Qualitative Interviews: A How-To Guide to Interviewing in Social Science | Off the Shelf 8

In this episode, we offer a how-to guide to qualitative interviewing in the social sciences. We cover the different types of interviews that exist, highlight some of their uses, and then provide a practical guide to interviewing complete with a number of tips that you can practice in order to become a more competent and confident interviewer.
Outlander Ethnography: • Outlander Ethnography
Footnotes:
1. While it is common to teach interviewing methods by dividing them into the above taxonomy (e.g., structured, semi-structured, and unstructured), authors like Brinkman (2013) and Parker (2005) are quick to point out that this three-part taxonomy is primarily theoretical and, in practice, interviewing methods should be thought of as a continuum rather than rigid tripartite framework. Brinkman notes, for instance, that “there is no such thing as a completely unstructured interview, since the interviewer always has an idea about should take place in the conversation” (2013, p. 20). To this I would add Parker’s observation that it is nearly impossible to conduct a perfectly structured interview “because people always say things that spill beyond the structure, before the interview starts and when the recorder has been turned off” (2005, p. 53). Consequently, I would advise that students consider the structured/semi-structured/unstructured taxonomy as a teaching tool that helps us better understand interviewing as a technique rather than a set of rules that should be rigidly applied in their fieldwork.
2. Arguably, two of the most common qualitative approaches to this problem that we teach in the classroom are purposeful sampling and snowball sampling. Beginning with the former, in purposeful sampling (see Patton 1989), the researcher does not attempt to represent an entire group through the random selection of a statistically significant number of subjects (aka random sampling). Instead, the researcher chooses subjects individually based on ex ante subjective judgements regarding each subject’s suitability as an informant. This is often used in small-scale qualitative research projects in which few people can serve as informants. Interviewing global experts in a field, for example, or individuals with uncommon, shared experiences limited to a particular group would both provide excellent frameworks for purposeful sampling. By contrast, in snowball sampling techniques, the participants themselves are enlisted as assistants in selecting suitable subjects for future interviews based on their personal experience and local knowledge (Bertaux 1981). This may be suitable in situations in which the research topic is neither politically nor personally sensitive, allowing for contact information to be shared. When using snowball techniques, it is essential that the researcher take steps to minimize the risk of violating the privacy of their participants. For this reason, I often recommend that novice researchers gain approval from an ethics review board (IRB or IEC) before using snowball techniques in the field.
Works Cited:
Bertaux, D. (Ed.). 1981. Biography and Society: The Life History Approach in the Social Sciences. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
Brinkman, Svend. 2013. Qualitative Interviewing: Understanding Qualitative Research. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
Douglas, Jack. 1976. Investigative Social Research: Individual and Team Field Research. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
Parker, I. 2005. Qualitative Psychology: Introducing Radical Research. Buckingham, UK: Open University Press.
Parker, T. 1996. Studs Terkel: A Life in Words. New York: Henry Holt.
Patton, M. Q. 1989. Qualitative Evaluation Methods. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
Seidman, Irving. 2013. Interviewing as Qualitative Research: A Guide for Researchers in Education and the Social Sciences. New York and London: Teacher’s College Press.
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0:00 Introduction
0:25 Defining Qualitative Interviews
1:13 The Difference b/w Structured, Semi-Structured, and Unstructured
2:44 Designing a Research Project
3:32 Making Preliminary Contact with Participants
5:20 How Many People Should You Interview?
7:05 What to do During the Interview
7:45 How to Structure Interview Questions
10:35 The Social and Environmental Context of the Interview
11:16 Conclusion
12:40 Subscriber Info

[@ArmchairAcademics]

We want to hear from you, as well! If you have any questions, feel free to ask them in the comments and, if you have ideas for future episodes on similar topics, let us know.

[@ventana100]

At what stage of your project do you decide whether to use sampling or snawball sampling? Do you need to reflect that on your written project? (Thank you so much, these videos are very helpful. New subscriber here!)

[@ArmchairAcademics]

@@ventana100, thanks for posting. Very happy to have you on board. That's a great question! It depends, in part, on whether you are writing funding proposals and/or submitting a research proposal to an ethics committee for approval. In those cases, you often need to propose a sampling method for your interviews and be able to articulate why you feel that that particular approach (whether it's single- or mixed-method) is appropriate for your research environment. To be honest, though, it's alright if you have to shift your methods and sampling techniques once you begin your work in the field. If you do so, however, this is something that you should account for in your written work as it may impact your data and reflect more systemic changes in your approach to data-collection as your research progresses. If you are not dealing with an ethics committee, though, and are not writing funding proposals, you have a bit more leeway regarding when you should settle on your sampling methods. I would argue that, in some cases, you can wait until you have made preliminary contact and begun establishing access to your participants; but this is only viable if already you have an understanding of the different methods that you might use, as well as their respective strengths and weaknesses. I hope that helps. Best of luck with your work!

[@ventana100]

@@ArmchairAcademics Thank you so much for your response. I'm preparing a grant proposal and reading your responses and watching your videos have been extremely helpful!

[@GenerateIncomeEasily]

Loved this. It is short and to the point. I was a little nervous about the thought of conducting interviews even though I did this at an honours level. However, after this, I just got a reminder that I simply need to be observant and attentive, while underlining keywords that are of interest and essence to my study. Thank you so much.

[@koladeolajide1210]

Certainly learnt a lot here. Interesting to note the information I once had but had forgotten along the way.

[@charlotteschwarzkopf6125]

Thanks for your tipps!

[@makindesamuel1674]

Love from Nigeria buddy, these fantastic 🤜

[@mmazumdar1]

That was an excellent step by step guide to qualitative research methods. Would be very useful for young graduate students. Thank you.

[@ArmchairAcademics]

You're very welcome! Thanks for posting, Madhumita.

[@LiteraryDialogues]

Thank you so much

[@L4TEKNIGHT]

Thanks for another great video!

[@ArmchairAcademics]

Thanks so much, D SC. Looking forward to making many more!

[@sylviawang7975]

Thanks a lot for your great videos. They're helpful. 🥳 from an Anthropology student, China.

[@ArmchairAcademics]

Thanks so much, Sylvia. Very glad to hear that you've been finding them helpful!

[@comsian032]

Really helpful. Thank You, Sir.

[@ArmchairAcademics]

Glad it was helpful!

[@RichJalipa]

Good job! Thank you!

[@ArmchairAcademics]

Thanks so much. Very glad it was helpful!

[@jscholtz7309]

Thankyou!!!

[@minhannguyen2258]

This is such a useful guide. Thanks for doing this. You briefly mentioned using prompts and probes from respondents' responses (picking up a few key words and ask follow-up questions, etc...) and taking their language seriously without making them feel defensive about their remarks. I think I've made this mistake in an earlier interview and my interviewee seemed to choose their words more carefully instead of talking naturally in their subsequent answers. Would be great if you could recommend some strategies to overcome this and/or sources to read about this. Many thanks!

[@ArmchairAcademics]

Thanks so much for posting. I appreciate it. To answer your question, when informant bias develops in response to interview questions, you're unfortunately in a very difficult spot. The majority of the practical writing on the subject focuses on how to avoid having this happen. If you're working in an ethnographic context, there's not much you can do aside from dig deep and continue to develop a research-oriented relationship with your community. Good will on the part of gatekeepers and other highly visible members of a community can help a ton with that. But... as I learned in a couple of cases during my doctoral fieldwork... sometimes there's no repairing relationships and you need to cut your losses. Still, that doesn't mean that the data is entirely unusable, though!! If you're an MA or PhD student, including a discussion of failed (or simply sub-par) interviews in your dissertation and talking through what you learned from those sessions and how you re-implemented that knowledge in your later work can be a really efficient way to salvage a poor interview. That would, unfortunately, be my best suggestion. Try to turn the experience into a reflexive analysis of your research methods. Don't know if that helps, but I would wholeheartedly suggest the following work, as well. In no particular order. Brinkmann, S. and Kvale, S. 2015. InterViews: Learning the Craft of Qualitative Research Interviewing. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Dey, I. 1993. Qualitative Data Analysis: A User-Friendly Guide for Social Scientists. London: Routledge. Roulston, K. 2010. Reflecting Interviewing: A Guide to Theory and Practice. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Rubin, H. J., and Rubin, I. S. 1995. Qualitative Interviewing: The Art of Hearing. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

[@minhannguyen2258]

@@ArmchairAcademics Thanks so much for your suggestions. Turning the not-so-positive experience into a reflexive analysis was also what my advisors mentioned to me a few weeks ago, and yes I'm reading the 1st & 4th book in your list, will look for the other 2 as well. Best of luck in 2024

[@ArmchairAcademics]

@@minhannguyen2258 You as well! Good luck with your work.

[@mdhcclothing4197]

I would love to hear you cover consumer behavior and the impact anthropology, society and culture has had on it.

[@ArmchairAcademics]

That's a really good suggestion. I've been considering a video on corporate anthropology for a while now... I'm think that I'm going to put it on the list for the beginning of 2024. 🍻

[@mdhcclothing4197]

@@ArmchairAcademicsI didn’t know corporate anthropology was a thing, thanks !

[@MF-un3wi]

This was extremely helpful thank you! I was wondering if you could maybe elaborate on how to deal with conducting interviews or participatory methods in a foreign language? I'm going to Colombia in a few months and though i'm working on my Spanish, it is not fluent. I will have some students help me translate things, but I am currently considering whether I should change my interview questions a bit, make them less open, in order to be able to keep up better. It's a tough call to compromise the depth data you would like to have, with what's realistic...

[@ArmchairAcademics]

What a great question! I should absolutely make a video on that in the future. Almost all of my interview work was in a non-native language, so it's a topic that's close to my heart. It's also a large subject in its own right and the 'right' answer will depend a great deal on the interviewer's linguistic proficiency, local political sentiments (e.g. how you are perceived as an outsider and how open they are to interviews), and the situational viability of working with a translator (which is usually to be avoided if possible). In short, though, I did find some practical work-arounds that helped me in the field. The first is, as you suggested, opening the interview up to be more ethnographic, giving the participant a lot of space to talk and then building follow-up questions in your notes. I found that having scripted, pre-prepared questions written in a colloquial style also helps enormously... so that you can quickly return to the interview structure if a question is a dud. I even went so far as to write up two separate lists of questions: 1) a main list of 'semi-structured' questions as a guideline; and 2) a list of anticipated follow-up questions that I might ask depending on how the participant responded. Combining that with impromptu follow-up questions usually kept things flowing and prevented my potential linguistic missteps from interfering with the interview. Saying all of that, though, keep in mind that I was working as an ethnographer. So the qualitative muddiness of some of those interviews was interesting tome and occasionally yielded insights that I wouldn't have had in a more structured, native linguistic context. Translators are another possibility. In the environments where I worked, though, there was a widespread (and well-justified) fear of information leaking to the government. That meant that including translators was practically impossible. In any case, if you do work with a translator -- or if locals contribute to the translation of some interviews by chiming in and clarifying your questions -- you should always make an effort to list that as a potential research confound in your notes. Best of luck with the work! Let me know how it goes :)

[@wocmultimedia]

What about making a brief written guide of your methodology? I mean a kind of flow chart of the main interview parts. A two-page PDF to be quickly consulted? Anyhow is a useful video. Thanks

[@ArmchairAcademics]

Thanks for posting, wocmultimedia. That's a great idea! I think we'll do that and put it up as a free resource on our Patreon page. Very glad to hear the video was useful :)

[@hananebouslahi1433]

Can I use structured interviews with open-ended questions in qualitative research??

[@ArmchairAcademics]

Hey there, hanane. Normally, the goal of structured interviews is to provide a structure that's consistent across multiple different interviews to provide data that's easy to code and quantify. So open-ended questions would add a highly qualitative component that doesn't mix well with structured interviews. Though, you can absolutely include some follow-up questions at the end of a structured interview to provide a bit of qualitative depth, but I would advise against mixing those into the main body of a structured interview. If you're interested in mixing open-ended questions into your interview, then it will start to reflect a semi-structured approach, which is probably the most common interview structure in qualitative research. So it really depends, in part, on what your goals are as an interviewer and researcher. I hope that helps! Good luck :)

[@risg4me]

came here to study, god distracted by the good looks 🙃