The Three-Interview Series

Perhaps most distinguishing of all its features, this model of in­depth, phenomenological interviewing involves conducting a series of three separate interviews with each participant. People’s behavior becomes meaningful and understandable when placed in the context of their lives and the lives of those around them. Without context there is little possibility of exploring the

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Respect the Structure of In-depth Interviews

We have found it important to adhere to the three-interview struc­ture. Each interview serves a purpose both by itself and within the series. Sometimes, in the first interview, a participant may start to tell an inter­esting story about his or her present work situation; but that is the focus of the second interview. It

Length of In-depth Interviews

To accomplish the purpose of each of the three interviews, Dolbeare and Schuman (Schuman, 1982) used a 90-minute format. People learning this method for the first time often react, “Oh, that is so long. How will we fill that amount of time? How will we get a participant to agree to be interviewed for

Spacing of In-depth Interviews

The three-interview structure works best, in my experience, when the researcher can space each interview from 3 days to a week apart. This allows time for the participant to mull over the preceding interview but not enough time to lose the connection between the two. In addition, the spacing allows interviewers to work with

Alternatives to the Structure and Process of In-depth, Phenomenological Interviews

Researchers will have reasons for exploring alternatives to the structure and procedures described above. As long as a structure is maintained that allows participants to reconstruct and reflect upon their experience within the context of their lives, alterations to the three-in­terview structure and the duration and spacing of interviews can cer­tainly be explored. But

Whose Meaning Is It? Validity and Reliability for In-depth, Phenomenological Interviewing

Whose meaning is it that an interview brings forth and that a re­searcher reports in a presentation, article, or book? That is not a simple question. Every aspect of the structure, process, and practice of inter­viewing can be directed toward the goal of minimizing the effect the interviewer and the interviewing situation have on

Research Proposals as Rites of Passage in Interview Research Method

In some respects becoming an academic is like joining a club. As in most other somewhat-exclusive clubs, there are those who are in and those who are out; there are elites and non-elites. There are privileges of membership, and there are penalties for not paying dues. To some extent, success in the club is

Commitment in Interview Research Method

When a candidate’s doctoral program is working well, a research topic arises out of work that has gone before. Course work, fieldwork, practica, clinical work, and comprehensive exams all lead the candidate forward to an area of inquiry about which he or she feels some passion. If the doctoral program has not worked well—if

From Thought to Language

Many students have trouble writing proposals because they are plagued by a sense of audience. The process seems dominated by doc­toral committees and Institutional Review Boards that must approve the proposed research. (For more on Institutional Review Boards, see Chapter 5.) When audience plays such a dominating role, writing can easily suffer. Rather than

What Is to Be Done in Interview Research Method?

Peter Elbow (1981) offers an approach to writing that I think can be useful in such cases. He suggests that trying both to create with the audience in mind and to make writing perfect from the start imposes an undue burden on the writing process. He suggests making writing and editing two separate aspects

Questions to Structure the Interview Research Proposal

1. What? Proposal writers need to ask themselves some simple questions. These can be divided into several groups. First is a group of questions I put under the heading of “What?” In what am I interested? What am I trying to learn about and understand? What is the basis of my interest? Interviewers begin

Rationale of Interview Research

Although the paradigms that underlie research methods in the social sciences seem to be changing rapidly (Kvale, 1996; Lincoln & Guba, 1985), the extent to which researchers will have to defend their use of in-depth interviewing as their research methodology will depend on their individ­ual departments. Some are still dominated by experimentalism or other

Working with the Interview Material

Research proposals should describe how researchers intend to work with and analyze the material they gather. Describing this process ahead of time is especially difficult for those who are doing empirical research for the first time. It is difficult to project how they will work with material from interview participants if they have never

Piloting Your Interview Research

The best advice I ever received as a researcher was to do a pilot of my proposed study. The dictionary (Gove, 1971) definition of the verb pi­lot is “to guide along strange paths or through dangerous places” (p. 1716). Although it may not seem ahead of time that the world of interviewing research takes

The Perils of Easy Access for Interview Research

Beginning interviewers tend to look for the easiest path to their po­tential participants. They often want to select people with whom they al­ready have a relationship: friends, those with whom they work, students they teach, or others with whom they have some tangential connection. This is understandable but problematic. My experience is that the

Access Through Formal Gatekeepers in Interview Research

When interviewers try to contact potential participants whom they do not know, they often face gatekeepers who control access to those people. Gatekeepers can range from the absolutely legitimate (to be respected) to the self-declared (to be avoided). If a researcher’s study involves participants below the age of 18, for example, access to them

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Informal Gatekeepers for Interview Research

Sometimes although there is no formal gatekeeper, there is an in­formal one (Richardson et al., 1965). Most faculties, for example, usu­ally include a few members who are widely respected and looked to for guidance when decisions about whether or not to support an effort are made. In small groups, there is usually at least

Access and Hierarchy of Interview Research

One of the differences between research and evaluation or policy studies is that the latter are often sponsored by an agency close to the people who participate in the interviews. In such studies, authority for ac­cess to participants often is formally granted by administrators in charge. There is a sense of official sponsorship of

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Making Contact in Interview Research

1. MAKING CONTACT Do it yourself. Try not to rely on third parties to make contact with your potential participants. No matter how expedient it seems to have someone else who knows potential participants explain your project to them, try to avoid doing so. Building the interviewing relationship begins the moment the potential participant

Building the Participant Pool in Interview Research

Another primary purpose of the contact visit is to assess the appro­priateness of a participant for the study. The major criterion for appro­priateness is whether the subject of the researcher’s study is central to the participant’s experience. For example, a doctoral candidate wanting to study the way process writing affects an English teacher’s experience