A Postmodern-Psychoanalytic Perspective on Interviewing

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In this presentation, I present a general philosophical understanding of the conversation that applies to qualitative research interviewing. In a philosophical sense, all human research is conversational, since we are linguistic creatures and language is best understood in terms of the figure of conversation. I also explore a number of more specific philosophies of interviewing, i.e., practices of using conversations for research purposes. I outline four different approaches to qualitative research interviewing that differ on two axes: First in terms of interviewer style -nondirective versus confronting style -and second in terms of epistemic ambitions -and I here introduce the continuum of doxastic versus epistemic interviewing. Current interviews are typically doxastic in aiming to probe the respondents' experiences and opinions -"doxa" in Greek -rather than developing "episteme", i.e., knowledge that is justified discursively in the conversation. Following Lather, I argue in favor of a self-conscious paradigm proliferation in interviewing research.

The open-ended interview is the preeminent data generation technique in methodological traditions as disparate as ethnography, phenomenology (in its different forms), psychoanalysis, narrative psychology, grounded theory, and (much) discourse analysis. Our aim in this chapter is to make the case that interviewing has been too easy, too obvious, too little studied, and too open to providing a convenient launch pad for poor research. We will argue that interview research will be made better if it faces up to a series of eight challenges that arise in the design, conduct, analysis, and reporting of qualitative interviews. Some research studies already face up to some of these challenges; few studies face up to all of them. We will make our case strongly and bluntly with the aim of provoking debate where not enough has taken place. These challenges are overlapping, but we have separated them in the way we have for clarity. It is important to emphasize that our aim is not to criticize interviews but to make them better.

2007

In what follows, I shall address a seemingly very simple question: Could we, by means of qualitative research interviews, gain knowledge? A first reaction to this question is likely to be: “What an insult! What do you think we have been doing all these years, talking to people about their experiences, desires, and opinions? Do you have the nerve to question whether we have gained knowledge along the way? Of course we have!”

Qualitative Research

We respond to recent discussions of the interview, and the ‘radical critique’ of interviewing, as reiterated in publications by Silverman and Hammersley. Reviewing and extending the critical commentary on the social life of the interview and its implications for qualitative research, we endorse criticism of the Romantic view of the informant as a speaking subject, arguing that the interview does not give access to the interiority or private emotions of social actors. We focus especially on the search for the ‘authentic’ voice of experience and feeling, arguing that the expression of authenticity is performative, and that such interviews need to be analysed for their performative features. The biographical work of the interview demands close, formal analysis, and not mere celebration. The argument is illustrated with a single case-study, derived from an ethnographic study of a social-work service in the UK. We suggest that it is possible to derive constructive responses to the radica...

International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 2020

In this article, we consider challenges for the existence and practice of qualitative research interviews. We review key features of qualitative interviewing, in particular the debate over the radical critique of interviewing and the nature of the data it generates, to set the scene for our arguments about the current standing and future prognosis for the method of generating data and the technologies that enable this. We look at qualitative interviewing in the context of the political project of neoliberalism and the regime of austerity associated with it, and the linked turn to what is known as ‘big data’, a feature of digital technological developments in garnering data. Qualitative researchers using interview methods have been creative in working with and resisting features of neoliberal austerity pragmatically and politically, and we provide some examples. We also consider an epistemological challenge and resistance from outside of the dominant framework – interviewing in indigenous methodologies. We argue that it is the relationship between the interview as a method of data generation for research and the ways of knowing about the world, that is the epistemology that the interview-based research proceeds from, that is crucial in considering the potentials for the method’s practice.

This study aims to reflect on qualitative interviewing with a particular emphasis on semi-structured interviewing (SSI), with the purpose of guiding students and young scholars of International Relations and Political Science who will use this method in their research. This study begs to differ from both radical post-positivist's deep scepticism which makes any scientific inquiry almost impossible as well as from positivism's unreflective, unproblematized, instrumental approach to interviewing. It proposes a reflectivist approach to qualitative interviewing that emphasizes the political nature of the interviewing process with various political, ethical and even social consequences. The reflectivist approach requires researchers to be self-critical at all times, in particular concerning their role and influence on the interview setting and the interviewee. This article proceeds as follows: It first addresses my own research on the nexus between civil society and the Kurdish question in Turkey, where SSI has been operationalized as the main research method. It then addresses the positivist and post-positivist debates on qualitative interviewing as well as the reflectivist approach that this study promotes. The article then engages in SSI in three distinct stages: pre-interview, interview and post-interview phases. Finally, the concluding part introduces some works utilising interviewing in Turkish IR and wraps up the theoretical/ methodological arguments disseminated throughout the study at hand.

Qualitative Report, 2012

In this manuscript, we describe the use of debriefing interviews for interviewing the interpretive researcher. Further, we demonstrate the value of using debriefing questions as part of a qualitative research study, specifically, one doctoral student's dissertation study. We describe the reflexivity process of the student in her study and the debriefing data that were coded via qualitative coding techniques. Thus, we provide an exemplar of the debriefing process and the findings that emerged as a result. We believe that our exemplar of interviewing the interpretive researcher provides evidence of an effective strategy for addressing the crises of representation and legitimation for researchers and instructors of qualitative methods courses alike.

Journal of Family Theory & Review, 2012

Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences, 2014

Interviewing is one of the data collection methods which are employed when one adopts the qualitative methodology to conduct research. This article relies on extensive literature review to critique interviewing as a data collection method. Although interviews have various forms and styles, it is important to note that there is no one interview style that fits every occasion or all respondents. The interviewer must work diligently to ensure the validity and reliability of the interview data otherwise, interviewers themselves, can turn out to be weaknesses due to their own bias, subjectivities and lack of interviewing skills. It is also important to note that interviewers themselves become part of the "interviewing picture" by asking questions and responding to the respondent and sometimes even sharing their experiences with interviewees; working with the interview data, selecting from it, interpreting and describing and analysing it regardless of their discipline and dedication in keeping the interview data as the product of the respondent. Weaknesses of interviewing have been both discussed and critiqued from different theoretical perspectives which are "postmodern, feminist, sociolinguistic" "conversation analytic", "ethnomethodological perspectives" and even data analysis.

International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 2020

We centrally consider the question of what interview data can be used to 'say' through a dialogue with advocates of the 'radical critique' of interview studies. We propose that while the critique has considerable utility in drawing to 'the social life of interviews' and the pervasiveness of notions of the 'romantic subject', it simultaneously goes too far in its reduction of interviews to narrative performance, and not far enough in its own critical departure from core characteristics of the romantic subject. We show how the critique leaves intact imagery of a seemingly unbridgeable divide between the experienced and the expressed, and involves a related conflation of what can be said at interview with what interviews can be used to say. We explore how the radical critique might productively be built upon via more 'synthetic' forms of research engagement, outlining alternative modes of apprehending interview data through a further critical departure from the romantic subject. Accordingly, we advance a move beyond a sole engagement with questions of how data are constructed and produced and towards how such data might otherwise be used to speak about the social world beyond the social nexus that constitutes an interview encounter.

2005

This paper distinguishes a series of contingent and necessary problems that arise in the design, conduct, analysis and reporting of open-ended or conversational qualitative interviews in psychological research. Contingent problems in the reporting of interviews include:(1) the deletion of the interviewer;(2) the conventions for representing interaction;(3) the specificity of analytic observations;(4) the unavailability of the interview set-up;(5) the failure to consider interviews as interaction.

Issues in Educational Research, 2021

Explicating interview approaches is significant for education research in understanding how the nuances of meaning from personal narratives uncover challenges and opportunities for investigating the lived experience across contexts. This paper considers interview approaches that focus on the reflexivity and meaning-making possible over a longitudinal timeframe for researcher and interviewee. Two methodological frameworks enabled a narrative oral history interview and a phenomenological lifeworld interview to establish variation in individual meaning-making, whilst eliciting understandings of shared social phenomena. We elucidate examples shared from the experience of teachers deemed as expert and interrogate the deliberations taken throughout a three-interview process. Reflexivity and the researcher's attendance to language, timing and open-ended prompting are some techniques considered for clarifying meaning in a small-scale Australian study. We argue that interrogating interview approaches for accessing deeper meaning-making of teacher professional learning further develops our understanding of interviewer-interviewee dynamics and the application of analytical frames.

Language in Society, 2011

2016

The last twenty years have seen an increasing emphasis on the role of the subject both in sociological theory and in methodological guides on the unstructured qualitative research interview. I will argue that this emphasis on subjects is misplaced and cannot lead to a clear understanding of social relations or sociological interviewing. To make this argument I will look at what could be taken as the basic social relation in social research: the qualitative interview between sociologist and research participant. I will argue that major methodological problems arise when interviewees are addressed as identified subjects and when interviews are understood as exchanges between subjects. I will also argue that sociologists who presume subjectivity in this way are not clear about the methodology of interviews because they are not clear about the basic logic of social relation. As well as trying to clarify this logic, I will also try to draw out some of the practical implications of a genu...