Interview Techniques in Three Different Research Scenarios

Towards this end, various methodologies qualitative and quantitative are available for data collection, of which interviewing is a part of. It is this paper's purpose to discuss interviewing as a data collection method, particularly focusing on its value, strengths and weaknesses. For purposes of this discussion, interviews shall be defined as controlled conversations that the interviewer uses to obtain data required from the respondent by means of asking serious questions verbally (Akbayrak: 2000). The essay will not delve into the different interviewing techniques, but tackle interviewing in the collective. Interviews are a key qualitative data collection method for social research. There are many reasons to use interviews for collecting data and using it as a research instrument. They are mainly useful in cases where there is need to attain highly personalized data, as well as in cases where there are opportunities for probing to get underlying factors. They also become a viable option where there are limited respondents and a good return rate is important, and also where respondents are not fluent in the native language of a country, or where they have difficulties with written language (Gray: 2004). The main advantage of interviews stems from their capability to offer a complete description and analysis of a research subject, without limiting the scope of the research and the nature of participant's responses (Collis & Hussey, 2003). Interviews are thus useful for gaining insight and context into a topic. They can provide information to which the interviewee was previously privy to, unlike other data collection methods such as questionnaires may act as blinkers to the responses required. They thus become critical for discovery oriented researches where the researcher is, in advance, only roughly aware in of what they are looking for. In an interview, there is leeway for a respondent to describe what is important to them, and from their responses useful quotes and stories can also be collected. In response to the need to seek complete description and analysis of subject matter, interviews from the onset, facilitate for the accurate screening for the right interviewee. Due to the nature of information sought, which has to be in depth, accurate, and reliable, the interviewer has to find the right individual who has the desired information. If the assessment is around certain work processes, then individuals directly involved in the work, or those directly affected by the work are purposefully sampled. In line with the above, face to face interviews will go further in making screening more accurate, as an individual being interviewed is unable to provide false information during screening questions such as gender, age, or race(Akbayrak: 2000).

Qualitative Inquiry, 2019

Drawing from the work of Deleuze and Guattari, we experimentally chart a cartography of a peculiar interview (an “off-topic”and “dissident” interview that disrupts the agenda of the interviewer). In this article, we aim to traverse the micropolitics of the interview, the entangled relations of power and resistance. We intentionally chart the intensive topography of the peculiar and re-present what was once missed (or passed over). Thinking with theory rather than method, we have used Deleuze and Guattari’s conceptualization of social machines, deterritorialization, and desire, to interrogate and experiment with the dissident interview. Performed as a nine-movement guerrilla encounter, the peculiarities of the interview are represented as unconventional guerrilla tactics that deterritorialize and disrupt the interview. Our experimentation surfaced some of the ways an interview can be despotic, stifling affective production. However, a Deleuzio-Guattarian war machine prevented the capture and appropriation of the interview and produced a new creative machine.

Environment and Urbanization, 1996

Journal of Sociolinguistics, 2009

This article involves a study of the narrative of a Second World War Resistance member by means of an interview in which the interviewer explicitly inserts the historical context by selecting the topics for discussion and asking critical questions. The interview deals with three periods: the Wartime period, the First Wave of Reprisals and the Second Wave of Reprisals. The analyses show that the interviewee's first and second level positionings shift along with changes in historical period and that they mirror the general historical image of the Resistance. These different positionings are highly consistent in themselves and this consistency is also present on the third level of positioning, because of the interviewee's fairly muted style of narrating, by which blatant inconsistencies are avoided and a general, 'good' identity is constructed. So the general historical context was explicitly brought into the data and this was clearly reflected in the interviewee's positionings.

Katherine Smith, James Staples and Nigel Rapport (eds) (2015): Extraordinary Encounters. Authenticity and the Interview. Oxford: Berghahn Books. Rev. in: Anthropological Notebooks, 2016, 22, 1, pp. 135-137., 2016

Oral History Vol 6, No 2, 2008

This paper explores ethical and political questions involved in interviewing informants defined simultaneously as ‘victims’ and ‘perpetrators’ of past violence. It recognises the political urgency of oral history interviews with subjects marginalised or oppressed by traditional historical narratives. It also stresses the important work on power dynamics in the oral history interview and in particular the impact of feminist oral history. In light of the increased influence memory studies and models of interviewing as witnessing and testimony, however, the article cautions against the tendency for interviewers to identify too closely with victims of past violences. With examples from my experiences interviewing female supporters of political violence in the Basque country, I argue for the need to consider the complexities of empathy and emotion in the interview setting, and the importance of distinguishing between empathy and solidarity in oral history.

Journal of Digital Art & Humanities, 2020

This paper examined the implications of using interviews as method of data collection in social sciences with reference to researcher's experience during fieldwork. The paper is purely qualitative and documentary sources were source of data collection. The paper argued that interview as an instrument of data collection when compared to other data collection techniques like questionnaire is more powerful in eliciting narrative data that allow researchers to investigate people's views in greater depth. The paper indicated that interview as a tool for social science data collection research helps to facilitate in obtaining direct explanation for human actions through a comprehensive speech interaction. The paper concluded that although interviewing is a powerful way of getting insights into interviewee's perceptions, it could go hand in hand with other methods providing in-depth information about participants' inner values and beliefs. For instance, using personal observation as a supplement to interviews would allow researchers investigate participants' external behaviors and internal beliefs. Therefore, the paper stressed that using more than one data collection instrument (although it depends on the research questions) would help obtaining richer data and validating the research findings.

Poetics Today, 2006

Studies of interviewing suggest that there is a wide gulf between interviewing theory and actual practice. Regarding interviews with Holocaust survivors specifically , there have been no systematic studies of the relationships between theory and practice, nor has there been systematic assessment by other criteria of the increasingly vast archives of survivor interviews. In the absence of such studies, the authors have pursued another approach to thinking about what made for better and worse interviews with survivors.

Slovak Ethnology, 2019

The oral history interview is a "multi-layered communicative event". It is a unique, active event, reflective of a specific culture and of a particular time and space. Interviews, more precisely biographical interviews, are the tool I have been using for decades. The relationship between the interviewer and interviewee is, therefore, an essential question for me. I interview people to find out what happened to them, how they felt about it, how they recall it and what wider public memory they draw upon. Focused on the biographical narratives, as well as in-depth and repeated interviews, I have constantly faced ethical and moral questions in accordance with my role as a listener, and as a partner in the interview, but also as a scholar with the goal of using the interview in my scientific work. In my text, I would like to develop Hourig Attarian's inspiring ideas on self-reflexivity, which brings to light the grey zones that we encounter in our work. This is often a difficult and fragile process. It is central to the connections that I create with the interviewees in my projects. These people always affect the course of my work, but also me personally. This balancing act is an exercise. I try to understand my own limits, I try to push my own boundaries, and assess how each of these circumstances impacts my research.

Acta Ethnographica Hungarica, 2016

This interview with Professor Jan Vansina, conducted in the mid-1980s by Szilárd Biernaczky, is the result of extensive correspondence between the two. After a brief introduction to the achievements of the distinguished and pioneering scholar of African history, the interview addresses the following issues: 1. the current status of oral history research; 2. new theories in the field of oral history research; 3. ethnohistory versus oral history; 4. ethnography, ethnology, European peasantry, and oral history; 5. the mythical dimension of the “beginning” and its inherent historical models (“outbound” segments, migration, new conquest, first ancestors, etc.); 6. oral history as a source of nationalist movements in Africa; 7. the appreciation of oral history (and its research) and African cultural movements.

Most discussions of oral history method are rooted in abstract ideas about what interviewing should be and should achieve. However, interviews are ultimately personal interactions between human beings, and as such they rarely conform to a methodological ideal. Nonetheless, oral history's complex, capricious nature is rarely addressed by its practitioners when they share their work with the world. The struggles and negotiations interviewers face while conducting interviews - ethical, political, personal - either go unacknowledged or are discussed only with trusted colleagues in informal settings. This groundbreaking collection shows that a full account of oral history methodology must include honest and rigorous analyses of actual practice, allowing us to embrace the uncertainties and remarkable opportunities that define a human-centered methodology. Here, fourteen practitioners draw connections between vastly different areas of study, including Holocaust memories, work with Abor...

Language in Society, 2011

Qualitative Research in European Migration Studies, 2018

Elore, 2006