Introduction to Interviewing

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Introduction to Interviewing

• INFO 272. Qualitative Research Methods

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Outline

• What is Qualitative Interviewing?
• Underlying theory
• Interview techniques

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Suchman and Jordans Critique

• Aspects of ordinary conversation
• Local control
• Question redesign
• Answer elaboration
• Detection and repair of misunderstandings

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Qualitative Interviewing
to obtain descriptions of the life world of the
interviewee with respect to interpreting the
meaning of the described phenomena. pg. 5-6
Kvale
to gain a fine-textured understanding of
beliefs, attitudes, values and motivations in
relation to the behaviors of people in particular
social contexts. pg. 39 Bauer and Gaskell
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Reasons to Conduct Qualitative Interviews

• Developing detailed description of an event
• Integrating multiple perspectives
• Learning how events are interpreted
• Bridging inter-subjectivities
• Identifying variables and framing hypotheses for
  quantitative research
• Learning from Strangers. Pg. 9-11

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Keeping in Mind...

• an interview is a negotiation between interviewer
  and interviewee (who exert reciprocal influence)
• an Inter-View Kvale
• What is the underlying theory of social reality?

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Keeping in Mind...

• when we understand knowledge as the social
  justification of belief rather than as accuracy
  of representation, conversation replaces
  confrontation with nature.
• the certainty of our knowledge is a matter of
  conversation between persons, rather than a
  matter of interaction with a nonhuman reality.

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Mediation

• through memory
• through interviewees self-perception
• through interviewers perceptions
• the presence of the interviewers and others
• extreme cases teenagers/pre-teens, politicians

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Advantages Disadvantages

• artificiality distance from event/experience
  (remember Becker on the accuracy gained from
  close observation)

• efficiency generate a large amount of material
  on a specific topic in a short amount of time
• getting at the internal world of meaning and
  interpretation of individuals

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Types

• individual depth interviews
• narrative interviews focusing on a specific
  experience
• expert interviews
• ethnographic interviews usually situated in
  interviewees cultural milieu, often spontaneous
  and informal
• joint interviews and focus groups i.e. husband
  and wife, family, household, co-workers, etc.

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Interview Techniques

• Main goal get your interviewees to talk openly
  and at length about a topic you have selected,
  but in their own words and in relation to their
  own experiences.
• This involves developing and extending your
  skills of conversation in a particular way

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Interview Techniques

• Recalling Suchman and Jordan
• Give the interviewee as much control over the
  conversation as possible
• Allow interviewee to redesign the questions
• Allow/encourage interviewee to elaborate on
  answers
• Confirm and clarify responses
• Detect and repair misunderstandings

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Interview Techniques

• what can go wrong?
• suspicion, evasion, stonewalling
• Interviewees who speak very little, or are
  extremely talkative, or go way off-topic
• speaking in generalities only, attempting to do
  the analysis for you (let me tell you how people
  use the Internet here)

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Interview Techniques

• first things first explain yourself and your
  expectations
• establishing rapport
• topics the interviewee enjoys talking about
• commiserate, empathize, be human

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Interview Techniques

• avoiding generalities
• ask for concrete examples, personal stories
• accessible questions with appropriate vocabulary
  (i.e. dont use terms like discourse or
  globalization)
• quality concerns
• avoid leading questions dont you think...
  isnt it true...
• clarify and confirm

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Interview Techniques

• encouraging verbosity
• avoid yes/no questions, ask questions that
  require descriptive or narrative answers.
• tell me about a time when you ...
• can you give me an example of...
• how would you describe...
• be quiet and wait
• ask follow up questions, allow interesting
  tangents to develop

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Interview Techniques

• discouraging verbosity
• politely interrupt
• throw them off guard with abrupt topic changes

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Interview Techniques

• Probes
• D ...it got to a time where we had to come to
  work on Sundays and I was going bad, this is
  Internet, Ive got to be careful of myself. So,
  and the Lord spoke to me in several ways.
• J you said that you had to be careful with the
  Internet, how so, what do you mean by that?

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Interviewing in Other Cultures

• issues with language
• attitudes in that particular society/subculture
  towards authority and the right to speak
• ideas about and experience with research
  practices
• private information (age, weight, income)
• rapport and suspicion (of identity, of
  methodology)
• time and scheduling

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Key Ideas to Remember

1. explain yourself and gain permission
2. ask open-ended questions in accessible language
3. follow the interviewees lead, clarify and
   confirm, detect and repair misunderstandings
4. use probes

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Tuesday

• Discussing examples of good and bad interviews