Interpreting the Interview Material

Interpreting is not a process researchers do only near the end of the project. Even as interviewers question their participants, tentative inter­pretations may begin to influence the path of their questioning. Marking passages that are of interest, labeling them, and grouping them is analytic work that has within it the seeds of interpretation. Crafting a profile is an act of analysis, as is presenting and commenting upon excerpts arranged in categories. Both processes lay the ground for interpretation. (I am us­ing Wolcott’s [1994] distinction between the words analysis and interpreta­tion. I think Wolcott offers a solid approach to working with interview data in his thoughtful explication of the terms description, analysis, and interpretation. In this book, I have used the phrase sharing the data instead of Wolcott’s description.)

In some ways, it is tempting to let the profiles and the categorized, thematic excerpts speak for themselves. But another step is appropriate. Researchers must ask themselves what they have learned from doing the interviews, studying the transcripts, marking and labeling them, crafting profiles, and organizing categories of excerpts. What connective threads are there among the experiences of the participants they interviewed? How do they understand and explain these connections? What do they understand now that they did not understand before they began the inter­views? What surprises have there been? What confirmations of previous instincts? How have their interviews been consistent with the literature? How inconsistent? How have they gone beyond?

Charmaz (1983), Glaser and Strauss (1967), and Maxwell (1996) address these questions with a practical suggestion: When you have identified pas­sages that are important but the category in which they fall seems undefined or its significance is unclear, write a memorandum about those passages. Through your writing about them, about how they were picked, about what they mean to you, the properties and import of the category may become clear. If you write such memoranda about each of the categories you have developed and about the profiles you have crafted, the process of writing about them will lead you to discover what it is you find important in them both individually and relative to others that you have developed.

Much of what you learn may be tentative, suggesting further re­search. In the early stages of our study of student teachers and mentors (Fischetti, Santilli, & Seidman, 1988; O’Donnell et al., 1989), we began to see evidence in the language of the student teachers we interviewed that tracking in schools was affecting how they were learning to become teachers. That led O’Donnell (1990) to conceptualize a dissertation study on the impact of tracking on learning to become a teacher.

The last stage of interpretation, then, consistent with the interview process itself, asks researchers what meaning they have made of their work. In the course of interviewing, researchers asked the participants what their experience meant to them. Now they have the opportunity to respond to the same question. In doing so they might review how they came to their research, what their research experience was like, and, fi­nally, what it means to them. How do they understand it, make sense of it, and see connections in it?

Some of what researchers learn may lead them to propose connec­tions among events, structures, roles, and social forces operating in peo­ple’s lives. Some researchers would call such proposals theories and urge theory building as the purpose of research (Fay, 1987). My own feeling is that although the notion of grounded theory generated by Glaser and Strauss (1967) offered qualitative researchers a welcome rationale for their inductive approach to research, it also served to inflate the term theory to the point that it has lost some of its usefulness. (See Dey, 1993, pp. 51-52, for a useful critique of the casual use of the word theory)

The narratives we shape of the participants we have interviewed are necessarily limited. Their lives go on; our presentations of them are framed and reified. Betty, whose profile is in the Appendix, may be still working out her relationship to child care. Nanda is still living out her life in the United States. Moreover, the narratives that we present are a func­tion of our interaction with the participants and their words. Although my experience suggests that a number of people reading Betty’s or Nanda’s transcripts separately would nevertheless develop similar narratives, we still have to leave open the possibility that other interviewers and crafters of profiles would have told a different story. (See Fay, 1987, pp. 166-174.) So, as illuminating as in-depth interviews can be, as compelling as the sto­ries are that they can tell and the themes they can highlight, we still have to bear in mind that Heisenberg’s principle of indeterminacy pervades our work, as it does the work of physicists (Polanyi, 1958). We have to al­low considerable tolerance for uncertainty (Bronowski, 1973) in the way we report what we have learned from our research.

Every research method has its limits and its strengths. In-depth in­terviewing’s strength is that through it we can come to understand the details of people’s experience from their point of view. We can see how their individual experience interacts with powerful social and organiza­tional forces that pervade the context in which they live and work, and we can discover the interconnections among people who live and work in a shared context.

In-depth interviewing has not led me to an easy confidence in the possibilities of progressive reform through research (Bury, 1932; Fay, 1987). It has led me to a deeper understanding and appreciation of the amazing intricacies and, yet, coherence of people’s experiences. It has also led me to a more conscious awareness of the power of the social and organizational context of people’s experience. Interviewing has provided me with a deeper understanding of the issues, structures, processes, and policies that imbue participants’ stories. It has also given me a fuller ap­preciation of the complexities and difficulties of change. Most important and almost always, interviewing continues to lead me to respect the par­ticipants, to relish the understanding that I gain from them, and to take pleasure in sharing their stories.

Source: Seidman Irving (2006), Interviewing As Qualitative Research: A Guide for Researchers in Education And the Social Sciences, Teachers College Press; 3rd edition.