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The Research Interview Part 1: Interviews and The Interview Society

The document discusses different types of interviews used in research. It outlines four stages of the question-answer process in interviews from both the interviewer and respondent perspectives. Interviews are described as pervasive in society for making sense of lives through news, talk shows, and research. The advantages of interviews include flexibility and obtaining deeper responses, while disadvantages include lack of standardization and time consumption. Interviews are also categorized based on their structure as respondent interviews led by the interviewer or informer interviews led by the respondent. Additionally, interviews are differentiated based on situations like being active, biographical, oral history, collaborative, or narrative.

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31 views

The Research Interview Part 1: Interviews and The Interview Society

The document discusses different types of interviews used in research. It outlines four stages of the question-answer process in interviews from both the interviewer and respondent perspectives. Interviews are described as pervasive in society for making sense of lives through news, talk shows, and research. The advantages of interviews include flexibility and obtaining deeper responses, while disadvantages include lack of standardization and time consumption. Interviews are also categorized based on their structure as respondent interviews led by the interviewer or informer interviews led by the respondent. Additionally, interviews are differentiated based on situations like being active, biographical, oral history, collaborative, or narrative.

Uploaded by

anushka kashyap
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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THE RESEARCH INTERVIEW

PART 1: INTERVIEWS AND THE INTERVIEW SOCIETY

Why we need interviews?

A model of the symbolic interactionist view of question- answer behaviour

Four stages:

1. Interviewer asking questions: Encode the question, takes into account own purposes, and
presumptions/knowledge about the respondent, and perceptions of the respondent’s
presumptions/ knowledge about the interviewer
2. Respondent hearing the question: Decode the question, taking into account own purposes
and presumptions/knowledge about the interviewer, and perceptions of the interviewer’s
presumptions/ knowledge about self (i.e. the respondent), being interviewed had to be
learned, sometimes man doesn’t know what to answer, respondent has to think through
what can I give back
3. Respondent encodes answer, taking into taking into account own purposes and
presumptions/knowledge about the interviewer, and perceptions of the interviewer’s
presumptions/ knowledge about self (i.e. the respondent), skill
4. Interview decodes the answer, takes into account own purposes, and
presumptions/knowledge about the respondent, and perceptions of the respondent’s
presumptions/ knowledge about the interviewer, Sometimes there is more than mere facts,
things about the feelings, emotions, etc

David Silverman: we are part of an interview society interviews seen as making sense of our lives.
E.g. News interviews, talk shows, documentaries, research interview

If interviews are conducted to us now then we can learn easily and fast1993

Interviews pervade and produce our contemporary cultural experiences and knowledge of our
authentic personal, private selves- Silverman

Different theory suggests different interviews

Mason’s book 1996

What is your epistemological position?

Questions should connect to your ontological position (what exists)

The knowledge we are looking for must be linked to the ontological position

e.g. Topic = racism

 a study of attitudes- attitudes are meaningful components of social world


 a study of discourse- our social world is constructed through the words we use
 a study of institutional racism – our world is seen to be structurally defined

PART 2: THE PROS AND CONS OF INTERVIEWS

Advantages

 tend to be lengthy
 Flexible, line of inquiry modifiable particularly with the unstructured interviews
 Use NVC for more info (face to face)
 Gets behind the immediate level of response-why might she hold such a view (get to a much
deeper level)
 Can be used with little fore - knowledge of the situation
 Situational – gets respondent’s view

Disadvantages

 Not standardised(exception: structured)


 Not ‘replicable’
 Time consuming, expensive
 Sometimes difficult to get cooperation of respondents
 Results difficult and time consuming to analyse

PART 3: TYPES OF INTERVIEWS

ON THE BASIS OF STRUCTURE

Respondent Interviews

 Interviewer is in charge
 Interviewer is determining what gets said and what is asked
1. Fully structured e.g. questionnaire
More extreme form
There are set of questions and you ask them questions in the same order
2. Semi-structured- check list perhaps some questions already worded
allows to have discussion
But there is a list of topics done in that order

Informer interviews

 Respondent’s in charge
 The person who you are interviewing has much more control on what is being asked and
said
 Interaction between researcher’s agenda and informer’s agenda
 Difficult to do it because of much interaction between the researcher and informer
 Follow up questions can be asked on the same topic
 More details about things
3. Unstructured in depth: broad area, but more like a free conversations(develops as the
interview progresses)
To produce thick descriptions interviewees are deliberately encouraged to produce
elaborated and detailed answers
Interplay of ideas between them
It may seem like a conversation but it isn’t, because the interviewer has specific topics and
does not give his information but the interviewee does give
Most of the times interviews are unstructured

ON THE BASIS OF SITUATION

Active
 Popular in last decades because of the authors Gubrium and Holstein – their book Active
Interview
 They emphasizes the way in which the interview is actually a two way process of the
interviewer indicating things bout what they’re interested in, what they want and so on as
well as coming back from the respondent
 It is a symbolic interaction model
 It is rather interactive than active

Biographical

 Person’s biography
 You ask about the person’s life that often goes through a long period of time
 Focussing on them, what did they think at that particular time
 Questions like “How did you get to where you are today?”

Oral history

 Common situation was People who lived through WWII what was it like to be there?
Gathering all their oral experiences, Its historic because it was years ago and it is oral
because people are talking about what they experience from what they saw so there is a
focus on recapturing the moment

Collaborative/ group (research or marketing) including focus groups

 Simply interviews done with a group of people


 Very often depth interviews
 In focus group you are particularly interested in the interaction between the people that are
being interviewed

Debates and confrontational

 Get two people in the same room who represent different views on the topic
 Very hard to make it work

Long interview or repeated interview

 One going over a long period of time with breaks


 Sometimes might do it over several days but more commonly on several occasions
 Longitudinal kind of approach

Multiple Interviewer

 1 interviewee, but may be 2 interviewers


 More interviewers than respondents
 Quite intimidating
 One person mostly asks questions and the other keeps listening
 Only do this type when it is appropriate for the respondents

Projective

 Asking people questions not just about what they’ve done but rather asking what they might
do
 What-if type interview
 Underlying motivation of the person can be recognised

Narrative

 To some extent overlaps the biographical


 Focus on a particular incident
 Starts with the open question
 Little scope for the interviewer to intervene

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