Fieldwork Methods & Issues - Interviews

Kerry went through a few qualitative data collection techniques today, focusing mainly on interviews, and touching briefly on focus groups, field notes, and participant observation. I found this session to be particularly useful because I will be conducting structured interviews for my research project. While my interview is made up of pre-determined questions and will be replicated for each interviewee, most of them are open-ended, which may lead to unnecessary/additional information since the interviewee is free to respond. Hence, it is necessary that I follow proper interview procedures and keep the conversation centred around the topic of interest.

Interviews

There are three fundamental types of research interviews: (1) structured, (2) semi-structured, and (3) unstructured. As mentioned earlier, for the purpose of my qualitative research project, I'll be adopting the structured interview approach. I chose interviews as the data collection method because face-to-face interviews are particularly apt when the depth of meaning is of importance and the current research is primarily focused on gaining insights and achieving a better understanding (Gillham, 2000; Ritchie & Lewis, 2003). Additionally, given the limited time and resources for this course, structured interviews will facilitate the data collection and analysis process. This is because: (1) regulation and standardisation: all respondents are asked the same questions in the same manner, making it easy to replicate the discussion; and (2) since I will be using NVivo 10 to code the collected data, the process of creating a coding structure to subsequently code the data will also be easier.

In the field of self-efficacy beliefs, conducting one-to-one interviews is probably the best way to elicit detailed responses of the interviewee's successes, failures, and experiences which contribute to and sustain his/her self-efficacy beliefs. Researchers in the area of self-efficacy have agreed that studies have mostly been quantitative, hence the need for more qualitative inquiries to provide richer descriptions via narrative (Zeldin, Britner, & Pajares, 2008).

In class, we had a short role-play in which Kerry was the interviewer and I the interviewee. On hindsight, I was very lucky to have been part of the role-play as I got to experience how it felt to be interviewed, which made me aware of the potential issues that an interviewer might overlook. One important aspect which I have never encountered was the fact that as the interviewer/researcher, I am actually the learner and not the expert. In other words, I am interested in the interviewee's opinions, experience, and feelings, so even if they differ from mine, I am not in any position to judge, criticise, or disagree. Kerry first portrayed the role of a "bad" interviewer by interrupting me (the interviewee) as I spoke and then disagreeing with one of my opinions. In both cases, I either stumbled or became very cautious of my subsequent responses - to which Kerry pointed out that because of his insensitivity, the interview has become a tense affair. Consequently, the quality of the data collected  may be comprised, since the interviewee's responses will be affected.

Kerry subsequently went through how we could become "good" interviewers who facilitated interviews and enhanced the quality of the responses, instead of quelling the interviewee's responses and potentially diminishing the quality of discussion. He provided a few tips on how interviewers could go about doing so:

• Don’t speak too much - the interviewer should not be dominating the conversation. He/she should be a listener, since the interviewee's responses are most important.
• Reflective listening - a communication technique involving two steps: (1) seek to understand the interviewee's idea, and (2) offer idea back to interviewee. Both steps help ensure that the response/opinion/idea of the interviewee has been understood.
• Rephrasing - "So you are saying that..." can help to clarify any vague ideas or responses from the interviewee. 

I have carried out two pilot interviews and three actual interviews thus far, but I struggled in one instance when the cafe was too noisy. For a number of questions, I could not hear and understand my interviewee's responses. Additionally, the quality of the recording was muffled. I do not intend to include that interview, and will instead be interviewing an additional person just to compensate for this interview.

References

Opdenakker, R. (2006), "Advantages and disadvantages of four interview techniques in qualitative research", Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung/Forum: Qualitative Social Research, Vol. 7, No. 4, pp. 11.

Zeldin, A. L., Britner, S. L., & Pajares, F. (2008), "A comparative study of the self‐efficacy beliefs of successful men and women in mathematics, science, and technology careers", Journal of Research in Science Teaching, Vol. 45, No. 9, pp. 1036—1058.

Other helpful links/references:

For Interviews

Open- versus close-ended questions (http://polaris.gseis.ucla.edu/jrichardson/dis220/openclosed.htm)

5 types of interviews: structured, semi-structured, unstructured, informal, and focus groups (http://www.qualres.org/HomeInte-3595.html)

Strengths and weaknesses of semi-structured interviews (http://www.academia.edu/1561689/The_use_of_semi-structured_interviews_in_qualitative_research_strengths_and_weaknesses)

Gillman, B. (2000), The Research Interview, Continuum, London.

Kvale, S. (1996), InterViews: An Introduction to Qualitative Research Interviewing, Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA.

Ritchie, J., & Lewis, J. (2003), Qualitative Research Practice: A Guide for Social Science Students and Researchers, Sage Publications, London.

Rubin, H. J., & Rubin, I. S. (2004), Qualitative Interviewing: The Art of Hearing Data, 2nd Edition, Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA.