Interviews

11 Key excerpts on "Interviews"

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  eBook - ePub

  Interviewing for Social Scientists

  An Introductory Resource with Examples

  • Hilary Arksey, Peter T Knight(Authors)
  • 1999(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications Ltd

    (Publisher)

         Interviews and Research in the Social Sciences

        . . . there is a very practical side to qualitative [research] methods that simply involves asking open-ended questions of people and observing matters of interest in real-world settings in order to solve problems. (Patton, 1990: 89)

  This is a chapter about the theories behind interviewing, which is one, immensely popular research method in the social sciences. It is also a deceptive method, for, since we have read, seen and heard hundreds of Interviews in the press, on radio and on television, it is easy to be blase about them and to assume that interviewing is nothing more than common sense at work.

  For that reason, and because this chapter deals in some complex, difficult and contested ideas, there may be a temptation to skip this chapter, a temptation that is both understandable and regrettable. Regrettable, because it is here we argue that interviewing is a family of research approaches that demand method more than common sense; and that approaches to interviewing are influenced by the purpose behind the research and by our often unvoiced assumptions about the nature of social science. Furthermore, choosing to interview might mean choosing not to use other research techniques, and that is a decision that needs to be justified.

  Much of what we say in this chapter holds good for social science research in general. The same could be said of Chapter 2 , in which we outline a common social science technique called triangulation and suggest that interviewing may be used in conjunction with other methods. Chapter 4 , which is about the design of an interview study, also addresses issues that arise in designing any social science research.

  In each of these chapters, for the sake of completeness, we have introduced some terms, such as reliability and validity, before dealing with them in depth. In those cases we have given references to the pages on which they receive fuller treatment.

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  Law and Society

  An Introduction

  • John Harrison Watts, Cliff Roberson(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Gaining a greater 77 Social Research Methods appreciation for each type of survey research requires us to take a closer look at each individual method. Personal Interviews Personal interviewing is a dynamic process whereby an interviewer (the researcher) orally solicits responses from persons identified within a sample population (respondents). The interview is viewed as a fairly straightforward method of finding things out, especially if the conversation is clear and fairly to the point. 21 Three basic terms are used to distinguish between the degree of formal-ity of the interview. They are fully structured Interviews, semistructured Interviews, and unstructured Interviews. The questions, their wording, and their sequence define the extent to which the interview is structured. And, although differences are found in each of these approaches, all of these types of interviewing techniques require that the researcher listen to what is being said and systematically record the responses. A structured interview is a process in which the researcher devel-ops a predetermined set of questions and asks the respondent for specific replies. The researcher controls the interview and asks all respondents the same questions and in the same order. In addition to questions, structured Interviews may involve provocative statements that are intended to prompt an immediate response from the person being interviewed. Again though, the respondent is provided with a list of possible responses in which one is chosen. Unstructured Interviews use open-ended questions to get as much detailed information as possible from the respondent. The unstructured for-mat allows the interviewer the opportunity to probe or ask follow-up ques-tions. And, such Interviews are generally easier for the respondent, especially if the information sought is opinion or belief. Semistructured Interviews, then, are surveys that combine both struc-tured and open-ended questions.

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  eBook - ePub

  Doing Qualitative Research in Psychology

  A Practical Guide

  • Cath Sullivan, Michael A Forrester, Cath Sullivan, Michael A Forrester(Authors)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications Ltd

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 2 ); you will see references in the literature to such things as feminist, narrative, life history and phenomenological dilemma Interviews. Such frameworks may influence the style of interviewing used, and will typically necessitate the use of a specific approach to data analysis (Hopf, 2004), as you will see in Chapters 9–14.

  Common across all forms of qualitative Interviews though is the focus on subjective interpretations of individual experience. That they are exploratory means that they do not presume that all of the issues, or ways of experiencing them, are known in advance. That they focus on subjective interpretations means that they are not concerned with ‘fact-finding’ or getting verifiable accounts. Rather, they acknowledge that human experience has diverse qualities and meanings, that the interview can explore these and that they can tell us something important about human behaviour and experience (Holstein and Gubrium, 1995).

  Interviewing typically involves one researcher interviewing one participant at a time, face-to-face, but there are ways to interview groups (for example, focus groups), use multiple interviewers, do repeat Interviews and conduct electronic Interviews (for example, by instant messaging or email) or telephone Interviews. This chapter will focus on the most common form of research interview in psychology – the individual, face-to-face semi-structured interview. This type of interview involves preparing questions (or at least topic areas) in advance, but allows freedom for the interviewee to address them in the order that feels comfortable or natural to them, and to raise aspects not necessarily anticipated. In so doing, the qualitative researcher shows a commitment to understanding what is important to the interviewee rather than driving the interview along a pre-determined route. The interviewer themselves also has freedom to be flexible in their questioning, and to respond in natural ways in the interaction (see Figure 7.2

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  An Invitation to Social Research

  How It's Done

  • Emily Adler, Roger Clark(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Cengage Learning EMEA

    (Publisher)

  Would you agree to be interviewed? Would you feel flattered that someone wanted to hear some of your life story or annoyed that you were being asked to spend the hour or two? Would you feel intimidated by having your views recorded? On the other hand, consider being the interviewer. How would you feel about con-ducting a series of Interviews with your peers? Qualitative interviewing has been an important social science tool for more than a century — and a method whose uses have been debated for almost as long (Lazarsfeld, 1944; Thurlow, 1935). These less structured Interviews are opportunities to learn a wide variety of things, among them people ’ s back-grounds and experiences; their attitudes, expectations, and perceptions of themselves; their life histories and the meaning they ascribe to events; and their views about groups of which they are a part and organizations with which they interact. The qualitative interview , also called the in-depth or intensive interview , has much in common with the structured interview . Both kinds of Interviews rely on self-reports and anticipate that the interviewer will do more of the ask-ing and the respondent will do more of the answering. Both kinds, “ far from being a kind of snapshot or tape-recording … in which the interviewer is a neu-tral agent who simply trips the shutter or triggers the response ” (Kuhn, 1962: 194), are opportunities for data to emerge from the social interaction between the interviewer and the interviewee. Despite these commonalties, the two kinds of Interviews are distinct. In the structured interview, the interviewer uses a standardized set of questions, heavily weighted toward closed-ended questions. The questions and closed-ended answer choices are delivered to each respondent with as little variation as possible to achieve uniformity in questioning.

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  Qualitative Inquiry in TESOL

  • K. Richards(Author)
  • 2003(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  47 2 Interviewing Preview Interviewing is rather like marriage: everybody knows what it is, an awful lot of people do it, and yet behind each closed door there is a world of secrets. Oakley 1981:41 Since Oakley drew this slightly provocative comparison, Interviews have become something of a public spectacle. We live in a world where Warhol’s fifteen minutes of fame has become almost a fact of life, where interviewers’ sights have extended beyond politicians and cele- brities and into the private lives of those in the next street. It is a world where reputations are ruined by a phrase taken out of context and where private motivations are made the subject of explicit attention and public critique. Hardly surprising, then, that Oakley’s world of secrets is now also a world of dark suspicions. Despite these changes in the public perception of Interviews, there is no sign that the research interview is falling out of favour, as the follow- ing pair of widely separated claims make clear: Modern sociology is ‘the science of the interview’. (Benney and Hughes 1956) In-depth interviewing is the hallmark of qualitative research. (Rossman and Rallis, 1998:124) Silverman’s suspicion that ‘the choice of the open-ended interview as the gold-standard of qualitative research is pretty widely spread’ 48 Qualitative Inquiry in TESOL (2000a:291) is therefore probably not far wide of the mark. However, the challenges facing the interviewer now, in terms of both data collection and data analysis, are probably greater than ever before. This chapter introduces you to different sorts of Interviews and to the practicalities of using these in order to collect data. It will involve some discussion of transcription and analysis, although the former is dealt with in more depth in the Chapter 4, while Chapter 6 describes procedures for analysis.

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  Speaking About Writing

  Reflections on Research Methodology

  • Peter Smagorinsky(Author)
  • 1994(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications, Inc

    (Publisher)

  My examples are drawn from a year-long ethnographic study of graduate students learning to write the news (Chin, 1991). Although the problems I encountered are restricted to this study and the context in which it was done, the issues I confronted in dealing with these problems are ones facing all researchers who choose to use ethnographic Interviews in their research. Let me begin by distinguishing between Interviews and informal talk. In the course of any research project, there are a number of times when re-searchers acquire important information through conversations with their participants. They take place over the phone, on brief walks, in any place and at any time the researcher is in the field. As important as these conver-sations may be in helping a researcher develop a thick understanding of what is going on, they are not Interviews if we mean by Interviews a planned process during which the researcher and participants have agreed to talk about specific issues. Interviews are a specific type of interaction be-tween participants governed by an implicit set of rules. These rules estab-lish, to some extent, the purposes for an interview, the kinds of activities that can take place, the various roles, the actions assigned to each partici-pants' role, and the structure of the interaction. To state in a report that Interviews have been used, then, is to claim that a particular kind of interac-tion took place between researcher and participants that has fulfilled spe-cific purposes established by the researcher, or jointly negotiated between interviewer and interviewee. In this chapter, the term interview is used to refer to the purposeful type of interaction described above. CONDUCTING ETHNOGRAPHIC Interviews No one definition can characterize the variety of approaches used in conducting ethnographic Interviews.

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  Educational Research

  Contemporary Issues and Practical Approaches

  • Jerry Wellington(Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Bloomsbury Academic

    (Publisher)

  Types and styles of interviewing There are several different approaches to interviewing, therefore different ways of designing and structuring them and, in turn, different techniques for conducting them. These are discussed fully in this chapter. Some authors have described Interviews as ‘a conversation with a purpose’ (Webb and Webb, 1932). This approach involves a relatively informal, interactive style which may often involve a two-way exchange of views (e.g. Lather, 1986). There may be some sort of ‘trading’ going on, by which the interviewer puts as much in as he or she gets out of the interview. Interviewing 139 At the opposite extreme, some researchers feel that an interviewer should act as a kind of sponge, soaking up the interviewee’s comments and responses, i.e. the interviewer is a kind of data-collection device. An extreme example of this kind of interview is the experience which pedestrians in the high street are sometimes subjected to: the interviewer simply collects and records the responses of the passer-by without comment or feedback and often without any knowledge of the subject being studied. In educational research, the latter extreme is unlikely to occur. Any researcher will need to establish some kind of rapport with the interviewee (discussed later) and will necessarily have background knowledge and prior conceptions which are ‘brought’ to the research. However, my own view is that this does not imply a balanced, two-way exchange of views between interviewer and interviewee. The purpose of a research interview is to probe a respondent’s views, perspectives or life-history, i.e. the exchange should be far more in one direction than another. It is rather more than a conversation with a purpose. The research interview’s function is to give a person, or group of people, a ‘voice’. It should provide them with a ‘platform’, a chance to make their viewpoints heard and eventually read.

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  Strategies for Writing Center Research

  • Jackie Grutsch McKinney(Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Parlor Press, LLC

    (Publisher)

  Like many other methods for qualitative research, interview studies can paint a detailed portrait of individual attitudes, beliefs, Strategies for Writing Center Research 68 experiences, and perspectives. That is what makes Interviews rich, ex-citing, rigorous, and even, occasionally, moving. As obvious as it sounds, the most important ethical safeguard you can make in an interview study is to be clear with your participants about the interview and what you’ll do with the recording and notes you collect. This should be communicated at the point of recruitment, in the informed consent, and again at the end of the interview when you explain your next steps. As in any study, participants are able to leave the study when they wish. With Interviews, I also make sure to allow participants to strike any language or any section of an interview in their review of the transcripts. In one case, this meant the partici-pant wanted me to cut a portion that I felt was very compelling, but I obliged since I would want the same treatment as a participant in a research study. Summary of Key Points: Interviewing • Interviewing allows researchers to talk directly to the source and provides flexibility that surveys do not. • There are many types of Interviews. Qualitative research inter-views typically try to understand the world from the perspec-tive of the interviewee. • Being clear with interviewees about how the interview notes and recordings will be used is essential. For Reflection, Discussion, and Action 1. What verbal and visual cues do you use to determine if some-one is listening to you? Which (if any) of these do you find challenging to maintain? 2. What do you know about the history of the writing center at your institution? Can you brainstorm a list of people within and outside of the writing center who might be good partici-pants for an oral history project? 3.

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  Research Methods for Health and Social Care

  • Joanne Neale(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Red Globe Press

    (Publisher)

  Part 4 Qualitative Research Chapter 16 In-depth Interviews L INDSEY C OOMBES , D EBBY A LLEN , D EBORAH H UMPHREY AND J OANNE N EALE Introduction The in-depth interview (also referred to as the ‘depth’, ‘open-ended’, ‘informal’, ‘personal’ or ‘qualitative’ interview) is a generic term used to describe the type of data collection that commonly takes place in qualitative research. In-depth interviewing essentially involves a verbal interaction between a researcher, who has a research topic or research question that they want to investigate, and an interviewee (sometimes referred to as a participant, respondent or informant), who has been selected because of their experience or knowledge of the issues being explored. Usually, the in-depth interview involves only one researcher and one interviewee 1 and the aim is primarily to gather opinions, facts and stories that will shed light on the research topic or question from the viewpoint of an expert ‘insider’. In-depth Interviews are most commonly conducted in person (face-to-face), but can also be undertaken by telephone. In the future, it seems likely that more in-depth interviewing might be carried out via video-conferencing or email. The format of the in-depth interview is often described as unstructured or semi-structured. 2 In the former, the interviewer conducts the interview with no preconceived view of the content or flow of the information to be gathered. In the latter, the interviewer has a broad set of questions that they want to ask, but encourages the interviewee to develop and expand upon issues that they deem important and lets the questioning flow naturally dependent on how the inter-viewee responds. Historical Context The history of in-depth interviewing lies within the broader development of social research methods and particularly ethnography (see Chapter 17). The businessman and social commentator Charles Booth is generally credited with Chapter 14

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  Interviewing Experts

  • A. Bogner, B. Littig, W. Menz, A. Bogner, B. Littig, W. Menz(Authors)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  Research methods, in this case Interviews, must be adapted to the specific modes of communication characteristic of the social setting that they seek to address. This is the only way to effectively live up to the meth- odological demand of qualitative research that the research process respect the existing structures of everyday communication in the field. The typical question-answer structure characteristic of the interview situ- ation in the opening sequence of expert Interviews with managers, as well as the “argumentative, discursive” structure of interviewing in the second stage of the interview, in the first study, and the more narrative form of interviewing, in the other study, all meet this key standard of qualitative research: On the one hand, such an interview strategy avoids violating interviewee expectations of the interview; on the other hand, it allows to align the research process with the prior structures of everyday communi- cation such that the process of developing subjective structures of relevance in the interview as they are operative in everyday life is supported to the best possible extent. In case of topics revolving around company matters, the “success” of question-answer-based and “argumentative, discursive” interviewing respect- ively is to no small part due to the fact that the forms of interviewing corres- pond with the situation managers face in the company when, for instance, the works council or their superiors question their positions and they are required to justify them. For this reason, although the interview situation compared to the everyday situations of company life can be considered to be more “open” and there is in principle less need for “tactical” behaviour, “argu- mentative, discursive” interviewing in thematically focused expert inter- views is the appropriate research method for this setting.

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  Handbook for Research Students in the Social Sciences

  • Graham Allan, Chris Skinner(Authors)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  The presence and personality of the interviewer are thus acknowledged as variables in the research process, and there is a recognition of the fact that ‘all researchers operate from within a theoretical overview and … affect the data at all stages’ (Scott, 1985:74). However, while these developments have benefited those already involved in qualitative interviewing, to the new researcher they can often appear daunting, complex and bewildering in their diversity and implications. The intention here is to suggest guidelines which may be useful to the research student and to consider some of the issues raised by more recent analyses of the social relations underpinning the qualitative interview.

  Groundwork and Access

  In moving away from a highly structured format it is sometimes difficult to know what approach to take in order to produce effective interview material (see Burgess, 1982, section 4; Burgess, 1984, Chapter 5 ). Is it better actually to write the questions down? Will prompts be sufficient? What about a simple key-issues approach or an aide-mémoire? Qualitative Interviews have sometimes been described as unstructured or ‘non-directive’, but as William Foot Whyte points out, neither of these approaches are appropriate for research, and ‘open-ended’ may be a more appropriate description (Whyte, 1982:111; Hammersley and Atkinson, 1983:113-4).

  In conducting Interviews it is obviously necessary to retain a critical awareness of what is being said and to be ready to explore some issues in greater depth — what Linda Measor calls ‘listening beyond’ (Measor, 1985:63). However, this sensitivity also needs to be employed by the researcher at the stage of drawing up the interview format. We need to ask ourselves how we are actually going to uncover information about the topics we have selected to research and what approach will be the most suitable. In my current research on the career and employment experiences of women engineers, I use a semi-structured approach and have found it helpful to begin by writing out the questions in full. Although I may not use the questions as written, this exercise allows me to think about the way I might phrase questions to enable me to discuss with women their experiences of working in a male-oriented environment in relation to gender and sexuality in the workplace.

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