named the author in the text, only the publication year needs to be mentioned in brackets.

Jones (2017) emphasised that citations in the text should be consistent.

Three or more authors

If a source has three or more authors, the name of the first author should be given, followed by the phrase "et al."

It was emphasised that citations in a text should be consistent (Jones et al., 2017).

Jones et al. (2017) emphasised that citations in a text should be consistent.

Leeds Harvard does not use ibid to refer to previously cited items. If you are citing the same item twice in a row (i.e. you do not cite any other items in the text between the two citations) you must write the full citation again. As usual, if you are directly quoting or paraphrasing specific ideas, you should include a page number (if there is one). 

Jones et al. (2017, p.24) emphasised that citations in a text should be consistent and argued that referencing is a key part of academic integrity (2017, p.27). Furthermore, having a broad range of references in a text is an indicator of the breadth of a scholar's reading and research (Jones et al., 2017, p.14).

Common issues

When you're referencing with Leeds Harvard you may come across issues with missing details, multiple authors, edited books, references to another author's work or online items, to name a few. Here are some tips on how to deal with some common issues when using Leeds Harvard.

Skip straight to the issue that affects you:

• Online items
• URL web addresses
• Multiple authors
• Corporate author(s) or organisation(s)
• Multiple publisher details
• Editions and reprints
• Missing details
• Multiple sources with different authors
• Sources written by the same author in the same year
• Sources with the same author in different years
• Two authors with the same surname in the same year
• The work of one author referred to by another
• Anonymising sources for confidentiality
• Identifying the authors’ family name (surname)

• How it works

How to Cite an Interview in Harvard Style?

Published by Alaxendra Bets at August 15th, 2021 , Revised On August 23, 2023

1. How to Citing interviews you conducted at Harvard

Quoting your research participants.

In Harvard referencing, the basics of in-text citation for personal communications are:

Author (communicator).

Format description.

Example: The Vice Chancellor’s statement was confirmed during an interview (P Dawkins 2011, personal communication, 11 October). OR, During an interview conducted on 11 October 2011, Prof Peter Dawkins stated that …

Example: One participant, David, stated in an interview (surname, David Year, personal communication, Date and Year) that he found the experience “very challenging” (full interview transcripts are presented in Appendix A). OR During an interview conducted on Date and Year, one participant, David, stated that he found the experience “very challenging” (full interview transcripts are presented in Appendix A)

Citing Personal Interviews

Example: An email (L. Singh 2020, personal communication, April 24) with one of the researchers involved in the project clarified that it was “still ongoing”.

2. Citing published interviews

Citing a newspaper interview.

The United States aims to return its space program to its former glory. Bridenstine (2018) stated that “A big objective is to once again launch American astronauts on American rockets from American soil”.

Note: Under this section on the APA website given, the second example doesn’t hold true in Harvard. The above format is the one main one followed in Harvard referencing, where the name of the interviewee is mentioned, followed by the year of the interview in ().

Why should you use a Plagiarism Detector for your Dissertation?

It ensures:

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Citing a podcast interview

Citing an interview from youtube, frequently asked questions, do you have to cite an interview you conducted harvard.

Yes, when following Harvard citation style, you must cite an interview you conducted. Include interviewee’s name, date, method, and context. Citing maintains academic integrity and allows readers to verify your sources.

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Podcasts have become a common source for research. We have prepared this article on how to cite a podcast in Harvard referencing.

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Protocols to cite a book in Harvard style: Author Surname, Author Initial. (Year Published). Title. ed. City: Publisher, p.Pages Used.

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DEPTH @ LSHTM Research blog

Dialogue, Evidence, Participation and Translation for Health

How to present quotes from interview transcripts: the ‘tidying up’ dilemma (including: what do with your own less-than-perfect sentences)

Two members of the DEPTH team, Cicely Marston (supervisor) and Shelly Makleff (PhD student) discuss how best to present quotations from interview transcripts when writing up. We talk about how to present ‘untidy’ speech (e.g. ‘um’, ‘er’, repetition), how much to ‘tidy up’ quotes, and the implications of any ‘tidy up’.

Shelly’s interviews and analysis have been done in Spanish and the quotes she presents in the final write up are translated into English. Here we present a lightly edited version of a supervisory email interchange we thought might be useful to others. And we would love to hear your views in the comments – we certainly don’t have all the answers.

To leave a comment, make sure you’ve clicked on this article’s headline so you are reading the post itself, not the DEPTH blog homepage.

SM: How do you clean up a transcribed quote to present it in an article? Every time I cut some words, even just filler words, should I mark these omissions with an omission marker (such as […])? Or do I have the liberty to just cut those fillers without a […], in order to create a clean and readable quote?

CM: In my opinion all cuts should be marked with an omission marker (e.g. […]). I have argued about this with a journal before because newspapers use  ellipses to indicate omissions (rather than a specific omission marker that only indicates omissions). The issue is that when you do this, there is no obvious way to mark pauses in someone speaking so you would need to find another pause marker that won’t be confused with an omission marker. You could do this by writing [pause] every time, but this also makes quotes hard to read if there are a lot of pauses. When you are using translated quotations, it is less clear what to do because for instance, you might keep the translation ‘clean’ by not including every single one of the filler words (though I would recommend you keep them as much as possible where th ere is a direct translation (e.g. in Mexican Spanish, hesitation where people say ‘este…’ can be translated as ‘um…’ in English), or at least if there is no direct equivalent, make sure you keep the spirit of the original which might have involved hesitations).

For translations, where it is good practice to provide the original language version in an appendix, one way to get around this is to present the original language quotations with all the pause markers etc included, and then present ‘tidied up’ translations in the body of the article. If you do this, you should mention it in the methods section so the reader knows they can refer to the original language quotations. Note that ‘tidying up’ is particularly challenging when you are working in your non-dominant language, which is all the more reason to present the original language tra nscript excerpts verbatim.

SM: Ok, so sounds  like you’d always use […] to signify eve ry piece of cut text in the article. For a conference poster, do you think it’s ok to leave out the […] for filler words so it’s smoother to read?

CM: I would keep it precise i.e. show where you have edited – I assume you won’t cut all the ums and errs. I get quite suspicious when I see a perfect quote because very very few people speak in complete sentences with no hesitations. if you genuinely think the hesitations are unimportant in any given instance, then you *can* edit them, but make sure there is a note that you have done this somewhere on the poster, for transparency.

SM: If I’m adding clarifying info in [], do I do that instead of or as well as the words that are being replaced? In other words, would it be “So for them [the students]” or “So for [the students]”?

CM: I would go with the longer version so that it is clear what they actually said versus what is your interpretation/explanation.

SM: Can I add punctuation and make sentences to create more clarity, when the speech was transcribed as a long run-on sentence?

CM: Yes, definitely improve the punctuation – transcriptions are almost always badly punctuated, especially when the narrative includes reported speech, in which case transcribers often give up on attempting to punctuate it altogether – and to be fair it can take a while to get it right even if it is quite obvious without punctuation what the speaker has said. It is worth doing because it does make it much harder to read when transcripts not properly punctuated. If you are not sure how to punctuate the sentence from the transcript alone (e.g. it is unclear where the emphasis in the sentence was), you will need to go back to the original audio to ensure your ‘new’ punctuation correctly represents what was said.

SM: I wish there were guidelines for this! In a quick internet search, I didn’t find any, at least not that are clear per discipline. While looking for guidelines I did see an article about the diversity of perspectives among academics about how they edit qualitative quotes. One perspective in favour of editing out the filler words pointed out that if participants saw their own quote with all the filler words, they’d feel embarrassed, and it isn’t an expectation that everyone speaks perfectly but that as researchers we should present their ideas as clearly as possible in a way they’d feel comfortable with. And actually, in Mexico when we shared the transcribed quotes with the health educators, they felt embarrassed about it, joking that they needed diction classes. They even made a meme of their horrified reactions when they read their words on paper and heard how they talked (see below). For the presentation of the data, we hadn’t really cleaned up the quotes, it was mainly verbatim, but the idea still stands- the way we represented them didn’t make them sound eloquent, and that embarrassed them.

CM. I agree that if the quotes have names attached to them, the person might prefer a ‘cleaned’ version, but your quotes are anonymised and so from an individual perspective I don’t think that is too much of a concern.

Having said that, it’s true that origi nal, not tidied-up quotations might contribute to  a discourse of the ‘other’ being inarticulate. People who are looking for ways to find others inferior will likely find them regardless and so I’m not sure that compromising the integrity of the transcript will help (although I’m open to arguments to the contrary).

Overall, though, going along with the idea that there is a ‘better’ way to s peak brings its own problems. Should we all speak in perfect sentences? Who determines what is ‘perfect’ or ‘best’? This is especially difficult if you are trying to ‘tidy up’ sentences that were spoken in another language than our dominant language. As researchers we should commit to transparency. Interviewers who worry about their sentences should probably listen back to the interviews – they will hear that it sounds very normal, even if they hesitate, repeat words, use filler words, reframe questions and so on. It’s important to build rapport – if you don’t naturally speak in 100% full sentences in real life, why would you do so in an interview? Being inauthentic, or struggling to present a more perfect self, may well have a negative impact on the interview overall.

What do you think? How have you handled these issues? Let us know in the comment section below. If you can’t see where, click on this article headline and scroll to the bottom.

3 Replies to “How to present quotes from interview transcripts: the ‘tidying up’ dilemma (including: what do with your own less-than-perfect sentences)”

Thanks for the interesting article! Indeed I have always found it hard to know when to edit a quote or not…and I feel academics do not all agree on this! Personally I have a tendency to ‘tidy it up’ depending on the audience (e.g. PowerPoint presentation).

Really interesting points here that have got me thinking. There’s a good article by Baxter and Eyles (2004) called ‘Evaluating Qualitative Research in Social Geography: Establishing ‘Rigour’ in Interview Analysis’ about how readers (or examiners!) view ‘rigour’ in qualitative research. This is the link: https://rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.0020-2754.1997.00505.x

Thanks for the blog!

I agree with your points, excellent post.

Comments are closed.

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Your Company Won't Grow Until You Follow These 4 Keys to Success Giving people the freedom to create their own roles can set scaling companies on the path to growth.

By Matthew Waggoner • May 9, 2024

Key Takeaways

• Perhaps now more than ever, an increasing number of workers are seeking an environment where they truly feel a sense of personal value.
• Hiring the right people will keep the entrepreneurial spirit alive throughout the growing organization.

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Hiring talent with entrepreneurial minds helps foster the same culture of innovation that brings a company from idea to fruition. As an HR leader who seeks to employ true self-starters — those who take the initiative and are eager to see the impact of what they're building — I have witnessed these traits contribute to the successful scaling of their companies.

Candidates identify with this work culture . Let's face it: nobody wants to feel like a small fish in a big pond where nothing they say or do matters. Part of the allure of working for a company still in its growing stages is that you can truly impact shaping its trajectory. This environment encourages opportunity beyond a job description – for both the employee and the company, allowing the entrepreneurial spirit to spread throughout the organization.

New and growing organizations must understand that scaling in size requires a different skill set than the early stages of founding a company from the ground up. There are four keys to success when taking a company to the next level.

Related: 3 Strategies to Optimize Your Hiring Process and Find the Best Employees

1. Let go of control

Filling positions at the next vertical level often requires external hires . How do we blend the historical knowledge inside the company with the experience we are bringing in from the outside? The answer lies in partnerships that leverage the entrepreneurial mindset people bring to the job — the initiative to challenge orthodoxies, test, and experiment. Then, give them room to succeed. Not understanding a new methodology at first isn't wrong.

My advice to new leaders is to hire up. We want individuals who are smarter than us so they can tell us how to improve functionalities like finances and sales. Tap into the expertise they developed elsewhere. Instilling entrepreneurial thinking in our employees allows every role to add more value than we could have predicted.

2. Get SMART about strategy

Entrepreneurs need a strategic plan to be successful, but I have seen a lot of businesses that don't really know what they want. Success can come quickly, but so can failure . As an entrepreneur growing your company and hiring for new positions, your job is to set the "North Star" — the clear expectation of where you want to go and how to hire the right people to get there. That involves planning goals for the next five years and giving the people you hired the freedom to establish the goals for each of their departments with that North Star in mind.

One way to set a strategic hiring plan is to use the SMART technique : Is it specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-oriented? If a company hired 100 people last year and wanted to hire 200 to account for expansion this year, this objective would tick many of those boxes. Leaders in hiring positions must work backward from their business objectives to ensure they are onboarding the right people who can help the company achieve and execute that strategic plan.

Related: SMART Goals May Be Holding You Back — Try This Effective Goal-Setting Technique Instead

3. Listen more

Beyond just the HR team, managers and other leaders need to agree to honestly hear employees' ideas and concerns. Turning a vision into reality is arduous, involving honest conversations with stakeholders and learning to look through different lenses. Those of us in leadership positions need to ask ourselves: Do I always shoot down people's ideas? Can I take constructive criticism?

If not, many training programs are available to develop active listening skills. Additionally, entrepreneurs need to collaborate with other entrepreneurs. So, find resource groups where entrepreneurs can share what worked for them or when they had to pivot. Finally, make yourself as accessible as possible. Personally, I really enjoy it when people come into my office and leave laughing because I know they feel safe enough to speak their minds.

4. Blend creativity with data

In the era of AI, creativity alone isn't enough. Leveraging data to show why your hiring and employee initiatives are both strategic and financially responsible is critical to the success of your scaling efforts. At the same time, it's easy to get so stuck in the data that it makes you risk-averse, so use data to strengthen and validate your creative ideas, not stifle them.

Data is as much about identifying where you might need to pivot as it is breaking down why a creative attempt might go wrong. Analyzing data like employee churn , tenure, productivity, etc. Ensuring your hiring practices are optimal for fostering the right company culture needed to scale and thrive is crucial. Where the numbers could be improved, use this as a lesson or guidance for the future. If your employee turnover is not where you want it to be, figure out why, take the steps needed to correct it, and move forward. Do not use words like "failure." Ultimately, the art of analytics is blending creativity with decision-making in partnership with those who will be the heart of your success.

Related: 'The Employment Situation' Report for April Shows Employers Are Taking Hiring Down a Notch, Employee Wage Growth Slowing

To grow, hire freethinkers

I have seen the difference between scaling companies that manage the challenges of growth and those that waste the opportunity in their willingness to truly listen to their employees and embrace change. Leaders have to get comfortable with teams being part of their growth. Steve Jobs came up with the idea for the iPhone, but he was only as awesome as the people behind him .

Perhaps now more than ever, an increasing number of workers are seeking an environment where they truly feel a sense of personal value. Don't be scared of the unknown; stay open to the craziest of ideas. This shift in mindset is essential for fostering innovation, driving growth, and staying ahead of the curve. With this in mind, hiring the right people will keep the entrepreneurial spirit alive throughout the growing organization.

Entrepreneur Leadership Network® Contributor

Vice President of Global Human Resources at Vagaro Inc

Want to be an Entrepreneur Leadership Network contributor? Apply now to join.

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Editorial article, editorial: capturing talk: the institutional practices surrounding the transcription of spoken language.

• 1 Research Hub for Language in Forensic Evidence, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, Australia
• 2 Aston Institute for Forensic Linguistics, Aston University, Birmingham, United Kingdom
• 3 Department of Communication and Media, School of Social Science and Humanities, Loughborough University, Loughborough, United Kingdom
• 4 Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement (NSCR), Amsterdam, Netherlands

Editorial on the Research Topic Capturing talk: the institutional practices surrounding the transcription of spoken language

Transcripts are a ubiquitous feature of virtually all modern institutions, many of which would be unable to function without them. Nevertheless, transcription remains an under-researched subject—a situation that Capturing talk: the institutional practices surrounding the transcription of spoken language seeks to remedy.

The initial aim of this Research Topic was to expose and examine under-appreciated features of “entextualization” (the process of representing spoken language as written text). One of these features is the fact that a transcript can only ever be a representation of speech, not a copy—and thus can never represent speech exactly. Another feature, well-articulated by Sarangi (1998) , is the unequal power over the process of transcription exercised by, on the one hand, the speakers whose voices are represented, and, on the other, by those controlling the transcription process.

Where Sarangi's interest was mainly in health and social services institutions, the present Research Topic has a leaning toward legal institutions, where, arguably, these power inequalities are even more starkly contrasted—as demonstrated by the territory-defining volume ( Heffer et al., 2013 ).

Four of the papers in this Research Topic deal with police interviews, providing insight into differing practices across jurisdictions and type of interview (e.g., whether with witnesses or suspects). Several papers examine the practice of converting an interview into a “statement,” written up by the officers who conduct the interviews. Beginning with interviews with witnesses in England and Wales (E&W), Milne et al. analyze a sample of such statements against transcripts produced by the researchers from an audio recording. The omissions, additions, distortions, and other errors in the police versions give cause for deep concern.

An extended study analyzing the creation of records of interviews with suspects in the Netherlands is recounted by Komter , which, again, contrasts transcripts prepared by police interviewers, with the author's transcripts prepared from audio recordings. Again, many concerning limitations on the police transcripts are observed and analyzed. However, while her own transcripts are far more detailed, Komter acknowledges that she too is necessarily selective in what she chooses to represent, guided by the evolving research questions she seeks to investigate.

One practice Komter discusses is that of police records presenting an interview as a monolog, in the voice of the interviewee, rather than as the question-and-answer dialogue it actually was. This practice is also investigated by Eerland and van Charldorp , again focusing on the Dutch context. These authors study how readers of the statements were influenced by three different styles of reporting (monolog, dialogue and narrative), with the troubling finding that the style of reporting affected perceptions of the statements' accuracy and comprehensibility.

In many jurisdictions, police interviews with suspects are routinely audio- or video-recorded. However, this does not signal the end of problems with the representation of these high-stakes interactions. The last of our interview papers is Haworth et al. , which summarizes the key findings to date of an ongoing study of the transcription of electronic records of interviews with suspects in E&W. It demonstrates a range of problems with official police transcripts even when these ostensibly capture the dialogue “verbatim,” and proposes that consistency, accuracy, and neutrality are the foundational features that should underpin any police interview transcript.

A second group of papers studies transcription in non-legal institutional settings. Holder et al. delves into two very large and highly structured organizations with serious security needs: NASA and the US Military. Both make extensive use of audio and video recordings capturing employees as they work—with transcripts produced either routinely, or on demand. The authors look into the two organizations' use of these transcripts, again comparing the official transcripts with their own transcripts of selected sections, using conversation analysis (CA) conventions.

Park and Hepburn also examine CA-style transcripts. Taking as an example Rachel Mitchell's interview of US Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh about his alleged historical sexual misconduct, these authors compare the information retrievable from a richly detailed Jeffersonian transcript with an orthographic transcript that “wipes out” or “skates over” crucial aspects of speech used by speakers and listeners in constructing the message expressed by the speech.

Another institutional use of transcripts covered in Capturing Talk concerns workers on the assembly line of a small factory in Sweden. Carlsson and Harari report an observation-and-interview study of the instruction manuals created by the workers. While they find much to commend in the retention of power by the creators and users of the manuals, the authors observe room for improvement in the “information design” of the texts, recommending that consultation of linguistics experts could offer benefits.

Voutilainen showcases the high quality of transcripts produced as an official record of the complex and challenging multicultural discussions of wide-ranging Research Topics covered by the parliament in Finland. His account demonstrates how much thought, research and work goes into managing all the factors that need to be considered to create transcripts of this standard.

In a return to the legal setting, a further group of papers examines transcripts of forensic audio, i.e., recordings of speech used as evidence in criminal trials. These are often of very poor quality, meaning that the transcript is intended not as a record of what was said, but as assistance to the court in determining what was said. Internationally, it is common for such transcripts to be provided by police investigating the case. While the courts recognize that police transcripts might contain errors, they rely on judges and/or juries being able to check the transcript against the audio. This ignores well-established research findings that the very act of checking a transcript can cause the listener to hear in line with the transcript, even if it is demonstrably false. For this reason, linguists sometimes recommend that, to ensure accuracy, transcripts should be produced by independent experts in transcription.

However, mere independence may not be enough, and Love and Wright point out some important caveats around this recommendation. They had eight trained transcribers produce transcripts of poor-quality forensic-like audio—finding huge divergences in the content of the transcripts (< 3% of conversational turns were transcribed consistently by all eight participants). This demonstrates that transcribing poor-quality forensic audio needs not just expertise in linguistics, but a managed, evidence-based method.

Recently, a common response to any discussion of the difficulty of transcribing poor-quality audio has been: “Why not let AI do it?” Loakes investigates this suggestion, finding that, while modern automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems are extremely efficient at transcribing good-quality audio, their performance on poor-quality forensic-like audio is low. Even the best-performing system, Whisper, scored only around 50% accuracy, with others far lower.

Harrington also observed low scores for ASR transcripts of poor-quality forensic-like audio. Bridging two of the main areas considered in this Research Topic, she also trialed ASR on recordings of police interviews. The resulting transcripts, though not problem-free, score far higher than those of covert recordings, with errors easier to identify. Harrington makes innovative recommendations for how ASR could be used as a “first draft” interview transcript, to be refined via human transcribers.

Two papers consider the transcription and translation of forensic audio featuring languages other than English. Gilbert and Heydon look at translated transcripts of Vietnamese recordings used as evidence in a drug-related trial. They point out significant errors in the translations, but note that, unless the defense goes to the expense of hiring their own translator/interpreter, such errors are unlikely to be detected—and suggest that audio in languages other than English is often admitted with inadequately tested translations.

Lai presents results of a large national survey of the practices and concerns of translators and interpreters who undertake forensic casework across a wide range of languages. Here, too, results indicate a number of important deficiencies in current practice for translating forensic audio featuring languages other than English—and Lai makes valuable recommendations for improvement.

Finally, taking an authoritative overview of the key issues relevant to this Research Topic, Fraser provides a systematic review of interdisciplinary research on transcripts and transcription, and sets out a series of interacting factors that are known to affect a transcript's reliability. Using examples from a range of legal and academic situations, Fraser argues that, to ensure a transcript is suitable for its intended purpose, it is essential that all the factors be appropriately managed.

Taken as a whole, Capturing Talk amplifies two observations made in both Sarangi (1998) and Heffer et al. (2013) , which, though not the exclusive focus of any individual paper, are highlighted throughout the Research Topic. First, the strong role that context inevitably plays in the interpretation of a transcript implies that “recontextualization” (using a transcript in a context other than the one it was created in) is likely to change its interpretation. Second, even the most expert linguistic analysis of transcripts produced by others is not itself a neutral or “objective” activity. However, this does not mean that such analysis must be “subjective” in any limiting sense. Rather it indicates a need for transcripts to be produced and analyzed by independent, context-aware experts able to devote appropriate attention to all relevant factors.

Most importantly, all contributions to Capturing Talk emphasize that transcription is far from the simple transduction of “sounds” into letters that it is often assumed to be by those who have not studied its intricacies. It is a highly complex and fascinating Research Topic worthy of taking its place as a dedicated field of research in its own right, particularly in view of the widespread misconceptions and unhelpful language ideologies that still beset the institutional practices surrounding the transcription of spoken language.

Author contributions

HF: Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing. KH: Writing – review & editing. FD: Writing – review & editing. DL: Writing – review & editing. ER: Writing – review & editing. MK: Writing – review & editing.

The author(s) declare that no financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher's note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Heffer, C., Rock, F., and Conley, J. (2013). Legal-Lay Communication: Textual Travels in the Law . Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Google Scholar

Sarangi, S. (1998). Rethinking recontextualization in professional discourse studies: an epilogue. Text Talk 18, 301–318. doi: 10.1515/text.1.1998.18.2.301

Crossref Full Text | Google Scholar

Keywords: transcription, misconceptions about language and linguistics, language ideologies, forensic linguistics, forensic transcription, police interviews and interrogations, entextualization

Citation: Fraser H, Haworth K, Deamer F, Loakes D, Richardson E and Komter M (2024) Editorial: Capturing talk: the institutional practices surrounding the transcription of spoken language. Front. Commun. 9:1417465. doi: 10.3389/fcomm.2024.1417465

Received: 15 April 2024; Accepted: 22 April 2024; Published: 08 May 2024.

Edited and reviewed by: Mila Vulchanova , NTNU, Norway

Copyright © 2024 Fraser, Haworth, Deamer, Loakes, Richardson and Komter. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Helen Fraser, helen.fraser@unimelb.edu.au

This article is part of the Research Topic

Capturing Talk: The Institutional Practices Surrounding the Transcription of Spoken Language