How much time can you save?

Structured content is interview content that is organized and summarized for you, so you can immediately see the results, develop insights, and get to your report dramatically faster than you could with standard transcripts. It’s all about reducing researcher time and cost. 

PureResponse Master transcripts consolidate all responses from all interviews into a single document. Each question from your discussion guide is listed, along with every response given to that question, so you can find any response to any question immediately. 

PureAnswer Content Analyses summarize responses down to the essence of what respondents said, consolidate similar responses across respondents, and organize responses from most to least frequent, enabling you to immediately know how many people answered each way.

PureResult Results Analyses summarize the overall results to each question asked across all interviews, so you can jump directly to the outcomes of your questions. 

The chart below shows a comparison of word counts for six 15-minute interviews in each of the different formats. The first bar, "6 IDIs" shows word counts for six separate verbatim interviews; "PureResponse" shows the length for the same content in a PureResponse Master Transcript; "PureAnswer" and "PureResult" show the full length of the Content and Results Analyses with footnoted quotes; "Excl. footnotes" shows the material content length of both PureAnswer and PureResult excluding footnoted quotes. 

Level 1: PureResponse master transcripts

The process begins with our PureResponse Master Transcripts. We create custom transcription tools containing the questions from your discussion guide. Transcribers and translators capture the content of your interviews against those questions. We then combine transcripts from all of your interviews into a single document. Your master transcript lists every question from your guide, and below each, all of your respondents’ answers to that question. You can order this in Word or Excel formatting (we will help you choose in advance).

Our PureResponse Master Transcripts by themselves represent a major leap in efficiency, since you can now rapidly find every answer to every question. You can either stop there or move on to PureAnswer content analysis. 

Example (400 words): Six responses from six interviews in one place.

Has this changed from what it was in the past, and how do you expect it to change in the future?

• (1:44) This has not really changed. This is our methodology. It is what we are used to and it's usually how we price our projects. (T1)

• (1:41) For me there's no change. My specialty is to be in tune with Hispanic consumer behaviors. I'm bilingual. Face to face is very important to me. I like to look at my respondents in the eye. I suppose I could do that with a webcam but being in front of my respondents is important to me. It helps me probe, it helps me get the information I need to get for my clients. (T2)

• (2:03) Oh, yes. Online is growing, it's changing. I still do a lot of focus groups in person. I actually prefer those, but online is great in a pinch. If I need to talk to somebody remotely and the target is unique, it doesn’t make sense for me to travel very far just to reach one group if I can get an online panel. (T3)

• (1:11) Slightly. I used to do groups, but now I'm mostly interviews. I know online is getting popular, but for me, I do face-to-face interviews. I also do on the phone, so let me correct myself. I do TDIs. (T4)

• (2:26) No. I: Do you expect it to change in the future? R: For what I do, I don't think so. Although, like I said, I'm always open. I get asked as a consultant to do a lot of different things for my corporate clients. So if they ever asked me to do an online panel, you better believe I'm going to do an online panel, but it has to make sense. (T5)

• (2:30) Certainly. I think we’re all realizing that online or digital research is growing exponentially last several years. We have to combine tools and methods for the right sorts of insights per study, depending on the objectives. Speaking for myself, I prefer on-site if I can have it. I like to meet participants in their natural habitats. I like to explore human beings and get at their opinions face to face, probing at eye level and being acutely aware of every tick. Exploring their interactions with their surroundings and also their peers in groups is important to me. (T6)

Level 2: PureAnswer content analyses

PureAnswer Content Analyses go much further. Working from your PureResponse master transcript, responses are summarized down to the essence of each respondent’s answer, then related responses are grouped together. Instead of several similar responses, you’ll see one concise, bulleted answer, along with the IDs of the respondents who answered that way. Useful nuances in how each respondent answered are captured as sub-bullets. The responses themselves are presented in majority to minority order. Quotes, representing the majority opinion and useful alternate viewpoints, are captured in time-stamped footnotes. A typical PureAnswer content analysis is less than one-fifth the length of the same content in verbatim transcripts.

Example (73 words): The same six responses in PureAnswer.

Has this changed; will it change?

• No. (T1, T2, T5)

• Yes. (T3, T6)

• Somewhat. (T4)

1 (1:41) Face to face is very important to me. I like to look at my respondents in the eye. I suppose I could do that with a webcam but being in front of my respondents is important to me. It helps me probe, it helps me get the information I need to get for my clients. (T2)

Level 3: PureResult results analyses

Our PureResult Results Analysis begins from your PureAnswer content analysis and summarizes all responses to the actual results they imply. All question-and-response sets are summarized into simple, single-sentence statements of results, and highly relevant quotes are retained in footnotes. Groups of related questions are consolidated to paragraph-level descriptions of results. 

Example (89 words): The same six responses in PureResult.

Three see no potential for this to change; two say new technology will change how their qualitative work is done; one thinks there is a potential for things to change somewhat.

1 (1:41) Face to face is very important to me. I like to look at my respondents in the eye. I suppose I could do that with a webcam but being in front of my respondents is important to me. It helps me probe, it helps me get the information I need to get for my clients. (T2)

Since these services operate in stages — PureAnswer building on PureResponse, PureResult building on PureAnswer — there is no risk of data loss, since you can always step back from the summary you are reading to the details it was prepared from. Tables of contents make this fast and easy. 

Structured documents are not for everyone

It’s hard to overstate how much time these structured document services can save you, but they are not for everyone. Why? Because of the preparation and control required to make them happen successfully. 

Qualitative research projects take so much time precisely because they are not structured. A researcher prepares a discussion guide containing topics to be covered. These are generally reasonably well organized. But then interviews are treated in a freeform manner which generally does not explicitly follow the guide. The transcriber or translator captures that freeform conversation. And suddenly you have a problem — tens to hundreds of thousands of words with no discernible organization.  

As you pour through all this content, most of the work you are doing is re-creating the structure that was there in the first place. You had clearly defined questions in your guide; now you need to go find each one in each transcript and identify the responses related to them. You then need to pull them out and organize them before any other work can begin.

Structured documents work by eliminating this build-structure-eliminate-structure-rebuild-structure problem. You do that by enforcing structure throughout. Great care needs to be taken with guide design to ensure that very clearly-defined “mailboxes” are created for all the responses you need to capture, which means more time and preparation up front. (Poorly prepared guides guarantee non-complying interviews.) That structure then needs to be closely followed during interviews, so that the transcriber listening can match the questions listed in your guide with the questions being asked by the interviewer in the recording.

If those things happen — if the guide is clearly structured and the interviews comply with the guide — then you can receive your PureResponse master transcripts in a few days, and each follow-on level of summarization within a day or so after that. If they don’t happen — if transcribers and analysts need to solve jigsaw puzzles to figure out how to match interviews against guides — then at best, your project will take a lot longer to complete. At worst, structured documents won’t be possible at all.

If you are comfortable with building and enforcing structure in your research process, we can help you eliminate most of your analysis effort. If you are not comfortable with those things, we can’t.

Additional help

Babbletype has a great deal of experience with structured document projects and can provide a lot of assistance. Read our book Content Analysis 101 for a detailed guide to designing and executing structured content projects. Download a copy here or contact us to request a printed copy. 

Involve us earlier for best results. Babbletype welcomes opportunities to advise on discussion guide development.