;1 SEVEN r.

CONDUCTING AN INTERVIEW

W e now tum to the actual process of producing knowledge through an

interview. This chapter exemplifies interviewing by means of a
demonstration interview, and discusses the interaction and the questioning in
the interview. We take up preparations for an interview, such as setting the
stage for the interview and prepaiing a sc1ipt in the form of an interview guide.
We also deal in some detail with researcher questions, interviewer questions,
the linguistic forms of questions, and the art of second questions. We do not
propose any general rules for interviewing, but describe some of the tech-
niques of the interview craft. With the techniques of interviewing mastered,
the interviewer may concentrate on the subject and the subject matter of the
interview: "Only ... a reflex reflexivity based on a craft, on a sociological
'feel' or 'eye,' allows one to perceive and monitor on the spot, as the interview
is actually taking place, the effects of the social structure within which it is
occurring" (Bourdieu et al., 1999, p. 608).
The reseai·ch interview is an interpersonal situation, a conversation
between two partners about a theme of mutual interest. In the interview,
knowledge is created "inter" the points of view of the interviewer and the
interviewee. The conversations with the subjects are usually the most engag-
ing stage of an interview inquiry. The personal contact and the continually new
insights into the subjects' lived world make interviewing an exciting and
enriching experience. In this chapter, we show in some detail the application
of a semi-structured life world interview, which we already addressed in

123
124 SEVEN STAGES OF AN INTERVIEW INVESTIGATION

Chapter 2 in relation to phenomenological philosophy. In the following chap-

ter, we present an overview of a variety of other interview forms by means of
short examples. The semi-structured life world interview seeks to obtain
descriptions of the life world of the interviewee with respect to interpreting the
meaning of the described phenomena; it will have a sequence of themes to be
covered, as well as some suggested questions. Yet at the same time there is
openness to changes of sequence and forms of questions in order to follow up
the specific answers given and the stories told by the subjects. The open phe-
nomenological approach of a life world interview to learning from the inter-
viewee is well expressed in this introduction to anthropological interviewing:

I want to understand the world from your point of view. I want to know what
you know in the way you know it. I want to understand the meaning of your
experience, to walk in your shoes, to feel things as you feel them, to explain
things as you explain them. Will you become my teacher and help me under-
stand? (Spradley, 1979, p. 34)

A CLASS INTERVIEW ABOUT GRADES

Below is an interview that the first author conducted before a class at an inter-
view workshop at Saybrook Institute, San Francisco, in 1987. Although the
interview situation is artificial, it gives in a condensed form a fair picture of a
semi-structured life world interview. The interview is reproduced shortened
and verbatim, with only a few minor changes in linguistic style.

Steinar I will now attempt to demonstrate the mode of understanding in

Kvale 0: a qualitative research interview, and I need a volunteer. It will be
a rather neutral topic, it's not a psychoanalytic depth interview.
The interview will take about 10 minutes and afterwards we will
discuss it here.

A woman in her 30s volunteers.

SKl: Thank you for your willingness to participate and be inter-

viewed here . 1 have been studying the effects of grades in
Europe for some years, and now I'm interested in the meaning
of grades for American students and pupils. I want to first ask
you a maybe difficult question. If you 'II try to remember back
Conducting an lnte111iew 125

when you went to p1imary school, are you able to remember the
first time you ever had any grades?

Student 1: I remember a time, but it might not have been the first time.

SK 2: Let's take that time. Can you te)l me what happened?

Student 2: I did very well. I remember getting a red star on the top of my
paper with 100, and that stands o_ut in my memory as exciting
and interesting.

SK3: Yes. Is it only the red star that stands out, or what happened
around it?

Student 3: (Laughter) I remember the color very very well. It was shining.
I remember getting rewarded all the way around. I remember
being honored by my classmates and the teacher and my parents-
them making a fuss. And some of the other ldds not responding
so well who didn't do so well. It was mixed emotions, but gen-
era11y I remember the celebration aspect.

SK 4: You said mixed emotions. Are you able to describe them?

Student 4: Well, at that time I was the teacher's pet and some people would
say, "Aha, maybe she didn't earn it, maybe it's just because the
teacher likes her so well." And some kind of stratification occur-
ring because I was not only the teacher's pet, but I was maybe
getting better grades and it created some kind of dissonance
within my classmates' experience of me socially.

SK 5: Could you desclibe that dissonance?

Student 5: Well, I think there's always some kind of demarcation between

students who do well and students who don't do as well, and
that's determined, especially in the primary grades, by the num-
ber that you get on top of your paper.

SK 6: Was this early in school? Was it first grade?

Student 6: Third grade.

SK 7: Third grade. Well, that's a long time ago. Are you able to
remember what they said? Or .. .
126 SEVEN STAGES OF AN JNTERVIEW INVESTIGATION

Student 7: No, it was more feeling . . .

SK 8: The feeling ...

Student 8: Yeah, it was the feeling of, I'd put some space between me and
the peer group . ..

SK 9: Because of your good grades ...

Student 9: Yeah.

SK 10: Did you try to do anything about that?

Student 10: I djdn ' t do o well after that. It really affected me in a large way.
I wanted to be with them more than I wanted to be with the
teacher, or on the teacher's good list. So it was significant.

SKll: It was a significant experience (the student said yes)-to you, and
you got in a conflict between teacher and your peers, or you experi-
enced it as a conflict. (Yes.) Did your parents enter into the situation?

Student 11: Not that I recall , because it was ... to me it was a significant
alteration in how I experienced grades. To them it was maybe
just a little bit less. But it was still satisfactory, still acceptable,
and I was still rewarded in general terms for doing well and not
failing. So that dichotomy was respected.

SK12: That kind of dissonance between say loyalty to your teacher and
the affection of the classmates, is that a situation you have been
into other times? Does it remind you of ... other .. . ?

Student 12: It keeps repeating itself in my ufe, yes . Whenever I start taking
my friends or my peer group for granted, I get some kind of
message saying, Huh-uh, what's more important to me? And
what's more important to me is my friendships.

SK 13: Um-hmm. That is the basic issue . . .

You mentioned several times before "rewarded"-what do you

mean by "rewarded"?

Student 13: Oh, getting to stay up to watch TV when I was in thfrd grade,
maybe; or getting to go some place or stay out later or maybe
just getting ice cream, some food ...
Conducting an Interview 127

[The remainder of the interview, omitted here for reasons of space, went on
about the importance of the student's friendships in college, and it ended in the
foJlowing exchange.]

SK26: Okay-are there any more things you would want to say before
we end the interview?

Student 26: No, I don' t think so.

SK27: Okay, thank you very much for your cooperation.

[The interview was then discussed in class, as excerpted below.]

SK28: How did you experience being interviewed about it [the grades]
up in front here?

Student 27: I thought it was a really good opportunity for me to explore that.
I haven't even thought about it in a long time, but I knew from
therapy that I've had recently that was a big time in my life when
I was closer to my teacher than I was to my friends and I've had
to face that a lot. It was fun for me to talk about it 'cause I'm
pretty clear about what happened.

When we look at the knowledge brought forth in this short interview pas-
sage, several important aspects of the social effects of grading appear-
primarily a pervasive conflict about her loyalty to her teacher or friends; being
a teacher's pet getting high grades created a dissonance in her classmates'
experiences of her and put a space between her and the peer group, a disso-
nance that kept repeating itself in her life, with her friendships being more
important (Student 3-5).
The general approach of this demonstration interview is in line with a phe-
nomenological life world interview and its mode of understanding as discussed
in twelve aspects in Box 2.2. The way of producing knowledge in this interview
was inspired by Rogers 's client-centered questioning. Thematically, the inter-
viewer had, in the interview guide, wanted to address meanings of grading from
three theoretical positions mentioned earlier-the Rogerian, Freudian, and
Skinnerian approaches (Chapter 6). Thus, when the student described "mixed
emotions" (3) and "it was more the feeling" (7), the interviewer sought, in line
with a Rogerian approach, to encourage further elaboration of the feeling and
128 SEVEN STAGES OF AN INTERVIEW INVESTIGATION

the mixed emotions by repeating these very words (SK 4 and 8). A Freudian
approach in a broad sense was t.Iied by asking, "Did your parents enter into the
situation?" (SK 11) and, later, whether the loyalty conflict between teacher
and pupils reminded her of other situations (SK 12). The student's answer con-
firmed that this kept repeating itself in her life, but she did not bring up fam-
ily relations. The interviewer here had in mind her grade/loyalty conflict as
possibly reactivating childhood conflicts of jealousy and sibling rivalry for the
affection of parents. Early in the interview the student (3) had mentioned rein-
forcements for good grades, uch as being honored by her classmates, teacher,
and parents. A Skinnerian reinforcement approach was pursued by the inter-
viewer (SK 13) in probing the meaning of the student's term "rewarded"
(3 and 13). The student then told about being rewarded for good grades as a
child by getting to stay up late to watch TV or by being given ice cream (13).

SETTING THE INTERVIEW STAGE

The setting of the in terview stage should encourage the interviewees to

desc1ibe their points of view on their lives and worlds . The first few minutes
of an interview are decisive. The interviewees will want to have a grasp of the
interviewer before they allow themselves to talk freely and expose thei r expe-
riences and feelings to a stranger. A good contact is established by attentive lis-
tening, with the interviewer showing interest, understanding, and respect for
what the subject says, and with an interviewer at ease and clear about what he
or ~he wants to know.
The interview is introduced by a briefing in which the interviewer defines
the situation for the subject, briefly tells about the purpose of the interview, the
use of a sound recorder, and so on and asks if the subject has any questions
before starting the interview. Further information can preferably wait until the
interview is over. The demonstration interview about grades was introduced
with a briefing about the purpose and context of the interview before (SK 0)
and at the start of the interview (SK l).
At the end of an interview there may be some tension or anx iety, as the
subject has been open about personal and sometimes emotional experiences
and may be wondering about the purpose and later use of the interview. There
may perhaps also be feelings of emptiness; the subject has given much infor-
mation about his or her life and may not have received anything in return. This
Conducting an Interview 129

being said, a common experience after research interviews is that the subjects
have experienced the interview as genuinely enriching, have enjoyed talking
freely with an attentive listener, and have sometimes obtained new insights
into important themes of their life worlds.
The initial briefing should be followed up with a debriefing after the inter-
view. The demonstration interview was thus rounded off by a debriefing before
ending the interview by asking if the student had anything more to say (SK 26),
and also after the interview by asking the student about her experience of the
interview (SK 28), an invitation this student accepted by commenting further
on the interview theme in relation to her therapy and her biography.
An interview may also be rounded off with the interviewer mentioning
some of the main points that he or she has learned from the interview. The sub-
ject might then want to comment on this feedback. After this the interaction
may be concluded by the interviewer saying, for example, "I have no further
questions. Is there anything else you would like to bring up, or ask about,
before we finish the interview?" This gives the subject an additional opportu-
nity to deal with issues he or she has been thinking or worrying about during
the interview. The debriefing is likely to continue after the sound recorder has
been turned off. After a first gasp of relief, some interviewees may then bring
up topics they did not feel safe raising with the sound recorder on. And the
interviewer can now, insofar as the subject is interested, tell more about the
purpose and design of the interview study. If new and interesting topics come post-interview,
de briefing
up after the sound recorder has been turned off, the interviewer should con- process and how
to handle it
sider if and how this material can be used in the further analysis and reporting
of the interview. The interviewee may feel that it is pmt of the agreement that
the postinterview conversation should not become part of the further research
process, but, at the same time, it is not unusual that important things are said
here, if the respondent talks more freely, throwing new light on the research
interview itself. From an ethical point of view, the interviewer ought to ask the
interviewee for permission to report the topics that emerge in the informal con-
versation after the interview.
The live interview situation, with the interviewee's voice and facial and
bodily expressions accompanying the statements, provides a richer access to
the subjects' meanings than the transcribed texts will do later on. It may be
worthwhile for the interviewer to set aside 10 minutes or more of quiet time
after each interview to reflect on what has been learned from the particular
interview. These immediate impressions, based on the interviewer's empathic
130 SEVEN STAGES OF AN INTERVIEW INVESTIGATION

access to the meanings communicated in the live interview interaction, may-

in the form of notes or simply recorded onto the sound recorder- provide a
valuable context for the later analysis of transcripts.
If an interview is to be rep01ted, perhaps quoted at length, then the
researcher should attempt when feasible to make the social context explicit
during the interview, and also the emotional tone of the interaction, so that
what is said is understandable to the readers who have not witnessed the lived
bodily presence of the interview situation. Much is to be learned from jour-
nalists and novelists about how to use questions and replies to also convey the
setting and mood of a conversation. A heightened attention to the numerous
interviews that surround us in the contemporary interview society, such as
radio and television interviews, can sensitize interviewers to the dynamics of
face-to-face conversations. Although few of these interviews are qualitative
research interviews (some broadcasted journalistic interviews do, however,
resemble research interviews), they can still alert the careful listener/viewer to
the importance and effects of body language, tone of voice, types of questions,
empathic versus confronting interviewer styles, and so on.

SCRIPTING THE INTERVIEW

The interview stage is usually prepared with a sctipt. An interview guide is a

script, which structures the course of the interview more or less tightly. The
guide may merely contain some topics to be covered, or it can be a detailed
sequence of carefully worded questions. For the semi-structured type of inter-
view discussed here, the guide will include an outline of topics to be covered,
with suggested questions. It will depend on the particular study whether the
questions and their sequence are trictly predetermined and binding on the
interviewers, or whether it is the interviewers' judgment and tact that decides
how closely to stick to the guide and how much to follow up the interviewees'
answers and the new directions they may open up .
Interviews differ in their openness of purpose; the interviewer can explain
the purpose and pose direct questions from the start, or can adopt a roundabout
approach, with indirect questions, and reveal the purpose only when the inter-
view is over. The latter approach is called a funnel shaped interview-an
example of which would be an interviewer interested in exploring cultural atti-
tudes in a community who starts by asking generally about the neighborhood,
different
purpose of
interview
according to
the opennes
Conducting an Interview 131

goes on to ask if there are many immigrants, and ends up specifically asking
about attitudes to their Muslim neighbors. The application of such indirect
interview techniques needs be considered in relation to the ethical guidelines
of informed consent.
An interview question can be evaluated with respect to both a thematic
and a dynamic dimension : thematically with regard to producing knowledge,
and dynamically with regard to the interpersonal relationship in the interview.
A good interview question should contribute thematically to knowledge
pre>duction and dynamically to promoting a good interview interaction.
Thematically, the questions relate to the "what" of an interview, to the the-
oretical conceptions of the research topic, and to the subsequent analysis of the
interview. The questions will differ depending on whether the researcher is
interviewing for spontaneous descriptions of the lived world, interviewing for
coherent narratives, or interviewing for a conceptual analysis of the person's
understanding of a topic. The more spontaneous the interview procedure, the
more likely one is to obtain unprompted, lively, and unexpected answers from
the interviewees. And on the other hand: The more strnctured the interview
situation is, the easier the later conceptual structuring of the interview by
analysis will be.
In line with the principle of "pushing forward ," the later stage of interview
analysis should be taken into account when prepaiing the interview questions.
If the analysis will involve coding the answers, then during the interview the
researcher should continually clarify the meanings of the answers with respect
to the categories to be used later. If a narrative analysis will be employed, then
the researcher should give the suhjects ample freedom and time to unfold their
own stories, and follow up with questions to shed light on the main episodes
and characters in their nan-atives.
Dynamically, the questions pertain to the "how" of an interview; they
should promote a positive interaction, keep the flow of the conversation going,
and stimulate the subjects to talk about their experiences and feelings. The
questions should be easy to understand, short, and devoid of academic lan-
guage. A conceptually good thematic research question need not be a good
dynamic interview question. Novice interviewers may be tempted to start with
direct conceptual questions. The sociologist Sennett thus received the follow-
ing response when as a young student he used a rather direct approach when
interviewing members of the Boston elite:" 'My what, young man?' an elderly
Boston matron replied when I asked her, point-blank over tea in the Somerset
132 SEVEN STAGES OF AN INTERVIEW INVESTIGATION

Club, to describe her identity. I had just made the tyro interviewer's error of
assuming that frontal attack is the best way to elicit information from others"
(2004, p. 41).
When preparing an interview, it may be useful to develop two interview
guides, one with the project's thematic research questions and the other with
interview questions to be posed, which takes both the thematic and the
dynamic dimensions into account. The researcher questions are usually for-
mulated in a theoretical language, whereas the interviewer questions should be
expressed in the everyday language of the interviewees.
Table 7.1 depicts the translation of thematic research questions in the
grading study into interview questions that could provide thematic knowledge
and also contribute dynamically to a natural conversational flow. The academic

Table 7.1 Research Questions and Interview Questions

Researcher Question.s Interviewer Questions

Do you find the subjects you learn

important?

Which fo rm of learning Do you find learning

motivation dominates in - - -- --- interesting in itself?
high school?

What is your main purpose in

going to high school?

Do the grades promote an Have you experienced a conflict

external, instrumental <f---- - - - - between what you wanted to read
motivation at the expense (study) and what you had to read to
of an intrinsic interest obtain a good grade?
motivation for learning?

Does learning for grades Have you been rewarded with money
socialize to working for ~ foe gotting gnnd g<odcs?
wages?

Do you see any connection

between money and grades?
Conducting an Interview 133

research questions, such as questions about inttinsic and extrinsic motivation,

needed to be translated into an easygoing, colloquial form to generate sponta-
neous and rich descriptions. The abstract wording of the research questions
would hardly lead to off-the-cuff answers from high school pupils. One
research question can be investigated through several interview questions, thus
obtaining rich and varied info1mation by approaching a topic from several
angles. And one interview question might provide answers to several research
questions.
The roles of the "why," "what," and "how" questions differ in the case
of research questions and interview questions. When designing an 'interview
project, the "why" and "what" questions should be asked and answered
before the question of "how" is posed. In the interview situation, the prior-
ity changes; here the main questions should normally be in a descriptive
form : "What happened and how did it happen?" "How did you feel then?"
"What did you experience?" and the like. The aim is to elicit spontaneous
descriptions from the subjects rather than to get their own, more or less spec-
ulative explanations of why something took place. Many "why" questions in
an interview may lead to an overreflected intellectualized interview, and per-
haps also evoke memories of oral examinations. "Why" questions about the
subjects' reasons for their actions may, nevertheless, be important in their
own right, and when posed, should preferably be postponed until toward the
end of the interview.
The question of why the subjects experience and act as they do is primar-
ily a task for the researcher to evaluate, and the interviewer may here go
beyond the subjects' self-understanding. An analogy to a doctor's diagnosis
may be clarifying. The doctor does not start by asking the patient why he or
she is sick, but rather asks the patient what is wrong, what he or she is feeling
and what the symptoms are. On the basis of the information from the patient
interview, and from other methods of investigation, the doctor then makes a
diagnosis of which illness is Wcely. For both the doctor and the interview
researcher there are cases where it is in1portant to know the subject's own
explanations of his or her condition and to ask questions about why. The pri-
mary task for both the doctor and the interviewer, however, remains that of
obtaining descriptions so that they will have relevant and reliable material
from which to draw their interpretations.
In addition to paying attention to the thematic and dynamic aspects of the
questions, the i_nterviewer should also try to keep in mind the later analysis,
134 SEVEN STAGES OF AN INTERVIEW INVESTIGATION

verification, and reporting of the interviews. Interviewers who know what

they are asking about, and why they are asking, will attempt to clarify the
meanin gs relevant to the proj ect during the interview. Such attempts at dis-
ambiguation of interviewee's statements will provide a more secure ground
for the later analysis. These efforts of meaning clarification during the inter-
view may also communicate to the subject that the researcher is actually lis-
tening to, and is interested in, what he or she is saying. Ideally the testing of
hypotheses and of interpretations is finished at the end of the interview, with
the interviewer's hypotheses and interpretations verified, falsified,
or refined.

INTERVIEWER QUESTIONS

The interviewer's questions should be brief and simple. The introductory ques-
tion may concern a concrete situation; thus the demonstration interview was
opened with a question of whether the student remembered the first time she
ever had any grades (SK J). The dimensions of grading introduced in her
answer were then followed up in the remainder of the interview; note the par-
allel here to the structure of the phenomenological interview about learning
presented in Chapter 2.
The interview researcher is his, or her, own research tool. The inter-
viewer's ability to sense the immediate meaning of an answer, and the hori-
zon of possible meanings that it opens up, is decisive. This, again, requires
knowledge of and interest in the resem·ch theme and the human interaction
of the interview, as well as familiarity with modes of questioning, in order
for the interviewer to devote his or her attention to the interview subject and
the interview topic. The questions may vary for different subjects. Kinsey
and his colleagues, whose research we discus ed in the previous chapter,
found that open questions provided the fullest answers and that
"Standardized questions do not bring standardized answers, for the same
question means different things to different people. In order to have ques-
tions mean the same thing to different people, they must be modified to fit
the vocabulary, the educational background, and the comprehension of each
subject" (1948, p. 52; see also Shaffer and Elkins, 2005, for a brief presen-
tation of Kinsey's mode of interviewing).
Conducting an Tnterview 135

A. Introductory Questions. "Can you tell me about ... ?"; " Do you
remember an occasion when . .. ?"; "What happened in the episode
you mentioned?"; and "Cou ld you describe in as much detail as possi-
ble a situation in w hich learning occurred for you?" Such opening ques-
tions may yield spontaneous, rich descriptions where the subjects
themselves provide what they have experienced as the main aspects of
the phenomena investigated.

B. Follow-up Q uestions. The subjects' answers may be extended through the

curious, persistent, and critical attitude of the interviewer. This can be
done through direct questioning of w hat has j ust been said. Also a mere
nod, or "mm," or just a pause can invite the subject to go on with the
description. Repeating significant words of an answer can lead to further
elaboration. Interviewers can train themselves to notice " red lights" in the
answers- such as unusual terms, strong intonations, and the like-which
may signal a whole complex of topics important to the subject.

C. Probing Questions. "Could you say someth ing more about that?"; "Can
you give a more detailed description of what happened?"; "Do you
have further examples of thi s?" The interv iewer here pursues the
answers, probing their conten t, but w ithout stati ng what dimens ions are
to be taken into account.

D. Specifying Questions. The interviewer may also fo llow up with more oper-
ational izing questions, for instance: "What did you actually do when you
felt a mounting anxiety?"; " How did your horly re;:wt?" In an interview
w ith many general statements, the interviewer can attempt to get more
precise descriptions by asking, " Have you also experienced this yourself?"

E. Direct Questions. The interviewer here directly introduces topi cs and

dimensions, for examp le: " Have you ever received money for good
grades?" "When you mention competition, do you t hen think of a
sportsmanl ike or a destructive competition?" Such direct questions may
preferably be postponed until the later parts of the interview, after the
subjects have given their own spontaneous descriptions and thereby
indi cated which aspects of the phenomena are central to them.

(Continued)
136 SEVEN STAGES OF AN INTERVIEW INVESTIGATION

(Continued)

F. Indirect Questions. Here the interviewer may apply projective ques-

tions such as "How do you believe other pupils regard the competition
for grades?" The answer may refer directly to the attitudes of others; it
may also be an indirect statement of the pupil's own attitude, which he
or she does not state directly. Careful further questioning will be nec-
essary here to interpret the answer.

G. Structuring Questions. The interviewer is responsible for the course of

the interview and should indicate when a theme has been exhausted.
The interviewer may directly and politely break off long answers that
are irrelevant to the investigation, for example by briefly stating his or
her understanding of an answer, and then saying, "I would now like to
introduce another topic: . .. "

H. Silence. Rather than making the interview a cross-examination by con-

tinually firing off questions, the research interviewer can take a lead
from therapists in employing silence to further the interview. By allow-
ing pauses in the conversation the subjects have ample time to associ-
ate and reflect and then break the silence themselves with significant
information.

I. Interpreting Questions. The degree of interpretation may involve merely

rephrasing an answer, such as " You then mean that ... ?" or an attempt
at clarification, such as " Is it correct that you feel that . .. ?" or "Does
the expression ... cover what you have just expressed?" There may also
be a more direct i11Lerpretation of what the pupil has said; for example,
" Is it correct that your main anxiety about the grades concerns the reac-
tion from your parents?"

Box 7 .1 depicts some main types of questions that may be useful, several of
which were applied in the demonstration interview. The introductory question,
asking about a specific episode of grading (SK 1/Question type A) ,
hit home, and the first two thirds of the interview were mainly a follow up (B) of
the student's answer (Student 2) about the "red star." The term, and probably also
her voice and facial expression, had indicated that this was a symbol of some sig-
nificant experience. The interviewer' follow-up question, repeating "red star"
(SK 3/B), led to an emotional response rich in information (Student 3).
Conducting an Interview 137

Continued probing, repeating another significant expression-"mixed

emotions"-and probing for further description (SK 4/B and C) opened up to
a basic conflict for the subject between loyalty to the teacher or to her peers .
This theme was pursued until the concluding student remark, "And what's
more important to me is my friendships" (12) . In some of the answers in this
sequence, the interviewer overheard potentially significant expressions like
"demarcation" and "space" (Student 5 and 8), and instead of following them
up, posed specifying (SK 6/D) and interpreting (SK 9/I) questions.
The majority of questions in this interview were probing (C)- often by
repeating significant words from the student's answers to the few direct ques -
tions about episodes and effects of grading. There were a few interpreting
questions, as when early in the interview a direct interpretation of the student's
statement (8) "Because of your good grades?" (SK 9/I) was immediately con-
firmed by a "Yeah" (Student 9). A later meaning-clarifying question "What do
you mean by 'rewarded'?"(SK 13/I) led to descriptions of specific rewards,
such as getting ice cream or staying up to watch TV (Student 13).
There were also answers, which were not followed up on, such as the stu-
dent's emphasizing "What's most important to me is friendship" (Student 12).
That is, the interviewer tried to do so by acknowledging what she said- ''That
is the basic issue" (SK 13), but when she did not pick it up, the topic was
changed to reward for grades. As the interviewer, I (Steinar Kvale) no longer
recall whether I chose not to pursue the friendship theme because l felt it was
becoming too sensitive for her to elaborate further on in front of the class, or
whether I sensed that she was changing my attempt to keep the interview
within a discourse of grades to a di scourse about friendships.

Can yo u describe it to me? W hat happened ?

W hat did you do? How do you remember it? How did you experi ence it?

What do you feel about it? How was your emotional reaction to thi s event?

W hat do you think about it? How do you conceive of this iss ue?

W hat is your opin ion of what happened? How do you judge it today?
138 SEVEN STAGES OF AN INTERVIEW JNVESTIGATION

With attention to the linguistic nature of interview interaction, there

follows a focus on the wording of the questions, which should be adapted to
the subject matter and the purpose of an interview study. In Box 7.2 different
linguistic forms of a question asking for elaboration on an episode are sug-
gested. The wording invites rather different styles of answers, going from
descriptive, behavioral, and expe1i_ential domains to emotional, cognitive, and
evaluative realms. A consistent use of one type of questioning throughout an
interview may lead to a specific style of answer, resulting for example in a
predominandy emotional or conceptual interview.
The questions in the interview about grades were mostly matter-of-the-
fact questions, asking the student to "remember" (SK 1 and 7), "what hap-
pened" (SK 2 and 3), and to "describe" (SK 4 and 5). There was a conceptual
question phrased "what do you mean by" (SK 13). There were no direct ques-
tions about the feelings, but in two cases the interviewer repeated emotional
terms the student used-"mixed emotions" (SK 4) and "feeling" (SK 8), and
the two questions asking for descriptions concerned the student's feelings-
"mixed emotions" and "dissonance" (SK 4 and 5). In contrast, in the client-
centered interview in Box 2.5, the counselor predominantly used emotional
terms in his questions, and Socrates applied inquisitive conceptual questions
in his pursuits of the essence of justice, love, and beauty.

THE ART OF SECOND QUESTIONS "

Until now the focus has been on the interviewer's questions. Now we focus on
second questions, which involve active listening-the interviewer's ability to
listen actively to what the interviewee says. Active listening is as important as
the specific mastery of questioning techniques. The interviewer needs to learn
to listen to what is said and how it is said. We may here, in line with the phe-
nomenological approach depicted in Chapter 2, speak of the interviewer
upholding an attitude of maximum openness to what appears. We may also
note that in Time magazine's biographies of ~reud and Piaget (see Chapter l),
their ability to listen was mentioned as a key trait ("Scientists and Thinkers,"
1999). This concerned Freud's mastery of patient and largely silent listening,
and Piaget's listening lo and watching children, his ability oflooking carefully
at how knowledge develops in children.
Conducting an Interview 139

Decisions about which of the many dimensions of a subject's answer to

pursue requires that the interviewer have an ear for the interview theme and a
knowledge of the interview topic, a sensitivity toward the social relationship
of an interview, and knowledge of what he or she wants to ask about. We may
here perhaps draw an analogy to chess, where each move by the opponent
changes the structure of the chessboard, and each player has to consider the
multiple implications of the opponent's move before making the next move,
anticipating the future moves of the opponent, and so on. What we also know
from studies of expert chess players is that they rarely engage in explicit rule
following (e.g., by thinking that if the queen moves like this, I ought to move
my king like that), which in fact is characteristic of novice chess playing
(Dreyfus & Dreyfus, 1986). Experts rely not on context-free rules but on their
intuitive skills and feel for the game; this is closely related to what Aristotle
described as phronesis, as discussed in Chapter 4 on ethics. The expert inter-
viewer is likewise immersed in the concrete situation and is sensitive and
attentive to the situational cues that will allow him or her to go on with the
interview in a fruitful way that will help answer the research question, instead
of focusing all attention on the interview guide, on methodological rules of
interviewing, or on what question to pose next.

Pupil: Grades are often unjust, because very often-very often-

they are on ly a measure of how much you tal k, a nd how
much you agree with the teache r's opinion.

Interviewer: How shou ld that influe nce the grade?

Other potential interviewer responses:

Si lence . . .
Hm, mm . . .
"How much you ta lk"?
Can you tel l me more about that?
Could you give some examples of what you are saying?
(Continued)
140 SEVEN STAGES OF AN INTERVIEW INVESTIGATION

(Continued)
Have you experienced this yourself?
You feel that the grades are not fair?
You find that the grades do not express your own abilities?
Can you describe more fully grades as "on ly a measure of how much
you talk"?
Could you specify how one follows the teacher's opinion?
When you say grades depend upon how much you talk, do you then
mean bluffi ng?
When you mention importance of following teacher's opinion, are you
thinking of wheedling?
Are you sure that is correct?
Is this not only your postulate?

In Box 7.3 some of the multitude of potential interviewer responses are

suggested in response to one interviewee statement about grades reported in
Box 1.1. There is no one "co1Tect" follow-up question ; the options suggested
in the box open up to different aspects of the answer. The potential responses
are grouped, roughly, from merely indicating that the answer is heard and
repeating a few words of the answer as an invitation to elaborate, to more
specifically probing questions, to more or less interpreting questions, and
finally to somt: counter-questions, the last one also being used by the inter-
viewer in this case. In the next chapter, we will consider in greater detail the
use of such confronting questions . The art of posing second questions can
hardly be specified in advance, but requires a flexible on the spot follow up
of the subject ' answers, with consideration of the research questions of the
interview inquiry.
In the demonstration interview, the interviewer followed up the students'
answers by asking for further descriptions and clarification of meanings and
emotions. The interviewer found it fairly easy to follow up on the student's
answers, as he was familiar with the topic and bad conducted several inter-
views on grading in a study in Denmark (Box 6.4). In this short interview, the
interviewer wanted to demonstrate a specific interviewing technique to the
class and hoped that this might provide interesting new knowledge of a famil-
iar topic.
Conducting an Interview 141

BOOKS ON INTERVIEWING

In this chapter, we have demonstrated in some detail how to conduct a semi-

structured life world interview. We will conclude the chapter by briefly men-
tioning other books on interv iewing with in part different perspectives on
interviewing than the present one.

Seid man's (1991) In terviewing as Qualitative Research is informed by

phenomenology and is a good example of a helpful "how to" book with a
strong emphasis on techniques and concrete questio ns. This also app li es to
Sprad ley's (1979) class ic, The Ethnographic Interview.
More theoretically informed books are Rubin and Rubin's (2005)
Qualitative Interviewing: The Art of Hearing Data, with its "respons ive inter-
viewing" approach, which relies mainly on what the authors call interpre-
tive, constructioni st philosophy, mixed w ith critica l theory (p. 30). Large
parts of the book are concerned with the intervi ew interaction itself: how to
engage in a "conversational partnership," how to structure the conversation,
and how to ask questions. Furthermore, the book contains concrete and
helpfu l advice about many practicalities of the qualitative research process,
for example concern ing how to get one's material published . Ethica l issues,
wider epistemologica l issues, and issues about th e interview as a social
practice in contemporary soc iety play only a minor role in the book.
Wengraf's (2 001) Qualitative Research Interviewing is also about semi-
structured depth intervi ews, but with a spec ific focus on biographic: n;:irr;itivP.
interviewing. It is a conceptual and techn ical account of interviewing w ith
many special terms that are used in precise and consistent ways. Wengraf dis-
tingu ishes "receptive strategies" from "assertive strategies" in interviewing,
with the former be ing close to Carl Rogers's model of psychotherapy (p. 154),
and the latter being more in line with active and discursive approaches to
interview ing (p. 155). Like most interview researchers, the author mainly
sides with the former receptive strategy. Like Rubin and Rubin 's book,
Wengraf's book contains little on ethics and interviewi ng as a socia l practice,
but it is a thorough account of biographi c narrative methods.
Briggs's (1986) Learning How to Ask is based on an ethnog raphic
approach and distinguishes itself by its foc us on intervi ewing as a practice
that often rests on Western conception of communication and reality, and
Briggs calls for further research into interviewing itself.