Qualitative Interviewing

1. Qualitative Interviewing

2. Inner Perspectives • Find out what is in and on someone else’s mind • Not put things on someone’s mind • Find out things that we can not directly observe • Feelings, thoughts, intentions • Previous point of time • Quality of the information obtained during an interview is largely dependent on the interviewer • Genuine interest in perspectives of other people • Must be fascinated by the rich variation in human experience

3. Contents • Different types of interviews • Contents of interviews • What to ask • Phrasing of questions • Recording responses

4. Types of Interviews • Informal conversational interview • Spontaneous generation of questions • Natural flow of interaction • General interview guide approach • Outlining a set of issues to be explored • Wording not determined in advance • Common information from each person interviewed • Adaptation to context of interview • Standardized open-ended interview • Carefully worded questions • Same to all interviewees • Closed, fixed-response interview • Response categories defined in advance

5. Informal Conversational Interview • Characteristics • Questions emerge from the immediate context and are asked in the natural course of things • No predetermination of question topics or wording • Strengths • Increases the salience and relevance of questions • Interviews are built on and emerge from observations • Interview can be matched to individuals and circumstances • Weaknesses • Different information collected from different people with different questions • Less systematic and comprehensive if certain questions do not arise naturally • Data organization and analysis can be quite difficult

6. General Interview Guide Approach • Characteristics • Topics and issues to be covered are specified in advance, in outline form • Interviewer decides sequence and wording of questions in the course of the interview • Strengths • The outline increases the comprehensiveness of the data and makes data collection somewhat systematic for each respondent • Logical gaps in data can be anticipated and closed • Interviews remain fairly conversational and situational • Weaknesses • Important and salient topics may be inadvertently omitted • Interviewer flexibility in sequencing and wording questions can result in substantially different responses from different perspectives, thus reducing the comparability of responses

7. Characteristics The exact wording and sequence of questions are determined in advance All interviewees are asked the same basic questions in the same order Questions are worded in a completely open-ended format Weaknesses Little flexibility in relating the interview to particular individuals and circumstances Standardized wording of questions may constrain and limit naturalness and relevance of questions and answers Strengths Respondents answer the same questions, thus increasing comparability of responses Data are complete for each person on the topics addressed in the interview Reduces interviewer effects and bias when several interviewers are used Permits evaluation users to see and review the instrumentation used in the evaluation Facilitates organization and analysis of data Standardized Open-ended Interview

8. Closed, Fixed-response Interview • Characteristics • Questions and response categories are determined in advance • Responses are fixed • Respondent chooses from among these fixed responses • Strengths • Data analysis is simple • Responses can be directly compared and easily aggregated • Many questions can be asked in short time • Weaknesses • Respondents must fit their experiences and feelings into researcher’s categories • May be perceived as impersonal, irrelevant and mechanistic • Can distort what respondents really mean or experienced by so completely limiting their response chooses

9. Contents of Interviews 1/2 • Experience/Behavior questions • What person does or has done • Experiences, behaviors, actions and activities • Opinion/Values questions • Cognitive and interpretive processes of people • What think about some issue • Feeling questions • Emotional responses to experiences and thoughts • Distinction between opinion and feeling must be made! • Analytical, interpretive, and opinion statements are not answers to questions about feelings

10. Contents of Interviews 2/2 • Knowledge questions • Factual information the respondent has/considers factual • ”all knowledge is merely a set of beliefs rather than facts” from philosophical point of view • Sensory questions • What is seen, heard, touched, tasted, and smelled • Demographic/Background questions • Identifying characteristics of the person being interviewed of routine nature • Locate respondent in relation to other people • Age, education, occupation, residence/mobility ...

11. Time Frame of Questions • Present, past and future tense • A matrix of 18 different types of questions

12. Sequencing of questions • No fixed rules in organizing an interview • Begin with questions about noncontroversial present behaviorism activities and experiences • Encourage to talk descriptively • Then interpretations, opinions and feelings • Knowledge and skill questions together with related activities and experiences • Can be quite threatening • First present, then past using present as baseline and future last • Background and demographics to absolute minimum throughout the interview • Never begin with a long list of demographics questions!

13. Wording of Questions • Asking truly open-ended questions • Minimize imposition of predetermined responses when gathering data • Not enough to merely leave out structured response categories, but also remove implicit and disguised categories • Whatever direction and whatever words to represent what they have to say • Presupposition: question implies that there is something to answer • Neutral, singular, clear

14. An Example 1/3

15. An Example 2/3

16. An Example 3/3

17. Dichotomous lead-in question Do you feel like you know enough about the program to assess its effectiveness? Have you learned anything from this program? Are there any conflicts among the staff? Presupposition lead-in question How effective do you think the program is? (presupposes that a judgment can be made) What have you learned from this program? (presupposes learning) What kind of staff conflicts have occurred here? (presupposes conflicts) Alternative Question Formats

18. Recording Responses • Capture actual words of the person being interviewed • Tape-recording interviews • Accuracy of data collection • More attentive to the interviewee • Transcribing interviews • Typical ratio 4:1 • Full transcriptions desirable data to obtain • High technical quality tapes • See checklist • Taking notes during interviews • Needed also when tape-recording • Key phrases, list of major points, key terms, interviewee language

19. Notes During Interviews • Use quotation marks only to indicate full and actual quotations • Develop some mechanism for indicating interpretations, thoughts, or ideas that may come to mind during the interview • Keep track of questions asked as well as answers received.

20. After the Interview • Check the tape and go over notes to uncover areas of ambiguity or uncertainty • Write down observations about the interview itself • Team working together needs to meet regularly and debrief together • Insights occur while data is fresh

21. Ethical Issues 1/2 • Promises and reciprocity. What’s in it for the interviewee? Why should the interviewee participate in the interview? (Don’t make promises lightly, if you make them, keep them). • Risk assessment. In what ways, if any, will conducting the interview put people at risk? How will you handle these potential risks? • Confidentiality. What are reasonable promises of confidentiality that can be fully honored? • Informed consent. What kind of informed consent, if any, is necessary for mutual protection?

22. Ethical Issues 2/2 • Data access and ownership. Who will have access to the data? For what purposes? Who owns the data in an evaluation? (Be clear about this in the contract) • Interviewer mental health. How will interviewers be affected by conducting the interviews? What will they hear or see that may merit debriefing and processing? • Advice. Who will be the researcher’s confidant and counselor on matters of ethics during the study? (Not all issues can be anticipated in advance. Knowing who you will go to in the event of difficulties can save time and bring comfort)