Qualitative interviews

1. Qualitative interviews • Two texts: • Steinar Kvale & Svend Brinkmann: • InterViews. Learning the craft of qualitative research interviewing. (2009) • and • Robert Thomas: • Studying elite using qualitative methods. (1995)

2. Kvale & Brinkmann • Overall: • Qualitative interviewing is a craft – something that has its own rules and that needs to be learned through practicing. • You deal with real people and hence the quality of the interview depends on your social skills.

3. Some context • Types • structured • semi-structured • Unstructured • ’The anthropological interview’ • Kaarhus, Randi 1999. Intervjuer i samfunnsvitenskapene. Bidrag til en videre metodologisk diskurs. Tidsskrift for samfunnsforskning 40(1):33-61. • language is descriptive and performative • positivist science: language only as descriptive • hermeneutic: language both descriptive and performative

4. Kvale & Brinkmann (cont.) • ”No standard procedures or rules exist for conducting a research interview or an entire interview investigation” (p. 99). • Qualitative interviewing is a craft. Learning needs partly to be done through reading and thinking but first of all through practicing it – trial and error

5. Kvale & Brinkmann (cont.) • 7 stages of an interview inquiery • Purpose of an investigation • Designing the study • Conducting the interview • Preparation for analysis • Deciding what mode of analysis • Assess the validity, reliability and generalisability of the study • Communicate the findings (reporting) • Not a linear prosess

6. Kvale & Brinkmann (cont.) • We always need to ask: • Why – clarifying the purpose of the study • What – getting to know the subject matter • How – the techniques/methods for obtaining information

7. Kvale & Brinkmann (cont.) • Method design: • Overall strategy – always keep in mind the overall goal • Flexible strategy – be prepared to alter and change • Push forward – clarify, elaborate, challenge • Back and forth – ’hermeneutical’ process • Adjust ambitions to means • Keep records

8. Kvale & Brinkmann (cont.) • How many interviews? • Depend on the theme and design – often too many • When not to interview!? • Fieldwork, observation, survey, etc. • What is the interview best suited for? • Meanings attitudes, opinions, … • But how generalisable? • Mixed methods: methodological triangulation.

9. Kvale & Brinkmann (cont.) • Conducting an interview: • Structured, semi-structured or unstructured? • Dialogical • Be prepared – but flexible. • Interviews are a multi-medial experience: seeing, smelling, hearing, … • What is the goal: face value (people’s opinion) or ’the doctor’

10. Kvale & Brinkmann (cont.) • Variations of interviews: • Purpose decides type of interview: length, structure, setting, etc. • Theme, age, gender, culture, class, etc.

11. Kvale & Brinkmann (cont.) • Types: • Focus groups • Factual interviews • Conceptual interviews • Narrative interviews • Discursive interviews • Confrontational interviews • Key informant?

12. Kvale & Brinkmann (cont.) • Criticisms: • Not scientific • Not objective • Not hypothesis testing • Not reliable • Not valid • Not generalisable • Ethical issues?

13. Kvale & Brinkmann (cont.) • Transcription • Who trascribes? • Why transcribe? • How to transcribe? • Initial analysis • ’1000-page question’ • Dialectical, spiralling process; thinking, reading, analysing, writing, thinking, reading, …

14. Thomas: Interviewing important people in big companies • Methods for studying elites: • Getting ready: selves: • - Yourself • - The other • Access – a crux • Getting data: • Used to talk, avoid problematic issues, etc. • Power-relationship

15. Some additional perspectives • Flyvbjerg, Bent 1991. Rationalitet og magt. Bind 1: Det konkretes vitenskap. Kjøbenhavn: Akademisk Forlag. • Kaarhus, Randi 1999. Intervjuer i samfunnsvitenskapene. Bidrag til en videre metodologisk diskurs. Tidsskrift for samfunnsforskning 40(1):33-61. • Vike, Halvard. 1999. Semantikk og politikk. Tegn og handling i lokalpolitiske prosesser. Sosiologisk årbok 4(2), 109-138. • Wikan, Unni. 1992. Beyond the Words: The Power of Resonance. American Anthropologist, 19: 460-482

16. Ethnography • Silverman, David (2006) Ch 3 “Ethnography and observation” in Interpreting Qualitative Data.  • Markham, Annette N. (2004). The Methods, Politics, and Ethics of representation in Online Ethnography. • Taylor, T.L. (1999): Life in Virtual Worlds: Plural Existence, Multimodalities, and Other Online Research Challenges.

17. One conducts fieldwork in order to collect ethnographic data. And participant observation is a central method • Ethnography: methodology, a perspective, a model? • To do fieldwork is a craft – you have to do it • Practice in everyday situations: on the subway, at home, in a restaurant, etc.: acquire a feel for it.

18. Silverman, David (2006) Ch 3 “Ethnography and observation” in Interpreting Qualitative Data.  • Ethnography is the study of people in naturally occurring settings … by methods of data collection which capture their social meanings and ordinary activities, involving the researcher participating directly … • Participant observation = ethnography = fieldwork • (spending long time observing and interacting with informants)

19. Silverman (cont.) • From Malinowski; Polish/English social anthropologist doing research in Melanesia during and after 1. WW. • Taking part in people’s everyday life over a long period of time. • Getting beyond what they say they do to what they actually do. • Importance of context; meaning and relevance is tied to context – thus important to be part of all relevant contexts in order to understand life-worlds

20. Silverman (cont.) • ”Do not assume that ethnography is simple to do. It involves defining a research problem, adopting a theoretical orientation, and having rigorous methods to record and analyse data.” (Silverman, p. 70) • Ethnography involves at least three aspects: • (i) the focus of the study • (ii) Methodological choices • (iii) Theoretical issues • (I add: (iv) a gaze or perspective)

21. Silverman (cont.) • The ethnographic focus • In anthropology: studies of non-Western ’tribes’ – units for study; an idea of a common culture • In sociology: studies of (Western) sub-cultures • In sociology: studies of the public realm (Goffman, Simmel, …) • In sociology: studies of organisations

22. Silverman (cont.) • (ii) Methodological issues • Four features: • Explorative, not hypothesis-oriented • Unstructured (data not easily coded) • Few units, many variables (qualitative) • Interpretive (seeks to understand life-worlds)

23. Silverman (cont.) • (ii) Methodological issues • Research problem • Research site • Access • Identity • Senses • Recoding • Analysis • Grounded theory

24. Silverman (cont.) • (ii) Methodological issues: 1. Research problem • What do we want to study? • Exploring; a constant back-and-forth between research problem, theory, methods and data: • Cato Wadel (1991) Feltarbeid i egen kultur, en innføring i kvalitativt orientert samfunnsforskning. Flekkefjord: Seek.

25. Silverman (cont.) • (ii) Methodological issues, 2. Choosing research site: • Silverman: ”Having worked out a research topic, you need to decide the best place to do your fieldwork” (p. 81). • No; in practice there is an interplay also between topic and site: The topic suggests site but the site reflect back on the topic (and methods)

26. Silverman (cont.) • (ii) Methodological issues, 3. Gaining access: • Private vs public settings? • Covert vs overt?

27. Silverman (cont.) • (ii) Methodological issues, 4. Finding an identity • Possible roles as fieldworker: • The novice • The expert • A family member • The friend • The stranger • Ascribed statuses (gender, age, ethnicity, race, etc.)

28. Silverman (cont.) • (ii) Methodological issues, 5. Looking as well as listening • (also smelling, tasting, …?) • The visual is very important: architecture, landscape, etc. • But use all senses; for many the aim is to have a feeling of what it means to be one of ’them’. Thus, the feel of the place …

29. Silverman (cont.) • (ii) Methodological issues, 6. Recording observations • Fieldnotes: how to write them? Can’t get it all but be precise: dilemmas • Tape recording • Film and photography? • Transcribing • Systematising/coding

30. Silverman (cont.) • (ii) Methodological issues, 7.Developing analysis of field data • Analysis helps narrow down topic/ sharpen focus • Bring forth the importance of comparison • The use of cases: • Have a critical application of types: random cases, information-oriented cases, deviant cases, maximum-variation cases, critical cases, paradigmatic cases • Flyvbjerg, Bent 1991. Rationalitet Og Magt. Bind 1: Det Konkretes Vitenskap. Kjøbenhavn: Akademisk Forlag.

31. Silverman (cont.) • (ii) Methodological issues, 8. Grounded theory • Inductive approach in which the aim is to arrive at theoretical insights • Data/cases  substantive theory  formal theory

32. Silverman (cont.) • (iii) Theoretical issues • Basic assumptions: • Common sense • Social practices • Phenomena • Never objective – but be as objective as possible? • Ethnomethodological model?

33. Markham, Annette N. (2004). The Methods, Politics, and Ethics of representation in Online Ethnography. • About methodology in CMC (Computer-mediated communication) • A total re-assessment of all qualitative research Focus on textuality (even though web-cams etc) • Change in research: from utopian, theoretical in early 90s to more empirical research now • Much has been labelled ethnography but shouldn’t • The site: virtual – no geographical location – is that very new? • What is data?

34. Markham (cont.) • Biases (p. 266) • Embodiment (p, 268) – argues that we need not go to the ’real’ embodied selves, as long as we are studying online identities YES • But mixing embodiment with context here? • Miller, Daniel & D. Slater (2000) The Internet: An ethnographic approach. New York: NY Univ. Press • Argues that you always has to see the offline-context in order to understand the online-context. • Ethical issues – In Norway: NSD …

35. T. L. Taylor. 1999. Life in Virtual Worlds. Plural Existence, Multimodalities, and other Online Research Challenges. • What is involved methodologically with inhabiting a virtual space and crating a digital identity and body? • What is the nature of the ’material’ we are working with online? • Do we need off-line data when studying online reality?

36. Taylor (cont.) • Do we need off-line data? • Depend on the questions asked and the theoretical perspectives • ”Questions asked”: never really discusses this properly – I return to it in the end

37. Taylor (cont.) • Taylor links the question of methodology to how we look at embodiment, self/ identity and epistemological issues. • Our performances online are formed by the virtual bodies we are (avtars). • Case: a person (off-line) who takes on a male avatar identity and poses as a computer expert. Says not possible if appearing as a female avatar. • Suggests that the embodied actor is ‘taking the lead’ vis a vis the (off-line) person. • Also that we have a flawed idea of the person; we have biases about how consistent we are across contexts?

38. Taylor (cont.) • Also that online, avatar-based interviews/dialogues are an important form of fieldwork – being embodied by interacting as avatars. • Argues for a online data triangulation – email, chat, avatars, home pages, etc. • Links the issue of online vs. off-line to questions about verifiability and reliability. • Refers to interviews only as factual interviews (cf. Kvale & Brinkman) – the discussion would be different if language was seen as performative. • (Narrativity, discourse?)

39. Taylor (cont.) • Objections: • Which questions asked need off-line research? • If it is social science should the research include off-line practice? • (cf. Miller & Slater. 2000. The Internet: an ethnographic approach.)

40. Glaser & Strauss. 1967. The Discovery of Grounded Theory. Strategies for Qualitative Research • Main task: • How the discovery of theory from data – systematically obatained and analysed in social research – can be furthered. • This is grounded theory – and a major task for sociology • Comparative methodology is a central means for furthering grounded theory

41. Glaser & Strauss (cont.) • Grounded theory must • Enable prediction and explanation • Useful for theoretical advances • Usable in practical application • Provide a perspective on behaviour • Provide a style for research • Also be • Verifiable • Operationalable • understandable

42. Glaser & Strauss (cont.) • Verification vs. Generalisation • (Logico-deductive vs inductive) • Verification – today perhaps testing or falsifying • Generalisation: from the particular to the general (theorising) • Qualitative vs. Quantitative – (there should be) no conflict or contradiction here

43. Glaser & Strauss (cont.) • Comparative method is to juxtapose one’s data with other, similar data to check out whether the initial evidence was correct. Is the fact a fact? • ”Other, similar data” might be to compare data on e.g. education from one country with the same data from another country. • Used to generate a set of concepts; ’evidence’ is used to discover concepts, which then is used to illustrate the evidence. • Search for generals: map patterns and universals (e.g. incest taboo) • Comparison for specifying; to distinguish a concept from seemingly similars – making a refinement through contrast

44. Glaser & Strauss (cont.) • Such concepts are then put together into systematic theories • Less critical – in the sense that one must not be overtly critical but work to develop a comprehensive system of concepts and relationships between such concepts. • Should be an open process; it is a theory ’in the making’ – a work that is a collective work involving the scientific community. • Two types; substantive and formal • Substantive; deals with an empirical area; education, ethnicity, etc. • Formal: a coceptual issue, a theme; stigma, media, economy, etc. • They are middle-range; between ’minor working hypotheses’ and ’all-inclusive’, grand theories

45. Mjøset. 2005. Can Grounded Theory Solve the Problems of its Critics? • Looks at Grounded Theory through two criticisms: • Goldthorpe’s Rational Action Theory rejects Grounded theory on the grounds that it does not live up to the ’standard attitude’ – i.e. positivist-like ideals • Buraway rejects Grounded theory as too positivist and non-reflexive. Argues for the extended case method (Manchester School in the 50s)