Interview Transcript Format in APA 7: Template and Example
APA 7 has no official format for interview transcripts. If your instructor, committee or ethics board wants full transcripts, put each one on a new page after the reference list as an appendix and use the layout below. Its speaker labels and timestamps come from university transcription guides, not from APA.
Interview transcript template (APA appendix)
Copy the box into your document, fill in the brackets and keep the whole paper double-spaced. If this is your only appendix, label it "Appendix" instead of "Appendix A", and refer to it in the text.
Download: Word (.docx) with this template and a filled-in example, already in Times New Roman 12 with double spacing.
What APA requires and what is convention
Sources: APA Style on appendices and quoting research participants, APA's reporting standards for qualitative research, and the Oregon State University Libraries transcription guide.
Example: a formatted transcript excerpt
A fictional interview, formatted with the template:
The participant appears as P3, the employer as [Company], and each turn starts with a timestamp so a reader can find the moment in the recording.
How to quote and cite interviews in APA 7
Interviews you conducted for your study
Quotes from your own participants don't go in the reference list, and APA says not to cite them as personal communications either. Make clear in the text that the words come from participants, and identify each person the way your consent form allows: a pseudonym or an ID such as P3.
Quotes under 40 words go in quotation marks within the sentence: as P3 put it, "the decisions got clearer because everything was written down." Quotes of 40 words or more become a block quotation, indented 0.5 inch, double-spaced, without quotation marks. A separate fictional example: P3 described the change this way:
Honestly, the meetings got longer at first, but the decisions got clearer because everything was written down. We started a one-page summary after every meeting, and within a month people stopped asking in the chat what had been decided and who was doing what.
Interviews that aren't part of your data
If the interview was published as an article, podcast or video, cite that source in its own format, and give a timestamp for a direct quote from audio or video, for example (Rivera, 2025, 14:02). A podcast reference looks like this: Rivera, J. (Host). (2025, March 3). Episode title in sentence case (No. 12) [Audio podcast episode]. In Podcast Name. Publisher. URL. If the conversation is private and readers can't access it, such as a call with an expert for background, cite it in the text only as a personal communication: (J. Rivera, personal communication, March 3, 2025).
Protect your participants
- Get consent before recording, and keep the confidentiality promises from your consent form.
- Replace names, employers, places and institutions with pseudonyms or bracketed labels such as [Company] or [City] rather than blanking text out, and keep a log of the replacements stored separately from the transcripts, as the UK Data Service recommends.
- Describe your transcription process in the method section, adapted to what you actually did, for example: "Interviews were recorded with participants' consent, transcribed with automatic transcription software and checked line by line against the audio. Identifying details were replaced with bracketed labels."
From recording to APA transcript with HypeScribe
HypeScribe gives you a draft transcript with speakers and timestamps that you then check and format. Before uploading research interviews, make sure your consent form and ethics approval allow processing recordings with an online service. Files are encrypted in transit and aren't used to train AI models.
- Upload the recording. Audio or video files up to 2 GB, or a link from Zoom, Google Drive, YouTube and other platforms.
- Rename the speakers. Change Speaker 1 and Speaker 2 to Interviewer and P3 once; every turn in the transcript updates.
- Check the draft. Pay attention to names, numbers, negations and which speaker said what. Highlight a line and press Play from here to hear it again, then correct the text in place. Mark what you still can't make out as [inaudible].
- Download DOCX with timecodes. Each turn starts with a timestamp and the speaker, such as
[14:02] Interviewer:, and after the first hour[1:14:02]. The file opens with a short header (date, length, speakers); delete it or use it for your interview details. - Format the appendix. Add the appendix label and title, replace identifying details with [brackets], and set double spacing.
HypeScribe charges per file rather than per minute, so a 90-minute interview uses one credit, the same as a 10-minute one. Plans are on the pricing page.
Interview transcripts
Get a draft of your interview transcript
Upload the recording and check the draft against the audio before you format it.
