Introduction to Interviewing

1. INFO 272. Qualitative Research Methods 8 October 2009 Introduction to Interviewing

2. Outline • What is Qualitative Interviewing? • Underlying theory • Interview techniques

3. Suchman and Jordan’s Critique Aspects of ordinary conversation: • Local control • Question redesign • Answer elaboration • Detection and repair of misunderstandings

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

5. Reasons to Conduct Qualitative Interviews • Developing detailed description • 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]

6. 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?

7. Keeping in Mind... • “when we understand knowledge as the social justification of beliefrather 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.”

8. Mediation • through memory • through interviewees self-perception • through interviewers perceptions • the presence of the interviewers and others “what is said turns out to change according to who is speaking and who is listening” [Alcoff, ‘the problem of speaking for others’] extreme cases: teenagers/pre-teens, politicians

9. Advantages & Disadvantages • 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 • artificiality: distance from event/experience (remember Becker on the accuracy gained from close observation)

10. 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.

11. 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

12. 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

13. Interview Techniques what can go wrong? • suspicion, evasion, stonewalling • closed-mouth or extremely talkative or off-topic interviewees • speaking in generalities only, attempting to do the analysis for you (‘let me tell you how people use the Internet here’)

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

15. Interview Techniques • avoiding generalities • ask for concrete examples, personal stories • accessible questions with appropriate vocabulary (i.e. don’t use terms like ‘discourse’ or ‘globalization’) • quality concerns • avoid leading questions: “don’t you think...” “isn’t it true...” • clarify and confirm

16. 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

17. Interview Techniques • discouraging verbosity • politely interrupt • throw them off guard with abrupt topic changes

18. 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, I’ve 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?”

19. 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

20. Key Ideas to Remember • explain yourself and gain permission • ask open-ended questions in accessible language • follow the interviewees lead, clarify and confirm, detect and repair misunderstandings • use probes

21. Tuesday • Discussing examples of ‘good’ and ’bad’ interviews