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

Some Logistical Considerations in Interview Research

The experience of scheduling a contact visit often reflects what trying to schedule the actual interview with the participant will be like. If one is a reasonable process, the other is likely to be so too. If scheduling one contact visit is unduly frustrating, the interviewer may do well to take that into account

Selecting Participants for Interview Research

1. SELECTING PARTICIPANTS Either during the contact process or shortly thereafter the researcher takes the crucial step of selecting the people he or she will interview. The purpose of an in-depth interview study is to understand the experience of those who are interviewed, not to predict or to control that experience. (See Van Manen,

The Belmont Report

Faced with the fact that the disregard for human welfare in research occurred not just abroad but also at home, various departments of the U.S. government issued federal guidelines concerning the protection of the rights of human subjects during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. (See Anderson, 1996; Applebaum, Lidz, & Meisel, 1987; Faden &

The Establishment of Local Institutional Review Boards

With the Belmont Report providing guidance, the federal government began the process of harmonizing the regulations that had been issued by various agencies into what is called the common rule, now adhered to by many federal agencies. The common rule refers to the regulations pre­sented in the Code of Federal Regulations, Title 45, Part

The Informed Consent Form

While there may be some variance in what a local IRB will ask re­searchers to submit for review, the issue of an informed consent form is almost always pivotal (Ritchie, 2003, p. 217). New interviewers tend to be hesitant about informed consent. They have no doubt of their own good intentions and worry that

Eight Major Parts of Informed Consent

A consent form adapted to in-depth interviewing should cover eight major parts: An invitation to participate in what, to what end, how, how long, and for whom?The first part of an informed consent form should state explicitly that the potential participant is being invited to take part in a research study. This introduction would

The Complexities of Affirming the IRB Review Process and Informed Consent

When guidelines for seeking informed consent were first issued by federal agencies in the 1960s and 1970s, some researchers felt that the costs of the new procedures outweighed the benefits. Experienced social scientists questioned the emphasis on written informed consent especially for participant observation studies that may be fluid, unfixed, and there­fore difficult ones

Interview Techniques Isn’t Everything, But It Is a Lot

1. LISTEN MORE, TALK LESS Listening is the most important skill in interviewing. The hardest work for many interviewers is to keep quiet and to listen actively. Many books about interviewing concentrate on the types of questions that in­terviewers ask, but I want to start this chapter by talking about the type of listening

Interviewing as an “I-Thou” Relationship

In a section of his book that is elegant even in translation, Schutz (1967) explains that one person’s intersubjective understanding of another depends upon creating an “I-Thou” relationship, a concept bearing both similarities to and significant differences from the philosopher Martin Buber’s use of the phrase. “Thou” is someone close to the interviewer, still

Interview Rapport

That balancing act is central to developing an appropriate rapport with the participant. I have never been completely comfortable with the common assumption that the more rapport the interviewer can establish with the participant, the better. Rapport implies getting along with each other, a harmony with, a conformity to, an affinity for one another.