Interviewing

Theory, techniques and training

Ben Emans

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9789020732801
• eBook ISBN: 9781000036169
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Conducting a good interview is more difficult than one might imagine. Of course, thorough preparation is essential, but equally important are knowledge of the specific subject area and effective communication skills. Interviewing: Theory, Techniques and Training presents relevant theoretical perspectives, provides material to help develop a range of communication skills and describes tried and tested ways of preparing for interviews.

There have been many developments in the field of interviewing in recent years. Computer-assisted protocols now play a prominent role in interviewing and there has been much research into the role of communication processes in interviews. Interviewing incorporates these recent developments and insights and offers up-to-date examples and practical suggestions.

1
Orientation

1 Interview characteristics

2 Telephone and computer-assisted interviewing

Interviewing is an age-old¹ profession undertaken by a wide variety of people. As a consequence, it is not easily explained or described. It is the outcome of a long-standing tradition that has given rise to innumerable individual methods and techniques as well as an elaborate glossary of technical terms, a collection of behavioural codes, a cumulative body of research results, and (inevitably) opposing schools and factions of thoughts. The objective of the initial part of this book is to introduce and familiarise the reader with this tradition.

Chapter one, entitled ‘Interview Characteristics’, begins by raising the fundamental issue underlying the interview phenomenon: its purpose. Why is an interview being conducted? What, in fact, is the interviewer’s primary concern? At first sight, it might not seem that these questions are worth worrying much about. But they are! And, what is more, a variety of answers can be given them, a few opposing ones of which are outlined in the text. One of them, termed ‘moderate objectivism’, is offered as a reasonable alternative. It is the vision underlying the book as a whole. To come to a full understanding of this vision, we first need to become acquainted with the concrete practices of interviewing outlined in the subsequent sections and chapters. However, without a definite idea of the purpose of interviewing, it is difficult to fully understand its actual practices. For this reason, this purpose is discussed initially. Some practical issues relating to how the interview is set up are then addressed. Key concepts such as ‘interview guide’, ‘respondent’, ‘open/closed questions’ and ‘probing’ are introduced.

Even more practical interviewing matters are discussed in chapter two, which deals with the various types of equipment that an interviewer can use. More specifically, it outlines the possibilities and the limitations associated with computers and telephones as opposed to the traditional pen-and-paper in face-to-face situations. The combination of a computer and a telephone makes many new applications available. These are reflected in the variety of interview types, of which an up-to-date overview is given.

The final sections in both of the chapters in part One are entitled ‘Topics for discussion’. In these sections, the reader is invited to reflect on the issues dealt with in the preceding discussions. This opportunity for review is meant to enhance understanding of the issues discussed, and hence to provide greater insight into the world of interviewing.

1
Interview characteristics

1.1 The purpose of interviewing: a moderate objectivist view

1.2 Objectivity

1.3 The interview guide

1.4 The neutral attitude of interviewers

1.5 Presence of third parties: yes or no

1.6 Anonymity: yes or no

1.7 Audio recording: yes or no

1.8 Informants and respondents

1.9 Interviews and self-administered questionnaires compared

1.10 Topics for discussion

Interviews tend to form part of everyday life for most people. They read periodicals or listen to radio and television programs that draw on the interview formula. In contexts such as personnel assessment, care services, consumer polls and social research they may also be confronted with them. As a consequence, few people would be stuck for an answer when asked what an interview is. They would likely describe it as something like: ‘a conversation between two people with one of them asking questions, the other answering them, and the asker noting the answers given’. This is an adequate definition, if somewhat underdeveloped and abstract. There are several additional factors about the phenomenon that need to be mentioned. These will be discussed in this chapter, in which the concepts of the interview and interviewing are examined in detail. Several pivotal characteristics of interviews are outlined, so that the reader is provided with the insights and background information needed to fully understand the rest of the book.

1.1 The purpose of interviewing: a moderate objectivist view

The most fundamental feature of interviewing stems from the purpose for which it is performed. In general terms, this can be defined as follows:

• to collect objective information
• from statements made by one or several interviewed individuals
• in order to answer one or several pre-formulated questions.

Having such a goal, the interview is clearly distinguishable from other types of conversation. Obviously, information is gathered in the course of any language exchange, but the distinctive quality of an interview conducted for the above-stated purpose arises from the systematic nature of its planning and execution. Other types of conversation often serve purposes in addition to the collection of information, such as providing information, negotiating, expressing emotions, convincing someone of something or just enjoyment. In fact, each particular type of conversation is characterised by its own set of purposes, in which information gathering may only be one and perhaps not even the principle element.

The interview, according to the position advocated here, does not involve any such secondary purposes. This is not to say that it does not generate outcomes aside from those directly resulting from the collection of information. In most cases, an interview has identifiable effects on both the interviewee and the interviewer. Some striking examples of this phenomenon have been documented. Respondents in a large-scale health survey were found to be more concerned about their own health after being interviewed than they were before.¹ Apparently, the questions in the interviews had increased the awareness of health risks. Something similar occurred in a survey on intended voting behaviour in an upcoming election. The turnout in the elections was found to be higher in the sample of interviewed people than in a comparable group of people who were not interviewed.² In this case, the interviews had apparently influenced the behaviour of the interviewees. There is also the well-known phenomenon known as the ‘freezing of beliefs’, where interviewees, after expressing certain beliefs during an interview, grow stronger in their convictions. Side-effects like these may indeed be valuable, but they are not the explicit goals of interviews as defined in this book. Such acts are expressly undertaken for the one and only purpose of deriving information from interviewee statements.

This view of interviewing can be termed ‘objectivist’; it holds that the goal of an interview is to record objectively the insights, ideas, feelings, reminiscences and so on that are communicated by the interviewee. The objectivist view is a controversial one. In a particular philosophical school known as constructivism³, objectivism is even considered improper and untenable. The constructivist interpretation⁴ of the interview situation is as follows. Interviewing implies interaction, and in turn, interaction implies that the interacting individuals (interviewer and interviewee) necessarily influence each other. If we take this simple truth seriously, we can only conclude that the objectivist’s equation of interviewing with information gathering is indefensible. The interviewer may indeed ask questions and, in so doing, elicit information from the interviewee, but this interaction has other consequences as well. By raising issues and encouraging the interviewee to reflect on them, the interviewer suggests ideas and releases feelings. In a sense, the interviewee experiences the interview as a learning activity. Similarly, the interviewer also undergoes a process of learning and development during the interview. In response to the interviewee’s answers, the person conducting the interview re-examines his or her own ideas and interests, and adjusts subsequent questions accordingly. For this reason, the outcomes of an interview tend to be the products of a particular interaction within a particular dyad consisting of an interviewer and interviewee. This is the constructivist view in a nutshell, and we can see it is entirely in contrast to the objectivist claim that interview outcomes actually reveal something about the interviewee considered as an individual.

In the objectivist view, the interview is conducted simply to bring the interviewee’s personal thoughts to the surface (although admittedly, this is only possibly to a limited extent). The thoughts involved deal with such things as the interviewee’s work situation, relationships, past, well-being, plans for the future, ambitions and so on. The objectivist interviewer, like a bird-watcher in an observation post⁵, tries not to interfere in these thoughts. In the objectivist view, the effects of interaction that intrude on the answers of the interviewees are considered and tolerated as unavoidable imperfections in the interview outcomes. The interviewer’s task is to minimise these intrusions and also to keep track of them as much as possible. This is part of the professional attitude of the interviewer as it is discussed in the sections and chapters to come.

The constructivist approach is, understandably, quite different. Basically, the constructivist fully acknowledges and even appreciates that the reality represented in the outcomes of an interview is constructed in and by that interview itself. An example is provided by the work of two researchers who investigated the situation of women in self-help groups.⁶ In this study, the interviews conducted with the members of such groups often took the form of therapeutic sessions, expeditions undertaken by the interviewer and the interviewee together. And the written account of the collected interviews undoubtedly clarified the problems faced by the interviewed women. In interviews structured this way, interviewers do not try to minimise their own influence. Instead, the interviewer’s contribution plays a pivotal role in the research project, as it guides interviewees into new areas of thought. In full contrast to the objectivist interviewer, the constructivist interviewer unrestrainedly accompanies the interviewee in exploring the novel terrain. The interviewer’s influence constitutes key information in the research report rather than just an aside. The reader of the report is introduced to the learning processes that took place during the interviews. Such information can be quite interesting as long as the reported learning processes are somehow shown to be reflective of a broad range of interviewer-interviewee partnerships. They then depict the dynamics of the situation in which interviewees found themselves. In comparison, reports based on objectivist research offer a relatively poor picture of such factors, providing no more than an incidental snapshot of the interview process. Clearly, the objectivist approach is more limited than that of the constructivist.

Opponents of the objectivist view often tend, however, to exaggerate its limitations, especially when they mistakenly relate it to ‘quantitative interviewing’ and distinguish it from the contrasting ‘qualitative’ or ‘in-depth interviewing’. The term ‘quantitative’ refers to interviews composed of questions that only permit superficial and easily coded answers (also called ‘closed questions’; see section 1.3), whereas the term ‘qualitative’ refers to interviews that elicit rich and profound answers, embedded in personal stories told by the interviewees. It should be stressed here that the objectivist approach lends itself to the collection of rich answers just as effectively as simple answers.⁷ It is misleading to state that the objectivist approach condemns the interviewer and interviewee to superficialities. This book, being based on the objectivist approach, applies equally to in-depth interviews as to the more standardised ones. Its subject matter is of relevance to quantitative as well as qualitative research.

At his point, there are two questions that need to be asked: what are the reasons underlying the choice of the objectivist view in this book and how can the adoption of this view be justified? Ease of use is a major justification. The activities of constructivist interviewers are far more involved than the activities of their objectivist colleagues. In fact, the job that constructivist interviewers have to manage includes all the tasks of the objectivist interviewer with the addition of numerous other tasks. During interviews, constructivist interviewers must listen carefully to how interviewees respond to the questions asked, while simultaneously reflecting on those questions. When drafting a record of the interviews conducted, interviewers then have to record meticulously the thoughts communicated by interviewees, while describing how those thoughts developed and how the interviewers contributed to the process. Constructivists must present a trustworthy account of the interview as a communicative process and include a grounded interpretation of that process. Taken altogether, the above requirements constitute an immense task, which may not even be possible under normal circumstances. The risk of the constructivist method is that the ambitions inherent in it are too high to be achieved, and that, to put it simply, the information gathered ends up being a useless mess. For this reason the more modest ambition of the objectivist approach, which still has its own challenges, is preferred in this book. The constructivist interviewer is like a manic moviemaker, filming everything in sight. His objectivist counterpart is like a photographer with a camera fixed on a tripod. The mission underlying this book is henc...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Preface
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part 1: Orientation
• Part 2: Conducting the interview
• Part 3: Preparing the interview
• Glossary
• Notes
• Literature
• Appendices
• Index