How to transcribe interviews for your thesis or research
Short answer
Upload each interview recording, get the transcript with speakers separated in minutes, rename participants with pseudonyms, and export to Word for coding in ATLAS.ti, NVivo or MAXQDA. First check what your consent forms and ethics approval, such as your IRB, say about cloud transcription.
In qualitative research, transcribing your interviews is a required step of the method: you can't code or analyze what participants said until it's in writing. It's also the most tedious part of a thesis. One hour of interview can take four to six hours to transcribe by hand, and a study often has twenty or thirty interviews.
With Dolcenota you upload each recording (from your phone, a recorder, or even WhatsApp voice notes) and get the full transcript in minutes, with each speaker separated. Then export it to Word to code in ATLAS.ti, NVivo or MAXQDA, and ask questions about the content.
Transcribe your interview in 3 steps
- 1
Upload your recording
Create your free account, click "Upload file" and choose your interview recording. Audio (mp3, m4a, wav and more) and video (mp4, mov) both work. If an interview or focus group is split across several files, upload them together for one transcript.
- 2
Get the transcript in minutes
Dolcenota transcribes English or Spanish and separates who said what automatically. A one-hour interview is usually ready in a few minutes, not a whole afternoon.
- 3
Label participants and export
Rename each speaker (Interviewer, P1, P2, or the pseudonyms you use) and the names apply across the transcript. Export to Word, PDF or TXT for your qualitative-analysis software, and use the summary and questions to get oriented ("which participants talked about trust?").
Transcription is part of your method
In qualitative research, the interview text is the data: open coding, category identification and methodological rigor all rest on it. That's why you need a faithful transcript, with good accuracy and speakers cleanly separated.
Dolcenota gives you the full text, which you export to Word to work with. If your methodology requires strict verbatim, the transcript is your starting point: review it against the audio and adjust it in Word, with far less work than transcribing from scratch.
How much does transcribing your interviews cost?
Human transcription services commonly charge around $1 to $2 per audio minute (as of October 2026), so a study with twenty-five hours of interviews can cost thousands of dollars and take days or weeks to come back.
With Dolcenota you start free with 60 minutes a month and every feature, and your first long recording is on us (a one-time welcome gift). On the free plan you can also buy one-time minute packs from $1.99, with no subscription. For fieldwork, Plus is $7.99 a month for 400 minutes and Pro is $14.99 for 1,000.
Built for qualitative research
- Speakers separated: interviewer and participants, focus groups included.
- Long sessions: in-depth interviews up to 4 hours per file, without splitting them.
- Merge several files or sessions into one continuous transcript.
- Export to Word to code in ATLAS.ti, NVivo or MAXQDA; search any phrase and quote it verbatim.
- The summary pulls out the main themes, and you can ask the interview questions to guide your analysis.
Consent and privacy
You obtain and safeguard your participants' informed consent. Check what your consent forms and ethics approval (for example, your IRB) say about cloud transcription services, and consider using pseudonyms when you name speakers.
Your files are processed on Amazon Web Services (AWS) infrastructure, stored encrypted, never used to train AI models, and you can delete them from your account whenever you want.
Frequently asked questions
Is the transcript verbatim?
Not in the strict sense. Dolcenota transcribes what's said, with punctuation, but it doesn't annotate fillers, pauses or overlaps using research conventions. If your methodology requires strict verbatim (fillers, pauses and overlaps annotated a certain way), use it as a base and adjust it in Word against the audio. It saves you most of the manual work.
Does it work for focus groups with several people?
Yes. Dolcenota separates turns by speaker and you can name each participant; the name is applied across the whole transcript, exactly what you need when there are several voices.
Can I export to analyze it in ATLAS.ti or NVivo?
Yes. Export the transcript to Word, PDF or TXT and import it into your qualitative-analysis software to code it. The automatic summary of key themes helps you get oriented before you start.
How good is the accuracy?
On clear audio it's very good, including long interviews with several speakers. Noise, distance and overlapping voices lower it, so check quotes against the audio and correct the text in Word where needed.
I only need transcripts for one project. Do I have to subscribe?
No. Start free with 60 minutes a month, and on the free plan you can buy one-time minute packs from $1.99, with no subscription. If you'd rather have a monthly plan during fieldwork, Plus is $7.99 a month for 400 minutes.
Can I upload WhatsApp voice notes?
Yes. If you ran interviews or captured testimonies as WhatsApp voice notes, upload them (several at once if you like) and we combine them into a single transcript.
Transcribe your first interview today
Create your free account and turn your interviews into text ready for analysis, with a summary and answers to your questions, in minutes.
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