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Subject Psychology

Paper No and Title Paper no.3: Qualitative Methods

Module No and Title Module no. 17: Interview Method Part 1

Module Tag PSY_P3_M17

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Learning Outcomes
2. Introduction
3. Choosing Interview Method of Data Generation
3.1 Specific Uses of Interview Method
3.2 Limitations of Interview Method
3.3 Theoretical position underlying use of Qualitative Interview Method
4. Types of Qualitative Interview
4.1 Unstructured, Semi-structured and Structured Interview
4.2 Nondirective versus Directive Interview
4.3 Research Interview, Diagnostic Interview, and Job Interview4.4 Interview as
‘Excavation’ or ‘Co-Construction’?5. Conclusion

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1. Learning Outcomes

After studying this module, you shall be able to

 Know about the Qualitative Interview Method as a research tool.

 Learn about the advantages, disadvantages of the technique.

2. Introduction

This module introduces you to the concept of Qualitative Interview Method, explaining what it is
and how it can be a useful tool in research.

Definition:

Qualitative Interview is one of the methods to generate ‘qualitative data’. It is ‘inter-view’ that is
the view between the researcher and the participant that develops due to the interaction between
the two. This viewpoint is more reflective of the interview as a co-constructed process, although
it may be seen as an excavation process, where interviewer simply gathers the respondent’s ideas
on a topic. These approaches are discussed later.
It is an in-depth, semi-structured form of interview technique that has been defined as a
‘conversation with a purpose’ (Burgess, 1984).

The semi-structured interview provides an opportunity for the researcher to hear the participant
talk about a particular aspect of their life or experience. The questions asked by the researcher
function as triggers that encourage the participant to talk. So, although it is the interviewer’s
research question that drives the conversation between the researcher and the participant, this
style of interviewing is sometimes described as ‘non-directive’. The interviewer may be an
‘expert’ in the use of the method, but the interviewee is the ‘expert’ on his personal experiences
and opinions that the interviewer tries to elicit.

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In the layman terms, it is a Face-to-face conversation

between equals. The technique involves respect between
both the individuals (The Participant and The Interviewer).
Although it has often been said to be characterized by lack of power relation (that is, the
interviewer as authority and the participant as the ‘subject’ or the lesser knowledgeable of the two
people) between interviewer and interviewee, since power relation process may colors the
movement of the interview, this is only relative and not absolute absence of power in the hands of
the researcher. The researcher attempts to create a balance between giving direction to the
interview process by himself, and allowing the interviewer to guide how exactly the process
unfolds.

Thus, the Central Characteristics that define this approach are following:

1. Informal style. It takes the form of conversation or discussion with the participant instead
of following a very formal question-and-answer format.
2. Interview Schedule may not be necessarily present. Thus, it involves a thematic,
biographical or narrative approach catered around a topic. The researcher may not have
list of exact statements or framed questions to ask to the participants, but usually has an
interview guide containing broad range of topics, themes, or issues that need to be
covered.
3. Interaction generates data. This is the basic assumption of this method. Thus, qualitative
interview involves interaction between the researcher and the participant (in case of one-
to-one interaction such as in-depth interview or key informant interview) or several
participants (in case of larger groups, example ‘focus groups’).

3. Choosing Interview Method of Data Generation

There are dozens of ways to data generation in qualitative research. When the researcher has
decided on a research question, he goes on to consider the best method out of all the available
methods that can be used to find out what he needs to know. Although several different methods
can also be used to generate data, often only one may be used due to time constraint.

Choosing Interview Method of Data Generation:

It is used when the researcher is interested in understanding the way in which people experience
an event- the subjective feelings and cognitive aspects of an event for an individual, and the ways
in which individuals attribute meaning to their everyday experience. You may consider this
statement for selecting interview method- “If you want to know how people understand their
world and their live, why not talk to them?” (Kvale, 2009)

3.1 Specific Uses of Interview Method

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1. It is very useful method to capture the events and

activities that cannot be observed directly, which is
true for a lot of psychological phenomena.
2. It pictures a range of feelings, situations, and people. The context is clearly depicted.
3. The researcher can move in past and future of the situation and the context.
4. It can thus be used for settings and people that are not directly accessible.
5. Another advantage of this technique compared to others (like a survey) is that the since
the interviewer is present in front of the interviewee, he can explain if anything comes up
that the interviewee is unable to understand.
6. Interviews can be made longer than the material that requires self completion (like a
survey) since the presence of interviewer ensures that the interviewee does not leave half-
way, because the presence of interviewer keeps the participant motivated to continue
answering and not be bored and leave work incomplete.

Interviewing Process has importance of not just what is being said but also
for the gestures, glances, facial expressions, pauses, voice inflections,
halting statements and other nonverbal behaviors that also communicate a
response of the individual and may complement or contradict the answer
that the respondent says. This is another very important advantage of
interview method. The total personality of the interviewee is accessible to
interviewer along with his answers, which provides a very valuable source
to understanding several individual phenomena that may be searched.

3.2 Limitations of Interview Method

1. Unlike say, the observation method, interviews allow access to what people say and think
but not to what they do and often, actions may differ from what people say in a given
situation.
2. It is a time-consuming as interview is a one-on-one conversation, researcher may be able
to collect in-depth data on only few people in a given time constraint.
3. Data generation and analysis requires lots of efforts. The conversation is not just casual
chatting; researcher needs to elicit the responses from another active participant (the
interviewee) without making undue influence on the responses by the way of framing
his/her questions. It is difficult process to balance these two and may require a lot of
practice on part of the researcher.
4. The interviewee may try to deliberately manipulate his/her responses due to various
reasons, or s/he may do so unwillingly due to faulty perception, faulty memory, lack of
insight, or simply inability to articulate. In these situations, the interview as a technique

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has no certain way of checking whether the

responses are correct and controlling the extraneous
variables that may interact with the responses by that the participant gives.
5. Hebert Hyman (1949) studied the interaction processes involved in interviewing process
and found that interviewer at times approach the interviewee with certain expected
answers to their questions. At times, they may develop these on the basis of early or
incomplete responses. This is an interviewer bias that may distort the results without the
interviewer actually realizing that he has collected incorrect data.

3.3 Theoretical Position Underlying the use of Interview Method

1. When the ontological position of the researcher supports the use of this method. This
means that the researcher views people’s views interpretations, and experiences as
meaningful components of the social reality that the research is trying to explore.
2. When the epistemological position of the researcher supports the use of this method. This
means that the researcher views that by direct interaction with people and listening to
them, their experiences and views can be captured accurately as data.
This may also mean that the researcher views knowledge as dependent on the context, the
situation, and the interactions. Thus, according to this, each interview needs to be flexible
and sensitive to the specific dynamics of each interaction, such that each interaction is
unique and tailor-made on the spot. Here, same set of standardised questions will not be
used. The questions would be specific to each respondent in the semi-structured interview
format although these questions may be based on certain themes that are common to all
respondents.
3. When the researcher views social reality as complex. The researcher may be interested in
the in-depth accounts of people’s experiences not assume that the simple comparison of
numbers- like it is done in surveys- reflects the accurate understanding of the phenomena.
Thus, in-depth instead of surface understanding is emphasised. Here, when the researcher
compares data across several respondents, the comparison is not straightforward
differences or similarities between the people on same set of questions but, the overall
themes in answers of various respondents are analysed to obtain ‘conceptual’ similarities
or differences in data rather than straightforward empirical differences.
4. Researcher conceptualises himself/herself as active and reflexive participant in the
process of data generation rather than a neutral data collector. Thus, the researcher sees
himself and his own background and theoretical orientations as influencing the process of
interview and its analysis.
5. It may practically be not possible to gather the data that the researcher is looking for in
any other form.
6. When researcher’s ethical position is that interviewees should be given more freedom
when they are sharing their personal accounts. Thus, researcher may believe that the
structured and interviewer-guided interactions do not generate a fair or complete account
of the interviewee’s experiences.

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The qualitative research interview is the most common form

of systematic method used to generate data to understand
subjective, personal experiences and feelings of individuals in their social contexts. However, it
must be used with caution and the method of data collection must always be guided by the
research question that the researcher has in his hands.

4. Types Of Qualitative Interview

On a continuum, Research Interview can vary from being Highly Structured (which involves
asking each interviewee the same set of standardised questions in a fixed, unvarying order; used
often in large-sample surveys, not typically used by qualitative researchers who are more
concerned with an evocative communication of people’s life experiences, activities, emotions,
and identities: Hugh-Jones, S., 2010), through Semi-structured (involving preparation of
questions in advance, but with freedom for the interviewee to raise aspects that are not necessarily
anticipated in advance, that is, ones that are new and arise during the interview itself: Hugh-
Jones, S., 2010), to being Highly Unstructured/ Open Interview (uncontrolled).

In semi-structured interview, the qualitative researcher shows a commitment to understanding

what is important to interviewee rather than driving the interview along pre-determined route.
Thus, both the researcher and the respondent have greater freedom. The interviewers can be
flexible in their questioning, and respond in natural ways in the interaction, as long as they
broadly address the research question they set themselves (Hugh-Jones, S., 2010).

One can think of it as being a naturalistic form of questioning. Just like a ‘laboratory experiment’
is a controlled and artificial creation of situation, structured interview is very controlled form of
questioning. While semi-structured interview is a natural form of conversation that is relatively
less controlled and can take a variety of different courses instead of only a few already anticipated
forms.

Fig: 1

Another categorization of Interview Method is as follows:

1. The Non-directive Interview

It is also called an uncontrolled, or unguided, or unstructured interview. In this approach, the
interviewer does not follow a list or a system of predetermined questions. During the process, the
interviewer encourages the participants to narrate examples of their own concrete experiences

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with very little or sometimes no direction from the

interviewer. The interviewee can talk about any event-
whatever they personally think is significant to them in whatever way they choose to narrate, they
can provide their own interpretations of these events, talking in the order they themselves feel to
be appropriate.
Sometimes it has been criticized as losing direction where the participant may start talking about
things that seem irrelevant to the research questions and sometimes, certain aspects may be
completely untouched by one interviewee. However, this approach assumes that the interviewee
is the best judge of his/her own experiences and thus, what should be relevant or not relevant to a
topic should depend on the interviewees’ choice instead of being forced from the outside by what
the interviewer thinks.

2. The Directive Interview

This procedure is more standardized technique where attempts are made to fit responses of an
individual (in the form of his/her experiences) into a predetermined structure- in the form of a
question sequence that is constructed by the interviewer on the basis of earlier research findings
on the topic.
It has an advantage over the nondirective interview method in that it can be used with a very large
sample of population and may present an easier level of analysis when dealing with responses
since they may be less diverse in comparison to the nondirective approach where the questions to
be asked are not very specific and thus responses may vary more widely making them slightly
more challenging to analyse.

The common features across different forms of Qualitative Interview are the following:
a) The focus remains on the subjective accounts of individual experience.
b) They are ‘exploratory’ means that they do not presume that all of the issues, or ways of
experiencing them, are known in advance.
c) The basic theoretical orientation in these families of methods to conduct qualitative
interview is that they acknowledge that the human experience has diverse qualities and
meanings, that the interview can explore these and that they can tell us something
important about human behaviour (Holstein & Gubrium, 1995).

TYPES OF INTERVIEW
It can be one-on-one interview between researcher and respondent.
There can also be Interview in groups, like a Focus Group.

Interviews can also be categorized according to their functions as:

1. Research Interview
Its function is to gather data on a particular subject chosen by the researcher as the area of study.
This present module focuses on this type of interview.

2. Diagnostic Interview

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It occurs in a hospital setting where a physician or a

psychiatrist asks questions to a patient to have an in-depth
understanding of the problem that the patient has. Forexample, a doctor talking to a patient to
determine whether s/he has depression.

3. Job Interview
The purpose of this type of interview is to assess the suitability of a candidate for a required job.
These selection interviews focus more on the personal attributes of the participants, such as
personality, physical characteristics, and nonverbal behavior.

4.4 Types of Interview- Interview as ‘Excavation’ or ‘Co-Construction’?

The interview process and outcome can be understood in different ways, that is, when two
researchers use interview method to obtain data, they may still differ in the whether they believe
that this data (verbatim response of the respondent) is just some thoughts and experiences that
were always there in the respondent’s head and have been just taken from him, or whether they
are not always constant across situations and people with whom they are shared. Next, we share
these two different conceptualizations:

1. Interview as Excavation

Many researchers may believe that people have some information (attitude/ experience/
memories) that remains in their head that is it is ‘pre-existing’ (already formed and present in the
participant in a form that can be just taken out of him by making him talk), rigid and
‘unchanging’, and easily accessible or available to be passed on to the interviewer.
This view reflects the ‘positivistic notions of science’. Thus, the interviewer is seen as a neutral,
objective individual who actively collects information present with interviewee, who is rather a
passive, unchanging entity.

ADD ANIMATION- INTERVIEWER TAKES OUT/ EXTRACTS ATTITUDES FROM THE

RESPONDENT’S HEAD.

Many researchers don’t agree with the assumptions of this view now.

2. Interview as Co-constructed

While the previous view was more prevalent earlier, this is the second view that is more a
contemporary view.
According to this view, the interview method relies on interaction between two people. Thus, to
say that one person is less involved (that is the interviewee is passive) in comparison to the other

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(the interviewer is active but neutral) is not a correct

statement. This basic assumption is a mis-representation of
the interactional nature of the interviewing process (Dingwall, 1977).

Secondly, the ‘information’ is not constant and unvarying as is assumed. When the information is
passed on, it can be presented in many different ways, that is, we can choose to talk about thing in
certain way. Furthermore, how we choose to talk about things may be influenced by several
factors that are outside complete control of the interviewer. Example, the same story of your
experiences in your college will vary depending upon whether another friend, your grandmother,
or your neighbors are asking about it. Thus the question ‘Explain your experience of college life’
will be answered very differently ADD AN EXAMPLE OF THE ANSWERS HERE
depending upon who is asking, what relation do you have with that person, for what purpose s/he
is asking, how you are feeling at that particular day, how you want to be seen in the eyes of the
person and so on. Thus, the information you share is dependent on the context and is not that
objective. The interviewee is not passive and the interviewer is very much influencing what the
interviewee says. Thus, both the people involved in the interaction are active in co-producing the
interview data.
Thus, this view is that the assumptions of the ‘interview as excavation’ are incorrect. Interview
process is a form of social interaction and the way the information is presented depends upon
interactional context that cannot be entirely controlled.
Now, if it is agreed that people can talk about the same thing in different ways at different times,
and people could tell any version of events or experiences they wish , then what can we say is
real? (Hugh-Jones, S., 2010). There are many approaches to answer this question. One of the
widely accepted approaches is called ‘Social Constructionism’. According to this, people can
generate very different accounts of the same event, experience, attitude, belief, etc. in different
contexts of interaction with various kinds of people; but these accounts are not generated in
entirely inconsistent or in a very chaotic manner (unless they are deliberately lying to create false
accounts due to lack of rapport with interviewer or due to some other motivation to do so). The
accounts can be different in expressing but there is some consistency to the ways in which people
think and feel about these experiences- this is the assumption of the social constructionist
approach. For example, the ‘experience of college life’ would remain ‘good overall’ if you felt so
in college, although the details that you give to explain this ‘good overall’ experience (attending
nice parties/ helpful teachers/ few good friends) may vary.

AN EXAMPLE
In the following example, Interviewer responds to a point that the respondent had made about
friends making college life a good experience by asking how she made friends. The following
account might have been very different had the interviewer focused on the other comments made
in respondents statement about experience of ‘apprehension’ in college life or had he focused on
the importance of experiencing ‘cultural fests’ in college. Any of these have been correct and
there is n wrong way, but the choice among these depends on what is the research question and
what the interviewer is looking for. Thus, the following data might have been very different
depending upon the interviewer and questions she asked and depending upon the statements made
by respondent. This shows that both the people are active in co-producing the interview data; and
there are multiple ways to answer any one question.

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Interviewer: So what were the good experiences that you

had in the college?

Respondent: My experience with people has always been good. I make friends easily. Although I
had a little apprehension in the beginning because I joined the college a little late in the term. So I
was worried I might not be able to make many friends. But then everything became fine very
soon. I enjoyed college fests and everything eventually with friends.

Interviewer: How did it become fine?

Respondent: When we worked in smaller groups for our practicals, people come closer. You get
to know each other and then you become friends with people who are like you, you know..?

Interviewer: Alright! so working together in small groups made you come closer with people and
more friends means happier college life?

Respondent: Yes, for me a few good friends are a big part of college experience apart from
academics….

Conclusion
Qualitative Interview is a face-to-face conversation with the purpose of recording responses by
individuals to gain understanding on a research question. Researcher should choose this
particular method of data collection if he has theoretical conceptions that the social reality of a
phenomenon can be best captured by people’s own subjective account of the experience.
The method is useful in eliciting the individual’s subjective experiences and allows a greater
depth of data including a lot of nonverbal behavior expression of the interviewee; however, it is
time-consuming process that is difficult to carry out and may only elicit opinions which may
differ from the actual behavior of the participants in a given situation. The interview format can
vary from being highly structured, semi-structured, to unstructured depending upon the research
question, researcher’s preference and other practical aspects like time constrain, amount of data to
be collected, etc.

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Module no. 17: Interview Method Part 1