Interviews

Interviewer and interviewee actively construct some version of the world appropriate to what we take to be self-evident about the person to whom we are speaking and the context of the question.

Issues about the status of interview data:

1. What is the relation between interviewees' accounts and the world they describe?
2. How is the relation between interviewer and interviewee to be understood?

According to positivism, interview data give us access to "facts" about the world.

According to interactionism, interviewees are viewed as experiencing subjects who actively construct their social worlds.

Six kinds of topics to which interview questions are addressed:

The task of the interview is to elicit a body of facts "out there" in the world.

The aim of interviews for positivists is to generate data which hold independently of both the research setting and the researcher or interviewer.

According to positivists:

1. The aim of social science is to discover unknown but actual social facts or essentials.
2. Reality is supposed to be "out there"
3. The existence of typical respondents is explicitly presupposed.
4. Methodological problems are more technical than theoretical or interpretive.

Interactionism

For interactionists, interviews are essentially about symbolic interaction:  "I wish to treat the interview as an observational encounter".

For Interactionists, the social context of the interview is intrinsic to understanding any data that are obtained.

Interactionists tend to reject pre-scheduled standardized interviews and to prefer open-ended interviews because:

1. It allows respondents to use their "unique ways of defining the world".
2. It assumes that no fixed sequence of questions is suitable to all respondents.
3. It allows respondents to "raise important issues not contained in the schedule"

Interactionism neglects three issues:

Problems which can distort interviewee' responses:

For many years, positivist survey research provided the main source of data for sociology.

Both interviewer and interviewee rely upon their common sense knowledge of social structures in order to produce locally "adequate" utterances.

Positivists argue that interviews based upon pre-tested, standardized questions are a way of increasing the reliability of research.  Interactionism and ethnomethodology bring into question the value of data derived from standardized, survey-research style interviews.

naturalism unwittingly agrees with positivism that the best kind of data are somehow "untouched by human hands" -- neutral, unbiased and representative.

Dimension which distinguishes positivists from ethnomethodologists is whether interviews are treated as straightforward reports on another reality or whether they merely report upon, or express, their own structures.

Tension in interactionism between internalist and externalists versions of interview data -- interactionist are not to sure whether interviews are purely "symbolic interaction" or express underlying external realities.

The need to preserve and understand the reality of the interview account is central to the argument of many interactionists.

For analytic purposes and in real life, form and content depend upon each other.  Interviews display cultural particulars.

Interviews are among the most widely used methods of data generation in the social sciences.

The interviewer attempts to position himself as colleague, friend or confessor in order that the respondent speaks openly, authentically, or truthfully, to produce valid reporting on some interior or exterior state of affairs.

Interviewing is understood as an interactional event in which members draw on their cultural knowledge

Questions are a central part of the data and cannot be viewed as neutral invitations to speak.

Interview responses are treated as accounts more that reports.

Members have analytic resources that they put to work as they engage in any kind of talk including interview talk.  Talk is social action; people achieve identities, realities, social order and social relationships through talk.

Another category of interviews are those which are conducted for research purposes only, which would not have taken place had the research not be undertaken.

A very large portion of research interviews would be conducted for the  purpose of finding out some specific information, perspectives or beliefs.  These interviews are typically characterized by a very asymmetrical organization of talk, in which the interviewer asks the questions but talks much less that the respondent.

The search is for how participants in the interview make use of the resources of membership categorization.  

Narratives and worlds

Interview subjects construct not just narratives, but social worlds.  Research cannot provide the mirror reflection of the social world that positivists strive for, but it may provide access to the meanings people attribute to their experiences and social worlds.

Life outside the interview

Interactionist research starts from a belief that people create and maintain meaningful worlds.  Language shapes meanings but also permits intersubjectively and the ability of willful persons to create and maintain meaningful worlds.  In our experience, interviewees will tell us, if given the chance, which of our interests and formulations make sense and non sense to them.  Cultural stories are based in part on stereotypes.  Collective stories take the point of view of the interview subjects, and "give voice" to those who are silenced or marginalized in the cultural story.

An illustration

Narratives which emerge in interview contexts are situated in social worlds.  They come out of worlds that exist outside of the interview itself.  Existence of social differences between interviewer and interviewees does not mean that the interviews are devoid of information about social worlds.  Knowledge of social worlds emerges from the achievement of intersubjective depth and mutual understanding.  There must be a level of trust between the interviewer and interviewee.  The assurance of confidentiality is achieved as much by implicit assurances as by explicit guarantees.

Cultural Stories

Rapport involves the interviewee feeling comfortable and competent enough in the interaction to "talk back." When respondents talk back they provide insights into the narratives they use to describe the meanings of their social worlds and into their experiences of the worlds of which they are a part.

Conclusion

While "open-ended" interviews can be useful, we need to justify departing from the naturally occurring data that surrounds us and to be cautious about the "romantic" impulse which identifies "experience" with "authenticity."  All we sociologists have are stories.  Come from other people, some from us, some from our interactions with others.  What matters is to understand how and where the stories are produced, which sort of stories they are, and how we can put them to honest and intelligent use in theorizing about social life.

The long interview lets us map out the organizing ideas of friendship and determine how these ideas enter into the individual's view of the world.

social scientists now apply their skills to a wide range of urgent issues.

Nine Key Issues:

1. The Social Scientific Research Community
   Some qualitative researchers look for cooperation.  Others have chosen a different posture.
2. The Donor Social Sciences--A Call for Ecumenical Cooperation
   It is necessary to bring the several "tribes" of the qualitative tradition into a state of useful cooperation.
3. The Qualitative/Quantitative Difference
   Most striking difference between the methods is the way in which each tradition treats its analytic categories.  Quantitative goal is to isolate and define categories as precisely as possible before the study is undertaken, and determine the relationship between them.  Qualitative goal is often to isolate and define categories during the process of research.
4. Investigator as Instrument
   In qualitative research, the investigator serves as a kind of "instrument" in the collection and analysis of data.  the investigator cannot fulfill qualitative research objectives without using a broad range of his own experiences, imagination, and intellect in ways that are various and unpredictable.
5. The Obtrusive/Unobtrusive Balance
   Qualitative methods are most useful and powerful when they are used to discover how the respondent sees the world.
6. Manufacturing Distance
   Scholars working is another culture (advantage) virtually everything before them is mysterious.  It is incumbent on the investigator to "manufacture distance."
7. The Questionnaire
   For the purpose of the long qualitative interview, it is indispensable.  Demanding objectives of this interview require its use.  Its first responsibility is to ensure that the investigator covers all the terrain in the same order for each respondent.  Second function is the care and scheduling of the prompts necessary to manufacture distance.  Third function of the questionnaire is that it establishes channels for the direction and scope of discourse.  The fourth function of the questionnaire is that it allows the investigator to give all his attention to the informant's testimony
8. The investigator/Respondent Relationship
   One of the most important differences between most qualitative and quantitative research is that the former demands a much more complex relationship between investigator and respondent.
9. Multimethod Approaches
   The realities that the long qualitative interview can report are not the only realities with which the social scientist must contend.

The four-step method of inquiry:

1. review of analytic categories and interview design
2. review of cultural categories and interview design
3. interview procedures and the discovery of cultural categories
4. interview analysis and the discovery of analytical categories

Notes from:

Data Collection.  (Handout Packet)

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