F2F interviews: often produce richer content than email of telephone (not sure, feel like it could be biased and/or lead to the interviewee to be less honest?)
Leading epistemological and ontological perspectives: unstructured vs structured then positivism, emotionalism and consructionism.
Neo-positivism: ‘facts about beahviours/practices/attitudes/values etc. Establish a context-free truth, interview as a pipeline for transmitting knowledge.
A possible way of checking for consistency: repeat interviews (a counterargument is offered below…). Allows the participants to reflect on interviews, and then develop their response.
Romantic researcher: establishing a rapport between the subject and the interviewer.
- Story telling is more likely to reflect real life
- Researcher might reject old opinions about not getting involved, because it might produce a more honest and compassionate interview methods.
Active interviewing:
- Interview subject moves from a repository of knowledge to a productive source of knowledge – the subject must be stimulated. The interviewer must lead them in an intellectual way to prompt a deeper level of reflection.
- Subjects and interviewer collaborate on knowledge development and production of meaning.
- A good interview follows feminist values i.e. minimising the power of the interviewer. A feminist uses informed consent forms and collects people randomly.
- Warm interviewing does not guarantee authentic responses – can be led by the idiosyncratic nature of the interview.
Repeat interviews: don’t always guarantee better information, the variation of account may be due to the subject’s inclination to not repeat themselves.
Romantic interview benefit: they may produce more varied information, which means richer points of reflection for the interviewer. Not necessarily ‘better’ information.
Localism: include ethnomethodology – conversation and discourse analysis. Emphasising the accumulation of knowledge, a clear writing style and the possibility of generalisation.
- Major issue: narrow research, a myopic interest in details of the interview situation, no more than talk informed by cultural norms. May not gain subjective reality.
Critique of emotionalism and romanticism: not always relevant for addressing less personally sensitive issues.
Understanding how the meaning-making process takes place is as critical as apprehending what is being conveyed.
Jorgenson (1991) – in investigating how people see themselves in family. Rather than asking the researchers for information on how family is defined, she asked the interview subjects to define and explore family. This became a much richer source of information (and could be helpful for students i.e. how do you define mattering). But difficult to know if the subjects are responding to the positionality of the researcher and responding appropriately.
In dialogic interviews: it may be that you end up leading the conversation i.e. the example of the grade received at primary school (p.14), the interview asked the student to expand on the dissonance they experienced as a result of this. This may have led the interview into a specific direction. The fact that it was historic might mean that they were more likely to be influenced and led by the interviewer. It may also be that the interviewer had a negative opinion of grades, so lead the direction of the feedback. Interviews are complex.
- Framing questions takes real skill! It is not easy.
Fundamentally, interviews rely on the interviewee wanting to state their experiences and knowledge for the benefits of the interview and the research project (p.16)
Difficult to express knowledge in words: a lot of knowledge. People know a lot but are often unable to articulate it well (and to a stranger!!). (p.16)
In interviews with managers: they often communicate a much more impressive and competent management approach to what exists in reality (!) this is often a reflection of management training they have been on, and ‘knowing what to say’. People may be smarter in using words, rather than in practice. Often the practice is talk. (p.17)