The Interview

The Interview
The Interview
From Formal to Postmodern
Andrea Fontana
and
Anastasia H. Prokos
Walnut Creek, California

Left Coast Press, Inc.
1630 North Main Street, #400
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Copyright © 2007 by Left Coast Press, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

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Library of Congress Cataloging-In-Publication Data
Fontana, Andrea.
The interview : from formal to postmodern / Andrea Fontana and
Anastasia H. Prokos.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN-13: 978-1-59874-108-7 (hardback : alk. paper)
ISBN-13: 978-1-59874-109-4 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Interviewing. 2. Interviews. I. Prokos, Anastasia H. II. Title.
BF637.I5F66 2007
158'.39—dc22
2007002475
07 08 09 5 4 3 2 1
Editorial Production: Last Word Editorial Services

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Printed in the United States of America
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum require-

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Cover design by Piper F. Wallis

Contents
Preface ....................................................................... 7
1. Interviewing in Perspective ................................ 9

The Interview Society ....................................... 11
The History of Interviewing .............................. 13
2. Structured Interviewing ................................... 19
3. Group Interviewing ........................................ 29
4. Unstructured Interviewing ............................. 39

Accessing the Setting ........................................ 43
Understanding the Language and Culture
of the Respondents ........................................ 43
Deciding How to Present Oneself ..................... 44
Locating an Informant ...................................... 44
Gaining Trust .................................................... 45
Establishing Rapport ......................................... 46
Collecting Empirical Material ............................ 47
5. Types of Unstructured Interviewing ............... 49

Oral History ...................................................... 49
5
Creative Interviewing ........................................ 51
Postmodern Interviewing .................................. 52
Grounded Theory and the Interview ................ 56
Gender and Interviewing .................................. 59
6. Framing and Interpreting Interviews ............. 69

Framing Interviews ........................................... 69
Interpreting Interviews ...................................... 72
7. Ethical Considerations .................................... 77
8. New Trends in Interviewing ........................... 83

The Interview as a Negotiated
Accomplishment ........................................... 84
Empathetic Interviewing ................................... 88
The Problematics of New Approaches .............. 94
9. Future Directions ............................................ 97

Formal Interviews ............................................. 97
Group Interviews ............................................ 101
Unstructured Interviews .................................. 102
Electronic Interviewing ................................... 107
10. Conclusion .................................................. 111
Glossary ........................................................................ 115
References .................................................................... 123
Index ............................................................................ 141
About the Authors ........................................................ 147

Preface
Books on interviewing are not scarce, yet we felt that there

was a void. Currently available texts on interviewing by
and large cover only a portion of the various modes of
interviewing. Also, they tend to become “manuals,”
how-to books, teaching by the numbers. Books on formal
interviewing ignore unstructured interviewing as “non-
scientific,” while books on unstructured interviewing,
especially those leaning toward postmodern approaches,
vehemently attack more traditional modes of interview-
ing, but rarely do any of them point out the shortcomings
of their own mode of interviewing.
In this book we attempt to cover all the various
modes of interviewing, providing the general gist of the
various types, giving examples of how they may be used
and in what types of research, and pointing out the de-
ficiencies of each type without privileging any of them.
We begin with formal, traditional modes of interviewing,
move on to group and focused interviewing, and then look
7
8 Preface
at the numerous types of unstructured interviewing. We

discuss how interviews are framed and interpreted and
outline the ethical implications of interviewing. We present
new modes of interviewing and point to future trends in
interviewing.
We provide a comprehensive and up-to-date refer-
ence section to allow readers to delve more deeply into
any of the various modes that may be of particular inter-
est to them. The manuscript itself is written in a direct
manner, void of rhetoric. We have tried hard to stay on
course and be lucid, simple, and to the point. We hope
we have succeeded.
We wish to thank James Frey, who, with Fontana,
co-authored the original essay that provided the impetus
for the book. He graciously gave us permission to use his
material, since, being retired, he is now more interested
in golf than interviewing. We also wish to thank Sage
Publications, which allowed us to use the material from
the third edition of the essay (Andrea Fontana and James
H. Frey, “The Interview: From Neutral Stance to Political
Involvement,” in The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research,
3rd Edition, edited by Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna S.
Lincoln, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage). Jennifer Keene pro-
vided helpful comments and edits for the chapters on struc-
tured interviews and gender and interviewing, and we
are thankful for that as well. Finally, we wish to thank
our editors at Left Coast Press for their support and for
providing acute insights on the content of the manuscript.
Interviewing in Perspective 9
Interviewing in
Perspective
Asking questions and getting answers is a much harder

task than it may seem at first. The spoken or written word
always has a residue of ambiguity, no matter how care-
fully we word the questions and how carefully we report
or code the answers. Yet interviewing is one of the most
common and powerful ways in which we try to under-
stand our fellow humans. Interviewing includes a wide
variety of forms and a multiplicity of uses. The most common
form of interviewing involves individual, face-to-face verbal
interchange, but interviewing can also take the form of
face-to-face group interchange, mailed or self-administered
questionnaires, and telephone surveys. It can be struc-
tured, semistructured, or unstructured. Interviewing can
be used for marketing research, political opinion polling,
therapeutic reasons, or academic analysis. It can be used
for the purpose of measurement, or its intent can be to
better understand an individual or a group. An interview
9
10 Chapter 1
can be a one-time brief exchange, such as five minutes

over the telephone, or it can take place over multiple lengthy
sessions, at times spanning days or weeks, as in life his-
tory interviewing.
The use of interviewing to acquire information is
so extensive today that it has been said that we live in an
“interview society” (Atkinson and Silverman 1997; Silverman
1993), where everyone gets interviewed and gets a mo-
ment in the sun, even if only to reveal dastardly aberra-
tions on the Jerry Springer show. Increasingly, qualitative
researchers are realizing that interviews are not neutral
tools of data gathering but rather active interactions between
two (or more) people leading to negotiated, contextually
based results. Thus, the focus of interviews is moving to
encompass the “hows” of people’s lives (the constructive
work involved in producing order in everyday life) as well
as the traditional “whats” (the activities of everyday life)
(Cicourel 1964; Dingwall 1997; Gubrium and Holstein
1997, 1998; Holstein and Gubrium 1995; Kvale 1996; Sarup
1996; Seidman 1991; Silverman 1993, 1997a). Interviews
are moving toward new electronic forms and have seen
a return to the pragmatic ideal of political involvement.
After discussing the interview society, we examine
interviews by beginning with structured methods of in-
terviewing and gradually moving to more qualitative types,
examining interviews as negotiated texts and ending with
electronic interviews and empathetic interviews. We be-
gin by briefly outlining the history of interviewing and
then turn to a discussion of the academic uses of inter-
viewing. We discuss the major types of interviewing (struc-
tured, group, and unstructured) as well as other ways in
which interviews are conducted. One caveat is that, in
discussing the various interview methods, we use the language
and rationales employed by practitioners of these meth-
ods; we note our differences with these practitioners and
our criticisms later in the book. Following our examina-

tion of structured interviewing, we address in detail the
various elements of qualitative interviewing. We then discuss
the problems related to gender and interviewing, as well
as issues of interpretation and reporting, as we broach
some considerations related to ethical issues. Finally, we
note some of the new trends in interviewing.
The Interview Society

Both qualitative and quantitative researchers today tend
to rely on the interview as the basic method of data gath-
ering, whether the purpose is to obtain a rich, in-depth
experiential account of an event or episode in the life of
the respondent or to garner a simple point on a scale of
two to ten dimensions. There is inherent faith that the
results are trustworthy and accurate and that the relation
of the interviewer to the respondent that evolves during
the interview process has not unduly biased the account
(Atkinson and Silverman 1997; Silverman 1993). The com-
mitment to, and reliance on, the interview to produce nar-
rative experience reflects and reinforces the view of the
United States as an interview society.
It seems that everyone—not just social researchers—
relies on the interview as a source of information, with
the assumption that interview results give a true and accurate
picture of the respondents’ selves and lives. One cannot
escape being interviewed; interviews are everywhere in
the form of political polls, questionnaires about visits to
doctors, housing applications, forms regarding social service
eligibility, college applications, talk shows, news programs—
the list goes on and on. The interview as a means of data
gathering is no longer limited to use by social science
researchers and police detectives; it is a “universal mode
of systematic inquiry” (Holstein and Gubrium 1995:1). It
seems that nearly any type of question—whether personal,
12 Chapter 1
sensitive, probing, upsetting, or accusatory—is fair game

and permissible in the interview setting. Nearly all inter-
views, no matter their purposes (and these can be var-
ied—to describe, to interrogate, to assist, to test, to evaluate,
etc.), seek various forms of biographical description. As
Gubrium and Holstein (1998) noted, the interview has
become a means of contemporary storytelling, in which
persons divulge life accounts in response to interview
inquiries. The media have been especially adept at using
this technique.
As a society, we rely on the interview and, by and
large, take it for granted. The interview and the norms
surrounding the enactment of the respondent and researcher
roles have evolved to the point where they are institu-
tionalized and no longer require extensive training; rules
and roles are known and shared. (However, there is a growing
group of individuals who increasingly question the tradi-
tional assumptions of the interview, and we address their
concerns later, in our discussion of gender and interviewing
and new trends in interviewing.) Many practitioners con-
tinue to use and take for granted traditional interviewing
techniques. It is as though interviewing is now part of
the mass culture, so that it has actually become the most
feasible mechanism for obtaining information about in-
dividuals, groups, and organizations in a society charac-
terized by individuation, diversity, and specialized role
relations. Thus, many believe that it is not necessary to
“reinvent the wheel” for each interview situation given
that “interviewing has become a routine technical prac-
tice and a pervasive, taken-for-granted activity in our culture”
(Mishler 1986: 23).
This is not to say, however, that the interview is so
technical and the procedures so standardized that inter-
viewers can ignore contextual, societal, and interpersonal
elements. Each interview context is one of interaction and
relation, and the result is as much a product of this social

dynamic as it is the product of accurate accounts and replies.
The interview has become a routine and nearly unnoticed
part of everyday life. Yet response rates continue to de-
cline, indicating that fewer people are willing to disclose
their “selves,” or that they are so burdened by requests
for interviews that they are much more selective in their
choices of which interviews to grant. Social scientists are
more likely to recognize, however, that interviews are
interactional encounters and that the nature of the social
dynamic of the interview can shape the nature of the
knowledge generated. Interviewers with less training and
experience than social scientists might not recognize that
interview participants are actively constructing knowledge
around questions and responses (Holstein and Gubrium
1995).
We now turn to a brief history of interviewing to
frame its roots and development.
The History of Interviewing

At least one form of interviewing or another has been
with us for a very long time. Even ancient Egyptians con-
ducted population censuses (Babbie 1992). During more
recent times, the tradition of interviewing evolved from
two trends. First, interviewing found great popularity and
widespread use in clinical diagnosis and counseling where
the concern was with the quality of responses. Second,
during World War I, interviewing came to be widely employed
in psychological testing with the emphasis being on mea-
surement (Maccoby and Maccoby 1954).
The individual generally credited with being the first
to develop a social survey relying on interviewing was
Charles Booth (Converse 1987). In 1886, Booth embarked
on a comprehensive survey of the economic and social
conditions of the people of London, published as Life and
14 Chapter 1
Labour of the People in London (Booth 1902–1903). In his

early study, Booth embodied what were to become sepa-
rate interviewing methods, because he not only imple-
mented survey research but also triangulated his work by
relying on unstructured interviews and ethnographic ob-
servations:
The data were checked and supplemented by visits

to many neighborhoods, streets and homes, and by
conferences with various welfare and community
leaders. From time to time Booth lived as a lodger
in districts where he was not known, so that he could
become more intimately acquainted with the lives
and habits of the poorer classes. (Parten 1950:
6–7)
Many other surveys of London and other English

cities followed, patterned after Booth’s example. In the
United States a similar pattern ensued. In 1895, a study
attempted to do in Chicago what Booth had done in Lon-
don (Converse 1987). In 1896, the American sociologist
W. E. B. Du Bois, who admittedly was following Booth’s
lead, studied the black population of Philadelphia (Du
Bois 1899). Surveys of cities and small towns followed,
with the most notable among them being the Lynds’
Middletown (Lynd and Lynd 1929) and Middletown in
Transition (Lynd and Lynd 1937).
Opinion polling was another early form of interview-
ing. Some polling took place well before the start of the
twentieth century, but it really came into its own in 1935
with the forming of the American Institute of Public Opinion
by George Gallup. Preceding Gallup, in both psychology
and sociology during the 1920s, there was a movement
toward the study (and usually the measurement) of atti-
tudes. W. I. Thomas and Florian Znaniecki used the
documentary method to introduce the study of attitudes

in social psychology. Thomas’s influence along with that
of Robert Park, a former reporter who believed that so-
ciology was to be found out in the field, sparked a num-
ber of community studies at the University of Chicago that
came to be known collectively as the works of the Chi-
cago School. Many others researchers, such as Albion Small,
George H. Mead, E. W. Burgess, Everett C. Hughes, Louis
Wirth, W. Lloyd Warner, and Anselm Strauss, were also
greatly influential (for a recent discussion of the relations
and influence of Chicago School members, see Becker 1999).
Although the members of the Chicago School are
reputed to have used the ethnographic method in their
inquiries, some disagree and have noted that many of the
Chicago School studies lacked the analytic component of
modern-day ethnography and so were, at best, “firsthand
descriptive studies” (Harvey 1987: 50). Regardless of the
correct label for the Chicago School members’ fieldwork,
they clearly relied on a combination of observation, per-
sonal documents, and informal interviews in their stud-
ies. Interviews were especially in evidence in the work of
Thrasher (1927/1963), who, in his study of gang mem-
bers, relied primarily on some 130 qualitative interviews,
and in that of Anderson (1923), whose classic study of
hobos relied on informal in-depth conversations.
It was left to Herbert Blumer and his former stu-
dent Howard Becker to formalize and give impetus to so-
ciological ethnography during the 1950s and 1960s, and
interviewing began to lose both the eclectic flavor given
to it by Booth and the qualitative accent of the Chicago
School members. Understanding gang members or hobos
through interviews lost importance; instead, what became
relevant was the use of interviewing in survey research
as a tool to quantify data. This was not new, given that
opinion polls and market research had been doing it for
16 Chapter 1
years. But during World War II, there was a tremendous

increase in survey research as the U.S. armed forces hired
great numbers of sociologists as survey researchers. More
than a half million American soldiers were interviewed
in one manner or another (Young 1966), and their men-
tal and emotional lives were reported in a four-volume
survey, Studies in Social Psychology in World War II, the
first two volumes of which were directed by Samuel Stouffer
and titled The American Soldier. This work had tremen-
dous impact and led the way to widespread use of sys-
tematic survey research.
What was new, however, was that quantitative sur-
vey research moved into academia and came to dominate
sociology as the method of choice for the next three decades.
An Austrian immigrant, Paul Lazarsfeld, spearheaded this
move. He welcomed The American Soldier with great en-
thusiasm. In fact, Lazarsfeld and Robert Merton edited a
book of reflections on The American Soldier (Merton and
Lazarsfeld 1950). Lazarsfeld moved to Columbia Univer-
sity in 1940, taking with him his market research and other
applied grants, and he became instrumental in the directing
of the Bureau of Applied Social Research. Two other “sur-
vey organizations” were also formed: the National Opin-
ion Research Center (formed in 1941 by Harry Field, first
at the University of Denver and then at the University of
Chicago) and the Survey Research Center (formed in 1946
by Rensis Likert and his group at the University of Michi-
gan).
Academia at the time was dominated by theoretical
concerns, and there was some resistance toward this applied,
numbers-based kind of sociology. Sociologists and other
humanists were critical of Lazarsfeld and the other sur-
vey researchers. Herbert Blumer, C. Wright Mills, Arthur
Schlesinger Jr., and Pitirin Sorokin were among those who
voiced their displeasure. According to Converse (1987),
Sorokin felt that “the new emphasis on quantitative work

was obsessive, and he called the new practitioners
‘quantophrenics’—with special reference to Stouffer and
Lazarsfeld” (p. 253). Converse also quoted Mills: “Those
in the grip of the methodological inhibition often refuse
to say anything about modern society unless it has been
through the fine little mill of the Statistical Ritual” (p.
252). Converse noted that Schlesinger called the survey
researchers “social relations hucksters” (p. 253).
But the survey researchers also had powerful allies
such as Merton, who joined the Bureau of Applied Social
Research at Columbia in 1942, and government monies
were becoming increasingly available for survey research.
The 1950s saw a growth of survey research in the univer-
sities and a proliferation of survey research texts. Gradu-
ally, survey research increased its domain over sociology,
culminating in 1960 with the election of Lazarsfeld to
the presidency of the American Sociological Association.
The methodological dominance of survey research con-
tinued unabated throughout the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s,
although other methods began to erode its prominence.
Qualitative interviewing continued to be practiced
hand in hand with participant observation methods, but
it, too, assumed some of the quantifiable scientific rigor
that preoccupied survey research to a great extent. This
was especially visible in grounded theory (Glaser and Strauss
1967), with its painstaking emphasis on coding data, and
in ethnomethodology, with its quest for invariant proper-
ties of social action (Cicourel 1970). Other qualitative
researchers suggested variations. Lofland (1971) criticized
grounded theory for paying too little attention to data-
gathering techniques; Douglas (1985) suggested lengthy,
existential one-on-one interviews that lasted at least one
day; and Spradley (1980) tried to clarify the difference
18 Chapter 1
between ethnographic observation and ethnographic in-

terviewing.
Recently, postmodernist ethnographers have con-
cerned themselves with some of the assumptions present
in interviewing and with the controlling role of the inter-
viewer. These concerns have led to new directions in quali-
tative interviewing focusing on increased attention to the
voices of the respondents (Marcus and Fischer 1986), the
interviewer-respondent relationship (Crapanzano 1980),
the importance of the researcher’s gender in interview-
ing (Gluck and Patai 1991), and the roles of other ele-
ments such as race, social status, and age (Seidman 1991).
Platt (2002), in her recent chapter on the history of
interviewing, correctly noted that the interview encom-
passes so many different practices that it is extremely hard
to derive meaningful generalization about it and that the
changes that have taken places over time are driven partly
by methodological concerns and partly by sociopolitical
motives.
Structured Interviewing 19
Structured
Interviewing
In structured interviewing, the interviewer asks all respon-

dents the same series of pre-established questions with a
limited set of response categories. There is generally little
room for variation in response except where open-ended
questions (which are infrequent) may be used. The inter-
viewer records the responses according to a coding scheme
that has already been established by the project director
or research supervisor. The interviewer controls the pace
of the interview by treating the questionnaire as though
it were a theatrical script to be followed in a standard-
ized and straightforward manner. Thus, all respondents
receive the same set of questions asked in the same order
or sequence by an interviewer who has been trained to
treat every interview situation in a like manner. There is
very little flexibility in the way in which questions are
asked or answered in the structured interview setting.
Instructions to interviewers often include some of the
following guidelines:
19
20 Chapter 2
• Never get involved in long explanations of the study;

use the standard explanation provided by the su-
pervisor.
• Never deviate from the study introduction, sequence
of questions, or question wording.
• Never let another person interrupt the interview;
do not let another person answer for the respon-
dent or offer his or her opinion on the question.
• Never suggest an answer or agree or disagree with
an answer. Do not give the respondent any idea of
your personal views on the topic of the question
or survey.
• Never interpret the meaning of a question; just re-
peat the question and give instructions or clarifi-
cations that are provided in training or by the su-
pervisor.
• Never improvise, such as by adding answer cat-
egories or making wording changes.
Telephone interviews, face-to-face interviews in house-

holds, intercept interviews in malls and parks, and inter-
views generally associated with survey research are most
likely to be included in the structured interview category.
This interview context calls for the interviewers to
play a neutral role, never interjecting their opinion of a
respondent’s answer. The interviewers must establish what
has been called “balanced rapport”; they must be casual
and friendly, on the one hand, but directive and imper-
sonal on the other. The interviewers must perfect a style
of “interested listening” that rewards the respondent’s
participation but does not evaluate these responses (Converse
and Schuman 1974).
Researchers hope that in a structured interview

nothing is left to chance. However, response effects, or
nonsampling errors, that can be attributed to the ques-
tionnaire administration process commonly derive from
three sources. The first source of error is respondent be-
havior. The respondent may deliberately try to please the
interviewer or to prevent the interviewer from learning
something about her or him. To do this, the respondent
will embellish a response, give what is described as a “socially
desirable” response, or omit certain relevant information
(Bradburn 1983: 291). The respondent may also err due
to faulty memory. The second source of error is found in
the nature of the task, that is, the method of question-
naire administration (face-to-face or telephone) or the se-
quence or wording of the questions. The third source of
error is the interviewer, whose characteristics or ques-
tioning techniques might impede proper communication
of the question (Bradburn 1983). It is the degree of error
assigned to the interviewer that is of greatest concern.
Most structured interviews leave little room for the
interviewer to improvise or exercise independent judg-
ment, but even in the most structured interview situation
not every contingency can be anticipated, and not every
interviewer behaves according to the script (Bradburn 1983;
Frey 1989). In fact, a study of interviewer effects found
that interviewers changed the wording of as many as one
third of the questions (Bradburn, Sudman, and Associ-
ates 1979).
In general, research on interviewer effects has shown
interviewer characteristics such as age, gender, and in-
terviewing experience to have a relatively small impact
on responses (Singer and Presser 1989). However, there
is some evidence to show that student interviewers pro-
duce a larger response effect than do nonstudent inter-
viewers, higher status interviewers produce a larger response
22 Chapter 2
effect than do lower status interviewers, and the race of

interviewers makes a difference only on questions spe-
cifically related to race (Bradburn 1983; Hyman 1954;
Singer, Frankel, and Glassman 1983).
The relatively minor impact of the interviewer on
response quality in structured interview settings is directly
attributable to the inflexible, standardized, and predeter-
mined nature of this type of interviewing. There is simply
little room for error. However, those who are advocates
of structured interviewing are aware that the interview
takes place in a social interaction context and that it is
influenced by that context. Good interviewers recognize
this fact and are sensitive to how interaction can influ-
ence response. Converse and Schuman (1974) observed,
“There is no single interview style that fits every occa-
sion or all respondents” (p. 53). This means that inter-
viewers must be aware of respondent differences and must
be able to make the proper adjustments called for by
unanticipated developments. As Gorden (1992) stated,
“Interviewing skills are not simple motor skills like riding
a bicycle; rather, they involve a high-order combination
of observation, emphatic sensitivity, and intellectual judg-
ment” (p. 7).
It is not enough to understand the mechanics of in-
terviewing; it is also important to understand the respondent’s
world and forces that might stimulate or retard responses
(Kahn and Cannell 1957). Still, the structured interview
proceeds under a stimulus-response format, assuming that
the respondent will truthfully answer questions previously
determined to reveal adequate indicators of the variable
in question, so long as those questions are phrased prop-
erly. This kind of interview often elicits rational responses,
but it overlooks or inadequately assesses the emotional
dimension.
Recently, new developments in computer-assisted

interviewing (Couper and Hansen 2002) have called into
question the division between traditional modes of inter-
viewing, such as the survey interview and the mail sur-
vey. Singleton and Straits (2002) noted that today we are
really looking at a continuum of data-collecting methods
that involve greater or lesser human interaction, rather
than clearly divided methods. Face-to-face interviews are
the most interactive, while self-administered questionnaires
are the least.
The strengths of the structured interviews, whether
they are face-to-face or over the telephone, lie in their
ability as a tool to gather standardized information about
a large number of respondents relatively quickly, and some-
times relatively cheaply. It is no surprise that the rise of
the structured interview coincided with the rise of a clearer
understanding and practice of probability sampling (House
et al. 2004). Large representative samples of respondents
allow researchers to make predictions about social phe-
nomena with specified degrees of accuracy.
Face-to-face interviews have many advantages over
less interactive methods. As Shuy (2002) notes, many situ-
ations benefit from face-to-face interviews, including those
in which the interview is long, or includes complicated
topics or sensitive questions. Special populations are also
better interviewed face-to-face, such as the elderly, those
with health problems, or those in marginalized groups
(Shuy 2002). Research indicates that response rates are
generally better for face-to-face structured interviews than
telephone or self-administered surveys (Babbie 2007), and
that information gathered face-to-face may be more valid
for certain types of studies (c.f. Aquilino 1994; Shuy 2002).
For example, in Aquilino’s study examining admission of
illicit drug use, admission of illicit drug use was more
likely in face-to-face interviews with self-administered
24 Chapter 2
questionnaires than through telephone interviews (Aquilino

1994).
Telephone interviews have their own advantages.
Researchers may choose to use telephone interviews for
practical reasons, such as their cost-efficiency and speed,
but there are other benefits as well, and some of these
advantages lie in the social distance the telephone cre-
ates between the interviewer and the respondent. For instance,
Shuy (2002) notes that telephone interviews may be safer
for interviewers when interviewing respondents in potentially
dangerous areas. Furthermore, interviewer effects are reduced
and there tends to be better uniformity in interviews and
standardization in questions (Shuy 2002).
Structured interviews typically gather a variety of
data, including information about respondents’ attitudes,
opinions, behaviors, characteristics, and knowledge. While
it might seem as if more “objective” information (for ex-
ample, information about demographic characteristics or
material circumstances) may be more valid than other types
of data gathered through structured interviews, a great
deal of research and work has gone into perfecting mea-
sures of respondents’ subjective realities, including atti-
tudes and opinions, as well as behaviors (Featherman 2004).
The contributions of structured interviews to sur-
vey research are broad in scope, and span the full range
of social sciences disciplines. From social psychology to
economics, structured interviews have contributed to
advances in knowledge. For example, in their book, A Telescope
on Society (2004), House and colleagues document the
history and contributions of the survey research center at
the University of Michigan to numerous areas of study.
Below we demonstrate the kind of contribution research-
ers from the survey research center have made.
One example of influential and important research
based on data gathered through telephone interviews is
research about poverty based on the Panel Study of In-

come Dynamics (PSID). Literally hundreds of published
social science articles use the PSID to investigate a wide
variety of research problems (Duncan, Hofferth, and Stafford
2004). The study had its roots in the War on Poverty, and
continues today, following the original respondents and
their children as they form households of their own (In-
stitute for Social Research 2006). The interview method-
ology of the PSID has changed over time, although it has
always been based on structured interviews. Originally,
data were collected through face-to-face interviews, but
not long after the inception of the study, the interviews
began being gathered over the telephone, and eventually
these became computer assisted (Institute for Social Research
2006).
In 1984 Duncan and colleagues published Years of
Poverty, Years of Plenty, a book that drew on data from
the PSID. Among other points, the study demonstrated
that there was actually a great deal of turnover among
the poor, a point that was contrary to popular perception
that treated “the poor” as a static and specific group. Professors
and policymakers have drawn on this research for lec-
tures and policy discussions (Duncan et al. 2004).
Perhaps the most prevalent example of influential
face-to-face structured interviews is the General Social
Survey (GSS). Most sociology students are familiar with
the GSS, which is another large, nationally representa-
tive survey that has been the basis of hundreds of influ-
ential sociological articles and is used for teaching purposes
throughout the discipline. The GSS is collected by the National
Opinion Research Center through face-to-face interviews
that last about 90 minutes (National Opinion Research
Center 2006).
One recent noteworthy study used a special mod-
ule of the GSS, Multi-Ethnic U.S.—or MEUS—to examine
26 Chapter 2
Americans’ attitudes toward minorities and immigrants

(Alba, Rubén, and Marotz 2005). While data from the GSS
have shown an overall increase in support for racial equality
and integration over the past several decades, this recent
research showed that “roughly half of Americans believed
that whites had become a numerical minority” (Alba et
al. 2005: 901). The researchers determined this by rely-
ing on questions such as the following: “Just your best
guess—what percentage of the United States population
is each group?” This question included instructions that
the percentages did not need to add up to 100 percent,
and encouraging respondents not to worry about math-
ematical consistency. The respondents were supposed to
make guesses for the following groups: White, Black/African-
American, Jewish, Hispanic or Latin American, Asian
American, and American Indian.
This research also showed that majority group members
with the most distorted impressions held the most nega-
tive attitudes toward immigrants, blacks, and Hispanics
(Alba et al. 2005). To make these determinations, the au-
thors relied on a series of Likert-formatted and similar
questions that asked respondents about their attitudes and
opinions on a number of different issues concerning
immigration and race. The Likert format for questions
generally relies on ordered response categories designed
to measure respondents’ strength of agreement with a state-
ment (Babbie 2007). An example of such a survey ques-
tion for Alba and colleagues’ research is the GSS survey
question that states: “African Americans shouldn’t push
themselves where they are not wanted. [Responses are:
Agree strongly, agree slightly, disagree slightly, disagree
strongly.]”
The results of their research are important, accord-
ing to the authors, because bigotry and prejudice seemed
to be, to some extent, linked to a particular form of

ignorance. According to Alba et al. (2005):
While bigotry cannot be eliminated by education

alone, the perceptual distortion of the nation, which
exacerbates prejudice, may be reduced with such
corrective lenses. Such a correction would be a con-
tribution, however modest, to the creation of con-
ditions under which the sense of group position recedes
and racial prejudice declines. (p. 915)
As Singleton and Straits (2002) observed, many surveys

today incorporate a variety of data-gathering methods,
driven by concerns such as time constraints, financial de-
mands, and other practical elements. These multiple data-
gathering techniques can be used for different parts of a
survey, or researchers can use different methods to en-
hance response rates. For example, recently researchers
have begun experimenting with the use of computer-
assisted self-interviewing (CASI), which can be used in a
number of ways, including handing a computer to a re-
spondent for specific questions or sets of questions dur-
ing a face-to-face interview (De Leeuw, Hox, and Kef 2003).
Other research has made use of mixed-mode data collec-
tion strategies for different reasons. For example, the 1999
National Survey of College Graduates relied on multiple
data-gathering techniques in an effort to increase response
rates. Specifically, mail surveys were complimented by tele-
phone (CATI) surveys, a web option for some respondents,
and even some face-to face interviews (National Science
Foundation 2006).
28 Chapter 2
Group Interviewing 29
Group
Interviewing
The group interview is essentially a qualitative data-gathering

technique that relies upon the systematic questioning of
several individuals simultaneously in a formal or infor-
mal setting. Thus this technique straddles the lines be-
tween formal and informal interviewing. Several types of
group interviews exist, and here we briefly discuss the
development and forms of group interviews.
The use of the group interview has ordinarily been
associated with marketing research under the label of focus
group, where the purpose is to gather consumer opinions
on product characteristics, advertising themes, and/or service
delivery. This format has also been used to a consider-
able extent by political parties and candidates who are
interested in voter reaction to issues and policies. The
group interview has also been used in sociological research.
Bogardus (1926) tested his social distance scale during
the mid-1920s, Zuckerman (1972) interviewed Nobel
29
30 Chapter 3
laureates, Thompson and Demerath (1952) looked at man-

agement problems in the military, Morgan and Spanish
(1984) studied health issues, Fontana and Frey (1990)
investigated reentry into the older worker labor force, and
Merton and his associates studied the impact of propa-
ganda using group interviews (see Frey and Fontana 1991).
In fact, Merton, Fiske, and Kendall (1956) coined the term
“focus group” to apply to a situation where the researcher/
interviewer asks very specific questions about a topic after
having completed considerable research. There is also some
evidence that established anthropologists such as Malinowski
used this technique but did not report it (Frey and Fontana
1991).
Today, most sociological researchers generically
designate all group interviews focus group interviews, even
though there is considerable variation in the nature and
types of group interviews. According to Morgan (1996),
marketing researchers sometimes rely on a very strict
definition of a focus group, one in which a specified number
of respondents who are strangers to each other partici-
pate in a highly structured interview, and this distinguishes
focus groups from other group interviews. Questioning
the utility of this strict definition, however, Morgan has
a more open definition of a focus group, but it is one that
allows researchers to distinguish it from other types of
research situations on three dimensions. His definition states
that a focus group is “a research technique that collects
data through group interaction on a topic determined by
the researcher” (Morgan 1996: 130). This definition ex-
cludes groups that serve a primary purpose other than
data collection, those in which there is no group interac-
tion, and those that occur naturally in which nobody directs
the interview. However, each of the latter situations may
be useful for social scientists to gather data.
In any group interview, the interviewer/moderator

directs the inquiry and the interaction among respondents
in a very structured fashion or in a very unstructured manner,
depending on the interviewer’s purpose. The purpose may
be exploratory; for example, the researcher may bring several
persons together to test a methodological technique, to
try out a definition of a research problem, or to identify
key informants. An extension of the exploratory intent is
to use the group interview for the purpose of pretesting
questionnaire wording, measurement scales, or other el-
ements of a survey design. This is now quite common in
survey research (Desvousges and Frey 1989). Group in-
terviews can also be used successfully to aid respondents’
recall or to stimulate embellished descriptions of specific
events (e.g., a disaster, a celebration) or experiences shared
by members of the group. Researchers often use group
interviews for triangulation purposes or they are used in
conjunction with other data-gathering techniques. For ex-
ample, group interviews could be helpful in the process
of “indefinite triangulation,” by putting individual responses
into a context (Cicourel 1974). Finally, phenomenologi-
cal purposes may be served whether group interviews are
the sole basis for gathering data or are used in associa-
tion with other techniques.
Group interviews take different forms, depending
on their purposes. They can be brainstorming interviews
with little or no structure or direction from the interviewer,
or they can be very structured such as those in nominal/
delphi and marketing focus groups. In the latter cases,
the role of the interviewer is very prominent and direc-
tive. Fieldwork settings provide both formal and infor-
mal occasions for group interviews. The field researcher
can bring respondents into a formal setting in the field
context and ask very directed questions. On the other
hand, a natural field setting, such as a street corner or a
32 Chapter 3
neighborhood tavern, can be conducive to settings for casual

but purposive inquiries.
Group interviews can be compared on several di-
mensions. First, the interviewer can be very formal, tak-
ing a very directive and controlling posture, guiding discussion
strictly, and not permitting digression or variation from
topic or agenda. This is the mode of focus and nominal/
delphi groups. In the latter case, participants are physi-
cally isolated but share views through a coordinator/in-
terviewer. The nondirective approach is more likely to be
implemented in a naturally established field setting (e.g.,
a street corner) or in a controlled setting (e.g., a research
laboratory) where the research purpose is phenomeno-
logical to establish the widest range of meaning and in-
terpretation for the topic. Groups can also be differentiated
by question format and purpose, which in the case of group
interviews usually means exploration, phenomenological,
or pretest purposes. Exploratory interviews are designed
to establish familiarity with a topic or setting; the inter-
viewer can be very directive (or the opposite), but the
questions are usually unstructured or open-ended. The
same format is used in interviews with phenomenologi-
cal purposes, where the intent is to tap intersubjective
meaning with depth and diversity. Pretest interviews are
generally structured in a question format with the inter-
view being directive in style.
Table 1 compares the types of group interviews on
various dimensions.
The skills that are required to conduct the group
interview are not significantly different from those needed
for the individual interview, although the requirements
for interviewer skills are somewhat greater than for indi-
vidual interviewing. The interviewer must be flexible,
objective, empathetic, persuasive, a good listener, and so
forth. But group dynamics present some challenges not
Table 1. Types of group interviews and dimension
Role of Question
Type Setting interviewer format Purpose
Focus group Formal, preset Directive Structured Exploratory, pretest
Brainstorming Formal or informal Nondirective Unstructured Exploratory
Nominal / Delphi Formal Directive Structured Exploratory, pretest
Field, natural Informal, Moderately Very unstructured Exploratory

spontaneous nondirective Phenomenological
Field, formal Preset Somewhat Semistructured Phenomenological

In field directive
SOURCE: Frey and Fontana (1991: 184).

34 Chapter 3
found in the individual interview. Merton, Fiske, and Kendall

(1956) noted three specific problems, namely that (a) the
interviewer must keep one person or small coalition of
persons from dominating the group; (b) the interviewer
must encourage recalcitrant respondents to participate;
and (c) the interviewer must obtain responses from the
entire group to ensure the fullest coverage of the topic.
In addition, the interviewer must balance the directive
interviewer role with the role of moderator, and this calls
for management of the dynamics of the group being in-
terviewed. Furthermore, the group interviewer must si-
multaneously worry about the script of questions and be
sensitive to the evolving patterns of group interaction.
Group interviews have some advantages over indi-
vidual interviews, namely, that (a) they are relatively
inexpensive to conduct and often produce rich data that
are cumulative and elaborative; (b) they can be stimulat-
ing for respondents and so aid in recall; and (c) the for-
mat is flexible. Group interviews are not, however, without
problems. The results cannot be generalized, the emerg-
ing group culture may interfere with individual expres-
sion (a groups can be dominated by one person), and
“group-think” is a possible outcome. Nevertheless, the group
interview is a viable option by both qualitative and quan-
titative research.
Morgan (2002) advocated a systematic approach to
focus group interviewing so as to create a methodologi-
cal continuity and the ability to assess the outcomes of
focus group research. Morgan suggested that, just as social
scientists were originally inspired to use focus groups by
the example of marketing, it might be time to look at
marketing again to see what is being done and use the
marketing example to innovate in the field of social sci-
ences.
The strengths of group interviews include their use

as a complementary method to other data-gathering tech-
niques and their ability to aid in examinations of group
interactions. In recent decades, the use of group inter-
views has increased in sociology, especially their use in
conjunction with other data-gathering techniques, such
as surveys and unstructured interviews. This use of meth-
odological triangulation shows that researchers often view
the strength of group interviews as tools to somehow extend
or compensate for the weaknesses of other methods. A
group interview can compliment other techniques by adding
explanatory detail to a survey, or by further exploring and
digging deeper into data gathered during unstructured
interviews (Warr 2005). For example, Morgan and Mar-
tin (2006) draw on data from in-depth interviews and
focus groups to illustrate how work-related out-of-office
socializing negatively impacts the careers of women in
sales.
Group interviews are also a stand-alone interview
method, and have particular strengths of their own. The
types of studies that benefit most from group interviews
include those that seek to uncover “social and cultural
contexts for individual beliefs” (Warr 2005: 201) and those
in which researchers are interested in interaction and group
processes, especially those pertaining to topics that may
not occur in “natural” settings (Gamson 1992; Warr 2005).
It is likely that it is for these reasons that searches of the
sociological literature uncover the use of group interviews
and focus groups in research related to health and illness,
sexuality, and aging more than other areas of research.
One example of the usefulness of focus groups in
social research was the research conducted by Kobetz
and colleagues (unpublished manuscript) examining why
Haitian women in Miami-Dade County present late stages
of breast and cervical cancer. In general, national surveys
36 Chapter 3
indicate women’s mammography use is similar among all

race/ethnic groups for the United States as a whole, yet
regional studies show differences for minority women as
compared to white women. In order to gain a better
understanding of Haitian women’s knowledge of cancer
awareness and prevention strategies, Kobetz proposed to
conduct focus groups with Haitian women, and then
had the focus groups actually conducted by a Haitian-
American nurse from within this community. While it had
been difficult to gather information from Haitian women
in other research situations, the focus groups conducted
by the Haitian-American nurse were extremely fruitful.
As a result, researchers now have a better understanding
of why Haitian women are less likely than white women
to use such preventive cancer strategies as mammogra-
phy and how their cancer awareness has been informed,
and there is evidence supporting more culturally appro-
priate models of health care.
Less formal group interviews can be valuable when
conducting research in which the researcher is trying to
understand respondents’ everyday lives rather than find
answers to particular questions. An example of this comes
from Roschelle and Kaufman’s (2005) study of homeless
youth, in which the first author participated in impromptu
conversations but did not act as a formal mediator. The
following excerpt from Roschelle and Kaufman (2005: 30),
which illustrates how homeless children manage stigma,
also demonstrates the kind of data researchers have ac-
cess to when they step back from the formal interview
process and follow respondents’ leads:
Marta: Man, I’m so sick of the nasty shit people say

about the homeless.
Jorge: Yeah, me too. They talk about us like we were
garbage.
Wanda: I know and it ain’t our fault we poor.

Marta: Yeah, my dad lost his job cuz he got hurt
and then we got kicked out of our apartment cuz
he couldn’t pay the rent. It’s not like he’s some lazy
crack head.
Jorge: My mom works two jobs and we still can’t
afford an apartment.
Marta: Yeah, but that don’t matter. Willie Brown
and them other politicians—they just keep saying
how lazy homeless people are and that we are all
drug addicts and criminals. It ain’t right and you
know it ain’t true.
Wanda: Damn.
Roschelle and Kaufman explain that focus groups

were not the most appropriate group interview approach
when interviewing these homeless youth because the
interviewer needed to minimize the social distance be-
tween herself and the children in order for the children
to feel comfortable expressing their thoughts. Structured
interviews may not have allowed the researchers to ob-
tain the kind of data they were looking for—the kind that
gave voice to the children themselves.
38 Chapter 3
Unstructured Interviewing 39
Unstructured
Interviewing
Unstructured interviewing can provide greater breadth than

do other types, given its qualitative nature. In this sec-
tion, we discuss the traditional type of unstructured in-
terview—the open-ended, in-depth (ethnographic) interview.
Many qualitative researchers differentiate between in-depth
(ethnographic) interviewing and participant observation.
Yet, as Lofland (1971) pointed out, the two go hand in
hand, and many of the data gathered in participant ob-
servation come from informal interviewing in the field.
Consider the following report from Malinowski’s (1967/
1989) diary:
Saturday 8 [December 1917]. Got up late, felt rot-

ten, took enema. At about 1 I went out; I heard
cries; [people from] Kapwapu were bringing uri to
Teyava. I sat with the natives, talked, took pictures.
Went back. Billy corrected and supplemented my
notes about wasi. At Teyava, an old man talked a
39
40 Chapter 4
great deal about fishes, but I did not understand

him too well. Then we moved to his bwayama. Talked
about lili’u. They kept questioning me about the
war—In the evening I talked to the policeman about
bwaga’u, lili’u and yoyova. I was irritated by their
laughing. Billy again told me a number of interest-
ing things. Took quinine and calomel. (p. 145)
Malinowski’s “day in the field” shows how very

important unstructured interviewing is in the conduct of
fieldwork and clearly illustrates the difference between
structured interviewing and unstructured interviewing.
Malinowski had some general topics he wanted to know
about, but he did not use close-ended questions or a formal
approach to interviewing. What is more, he committed
(as most field workers do) what structured interviewers
would see as two “capital offenses.” First, he answered
questions asked by the respondents. Second, he let his
personal feelings influence him (as all field workers do);
thus, he deviated from the “ideal” of a cool, distant, and
rational interviewer.
Malinowski’s example captures the difference in
structured versus unstructured interviewing. The former
aims at capturing precise data of a codable nature so as
to explain behavior within pre-established categories,
whereas the latter attempts to understand the complex
behavior of members of society without imposing any a
priori categorization that may limit the field of inquiry.
In a way, Malinowski’s interviewing is still struc-
tured to some degree: there is a setting, there are iden-
tified informants, and the respondents are clearly discernible.
In other types of interviewing, there might be no setting;
for instance, Hertz (1995, 1997b, 1997c) focused on locating
women in a historic moment rather than in a place. In
addition, in their study of single mothers, Hertz and Ferguson
(1997) interviewed women who did not know each other

and who were not part of a single group or village. At
times, informants are not readily accessible or identifi-
able, but anyone the researcher meets may become a valuable
source of information. Hertz and Ferguson relied on trades-
people and friends to identify single mothers in the study.
Fontana and Smith (1989) found that respondents were
not always readily identifiable. In studying Alzheimer’s
disease patients, they discovered that it was often pos-
sible to confuse caregivers and patients during the early
stages of the disease. Also, in Fontana’s (1977) research
on poor elderly, the researcher had no fixed setting at all;
he simply wandered from bench to bench in the park where
the old folks were sitting, talking to any disheveled old
person who would talk back.
Spradley (1979) aptly differentiated among various
types of interviewing. In describing the experience of a
young American woman ethnographer who was traveling
through the Kalahari Desert, he told of an interviewer-
respondent interaction that would be unthinkable in tra-
ditional sociological circles. Yet he demonstrates the very
essence of unstructured interviewing—the establishment
of a human-to-human relation with the respondent and
the desire to understand rather than to explain:
Presently she smiled, pressed her hand to her chest,

and said: “Tsetchwe.” It was her name. “Elizabeth,”
I said, pointing to myself. “Nisabe,” she answered.
. . . Then, having surely suspected that I was a woman,
she put her hand on my breast gravely, and, find-
ing out that I was, she touched her own breast. Many
Bushmen do this; to them all Europeans look alike.
“Tasu si” (women), she said. Then after a moment’s
pause Tsetchwe began to teach me. (pp. 3–4)
42 Chapter 4
Spradley (1979) went on to discuss all of the things

that an interviewer learns from the natives—their culture,
their language, their ways of life. Although each and every
study is different, these are some of the basic elements of
unstructured interviewing. These elements have been
discussed in detail already, and we need not elaborate on
them too much here (for detailed accounts of unstruc-
tured interviewing, see Adams and Preiss 1960; Lofland
1971; Spradley 1979). Here we provide brief synopses.
Remember that these are presented only as heuristic devices;
every study uses slightly different elements and often in
different combinations.
It is important to keep in mind that the following
description of interviewing is highly modernistic in that
it presents a structured format and definite steps to be
followed. In a way, it mimics structured interviewing in
an attempt to “scientize” the research, albeit by using very
different steps and concerns. Later in this book, in dis-
cussing new trends, we analyze these notions as we frame
the interview as an active emergent process. We contend
that our interview society gives people instructions on
how to comply with these heuristics (Silverman 1993, 1997a,
1997b). Similarly, Scheurich (1995, 1997) was openly critical
of both positivistic and interpretive interviewing, because
they are based on modernistic assumptions. For Scheurich
(1997), rather than being a process “by the numbers,”
interviewing (and its language) is “persistently slippery,
unstable, and ambiguous from person to person, from
situation to situation, from time to time” (p. 62).
Although postmodern researchers follow Scheurich,
more traditional sociologists and researchers from other
disciplines still follow this “how to” approach to inter-
viewing, where the belief exists that the better they ex-
ecute the various steps, the better they will apprehend
the reality that they assume is out there, ready to be plucked.
Accessing the Setting

How do we “get in”? That, of course, varies according to
the group that one is attempting to study. One might have
to disrobe and casually stroll in the nude if she or he is
doing a study of nude beaches (Douglas and Rasmussen
1977), or one might have to buy a huge motorbike and
frequent seedy bars in certain locations if he or she
is attempting to befriend and study the Hell’s Angels
(Thompson 1985). The different ways and attempts to
get in vary tremendously, but they all share the common
goal of gaining access to the setting. Sometimes there is
no setting per se, as when Fontana (1977) attempted to
study poor elderly on the streets and had to gain access
anew with each and every interviewee.
Understanding the Language

and Culture of the Respondents
Wax (1960) gave perhaps the most poignant description
of learning the language and culture of the respondents
in her study of “disloyal” Japanese in concentration camps
in America between 1943 and 1945. Wax had to over-
come a number of language and cultural problems in her
study. Although respondents may be fluent in the language
of the interviewer, there are different ways of saying things—
or indeed, certain things that should not be said at all—
linking language and cultural manifestations. Wax made
this point:
I remarked that I would like to see the letter. The

silence that fell on the chatting group was almost
palpable, and the embarrassment of the hosts was
painful to see. The faux pas was not asking to see
a letter, for letters were passed about rather freely.
44 Chapter 4
It rested on the fact that one did not give a Cauca-

sian a letter in which the “disloyal” statement of a
friend might be expressed. (p. 172)
Some researchers, especially in anthropological

interviews, tend to rely on interpreters and so become
vulnerable to added layers of meanings, biases, and in-
terpretations, and this may lead to disastrous misunder-
standings (Freeman 1983). At times, specific jargon, such
as the medical metalanguage of physicians, may be a code
that is hard for nonmembers to understand.
Deciding How to Present Oneself

Do we present ourselves as representatives from academia
studying medical students (Becker 1956)? Do we approach
the interview as a woman-to-woman discussion (Spradley
1979)? Do we “dress down” to look like the respondents
(Fontana 1977; Thompson 1975)? Do we represent the
colonial culture (Malinowski 1922), or do we humbly present
ourselves as “learners” (Wax 1960)? This is very impor-
tant because once the interviewer’s presentational self is
“cast,” it leaves a profound impression on the respondents
and it has a great influence on the success of the study
(or lack thereof). Sometimes inadvertently, the researcher’s
presentational self may be misrepresented, as Johnson (1976)
discovered in studying a welfare office when some of the
employees assumed that he was a “spy” for management
despite his best efforts to present himself to the contrary.
Locating an Informant
The researcher must find an insider—a member of the
group being studied—who is willing to be an informant
and act as a guide and translator of cultural mores and,
at times, of jargon or language. Although the researcher
can conduct interviews without an informant, he or she

can save much time and avoid mistakes if a good infor-
mant becomes available. The “classic” sociological infor-
mant was Doc in Whyte’s Street Corner Society (1943).
Without Doc’s help and guidance, it is doubtful that Whyte
would have been able to access his respondents to the
level he did. Similarly, Rabinow’s (1977) discussion of
his relation with his main informant, Abd al-Malik ben
Lahcen, was very instructive. Malik acted as a translator
but also provided Rabinow with access to the cultural ways
of the respondents, and by his actions he provided Rabinow
with insights into the vast differences between a Univer-
sity of Chicago researcher and a native Moroccan.
Gaining Trust
Survey researchers asking respondents, for instance,
whether they favor the establishment of a nuclear dump
in their state (Frey 1993) do not have too much work to
do in the way of gaining trust; respondents have opin-
ions about nuclear dumps and are very willing to express
them, sometimes forcefully. But it is clearly a different
story if one wants to ask about people’s frequency of sexual
intercourse or preferred method of birth control. The in-
terviewer therefore needs to establish some trust with the
respondents (Cicourel 1974).
Paul Rasmussen (1989) had to spend months as a
“wallflower” in the waiting room of a massage parlor before
any of the masseuses gained enough trust in him to di-
vulge to him, in unstructured interviews, the nature of
their “massage” relation with clients. Gaining trust is essential
to the success of the interviews, and once it is gained,
trust can still be very fragile. Any faux pas by the researcher
may destroy days, weeks, or months of painfully gained
trust. Altheide (1976) in his study of the newsroom made
46 Chapter 4
a few rookie mistakes that almost had him thrown out,

with disastrous results for his study (p. 200):
The second major clash occurred when I mistak-

enly tape recorded a conversation in a news car. I
had routinely taped several cameramen and reporters,
and I assumed that my first ride with a particular
cameraman was also recordable since one of the
reporters friendly to me was also along. I knew I
was wrong when the cameraman threatened to throw
me out of the car.
Establishing Rapport
Because the goal of unstructured interviewing is under-
standing, it is paramount to establish rapport with respon-
dents; that is, the researcher must be able to take the role
of the respondents and attempt to see the situation from
their viewpoint rather than superimpose his or her world
of academia and preconceptions upon them. Although a
close rapport with the respondents opens the doors to more
informed research, it may create problems, in that the
researcher may become a spokesperson for the group studied,
losing his or her distance and objectivity, or may “go native”
and become a member of the group and forgo his or her
academic role. At times, what the researcher might feel
is a good rapport turns out not to be, as Thompson (1985)
found out in a nightmarish way when he was subjected
to a brutal beating by the Hell’s Angels just as his study
of them was coming to a close. At the other end of the
spectrum, some researchers might never feel that they have
established a good rapport with their respondents. Malinowski
(1967/1989), for example, always mistrusted the motives
of the natives and at times was troubled by their brutish
sensuality or angered by their outright lying or decep-
tions: “After lunch I [carried] yellow calico and spoke about
the baloma. I made a small sagali, Navavile. I was fed up

with the niggers” (p. 154).
Collecting Empirical Material

Being out in the field does not afford one the luxury of
video cameras, soundproof rooms, and high-quality re-
cording equipment. Lofland (1971) provided detailed
information on doing and writing up interviews and on
the types of field notes that one ought to take and how
to organize them. Yet field workers often must make do
with what they can have in the field; the “tales” of their
methods used range from holding a miniature tape re-
corder as inconspicuously as possible to taking mental
notes and then rushing to the privacy of a bathroom to
write them down—at times on toilet paper. We agree with
Lofland that, regardless of the circumstances, researchers
ought to (a) take notes regularly and promptly; (b) write
down everything no matter how unimportant it might seem
at the time; (c) try to be as inconspicuous as possible in
note taking; and (d) analyze notes frequently.
47
48 Chapter 4
Types of Unstructured Interviewing 49
Types of Unstructured
Interviewing
We consider the issue of interpreting and reporting em-

pirical material later in the book. In this chapter, we briefly
outline some different types of unstructured interviews
and issues relating to how interviews proceed: oral his-
tory, creative interviewing, and postmodern interviewing.
We also discuss how grounded theory and gender influ-
ence the interview process.
Oral History
The oral history differs from other unstructured interviews
in purpose but not in method. The oral collection of
historical materials goes back to ancient times, but its
modern-day formal organization can be traced to 1948,
when Allan Nevins began the Oral History Project at Columbia
University (Starr 1984: 4). The oral history captures a
variety of forms of life, from common folks talking about
their jobs in Terkel’s (1975) Working to the historical
recollections of President Harry Truman in Miller’s (1974)
49
50 Chapter 5
Plain Speaking (see also Starr 1984: 4). Often oral his-
tory transcripts are not published, but many may be found
in libraries. They are like silent memoirs waiting for someone
to rummage through them and bring their testimony to
life. Recently, oral history has found great popularity in
the feminist movement (Gluck and Patai 1991), where it
is seen as a way of understanding and bringing forth the
history of women in a culture that has traditionally relied
on masculine interpretation: “Refusing to be rendered
historically voiceless any longer, women are creating a
new history—using our own voices and experiences” (Gluck
1984: 222).
Another important direction taken by oral history
is toward collecting the oral histories of oppressed groups,
providing vivid and often moving accounts from viewpoints
that have been suppressed for too long. Govenar com-
piled a volume of Afro-American slave narratives and oral
histories (2000: xiv): “The emphasis is upon people them-
selves and the ways in which they participate in the
process of history through what they say and do.” The
following snippet exemplifies the tone and style of the
oral histories:
Prejudice was very much evident in Minden. It really

was. Lynching was very prevalent. It was fading after
I grew up. My father, he told me some about the
lynchings around there, but I don’t recall any. But
the prejudice was very strong. On election day, it
was best for Negroes to stay home because the white
people thought you might come to vote and then
they would start beating you up, you know, cause
a lot of trouble. So most Negroes stayed home on
election day. They weren’t even allowed to regis-
ter in those days. It was so evident you didn’t
have to talk about it. No, it wasn’t discussed very
much in the home. You just knew it was there and
everywhere and everyplace. There wasn’t much dis-

cussion about the race prejudice. (Govenar 2000:
155)
Relevant to the study of oral history (and, in fact,

to all interviewing) is the study of memory and its rela-
tion to recall. For instance, Schwartz (1999) examined
the ages at which we recall critical episodes in our lives,
concluding that “biographical memory . . . is better un-
derstood as a social process” and that “as we look back,
we find ourselves remembering our lives in terms of our
experience with others” (p. 15; see also Schwartz 1996).
Ellis (1991) resorted to the use of “sociological introspection”
to reconstruct biographical episodes of her past life. Notable
among Ellis’s work in this genre is her reconstruction of
her nine-year relationship with her partner, Gene Weinstein.
Through the following quote from Tolstoy’s The Death
of Ivan Ilyich, Ellis described the emotional negotiations
the two of them went through as they coped with his down-
ward-spiraling health until the final negotiation with death:
From that moment the screaming began that con-

tinued for three days, and was so terrible that one
could not hear it through two closed doors without
horror. . . . For three whole days, during which time
did not exist for him, he struggled in that black sack
into which he was being thrust by an invisible, resistless
force. He struggled as a man condemned to death
struggles in the hands of the executioner, knowing
that he cannot save himself. (Ellis 1995: 297)
Creative Interviewing
Close to oral history, but used more conventionally as a
sociological tool, is Douglas’s (1985) “creative interview-
ing.” Douglas argued against the “how to” guides to con-
ducting interviews because unstructured interviews take
52 Chapter 5
place in the largely situational everyday world of mem-

bers of society. Thus, interviewing and interviewers must
necessarily be creative, must forget “how to” rules, and
must adapt themselves to the ever-changing situations they
face. Similar to oral historians, Douglas described inter-
viewing as collecting oral reports from the members of
society. In creative interviewing, these reports go well beyond
the length of conventional unstructured interviews and
may become “life histories,” with interviewing taking place
in multiple sessions over many days with the respondents.
Douglas felt that in order to gain trust from the
interviewee and coax her into greater disclosures about
her life, the interviewer must share glimpses of her own
life with the interviewee (1985: 157):
Once again, the fact that Elise was about my own

age was quite helpful in establishing intimate self-
disclosures. I knew I would have to take a much
longer and more intimate, more self-disclosing voyage
than the first interviewers had. We did. By the time
we got to the moment of truth in her life, we had
explored many major veins and some byways of our
lives together. Then she easily told all the details
about her first affair, which proved to be the first
real love of her life and of very great importance in
understanding her basic sense of self. From there
on we steered our little ship safely home to the lovely
haven of self-discovery.
Postmodern Interviewing
Douglas’s concern with the important role played by the
interviewer as human, a concern that is also shared by
feminist oral historians, became a paramount element in
the interviewing approaches of postmodern anthropolo-
gists and sociologists during the mid-1980s. Marcus and
Fischer (1986) addressed ethnography at large, but their
discussion was germane to unstructured interviewing because,

as we have seen, such interviewing constitutes the major
way of collecting data in fieldwork. Marcus and Fischer
voiced reflexive concerns about the ways in which the
researcher influences the study, both in the methods of
data collection and in the techniques of reporting find-
ings. This concern led to new ways of conducting inter-
views in the hope of minimizing, if not eliminating, the
interviewer’s influence. One such way is through poly-
phonic interviewing, where the voices of the respondents
are recorded with minimal influence from the researcher
and are not collapsed together and reported as one through
the interpretation of the researcher. Instead, the multiple
perspectives of the various respondents are reported, and
differences and problems encountered are discussed, rather
than glossed over.
Krieger (1983) provided one of the best examples
of polyphonic interviewing, in her study of a women’s
community, a lesbian group. Krieger spent a year doing
participant observation, followed by intensive interview-
ing of seventy-eight women. When time came to write
the story, Krieger decided to rely entirely and solely on
the interview notes, to let the voices of the women be
heard (1983: 191):
I added very little of my own wording to my text

beyond crediting paraphrased passages to different
speakers and identifying when speakers changed. I
therefore became almost absent as a narrator. I was
“painting a picture” . . . rather than “telling a story.”
Krieger let the women’s interviews tell the story.

The absence of analysis by the author meant that the
readers had to provide their own interpretation of the in-
terviews, thus removing almost entirely the mediating and
54 Chapter 5
interpretive role of the writer, although paraphrasing is

in itself an interpretive process. The following excerpt char-
acterizes the tone of the book (1983: 70):
It was true, said Meg. She was easily threatened in

her relationship with Diana. She felt a lot of jeal-
ousy. She didn’t want to feel it. It wasn’t a desir-
able quality about herself. It was like a weakness,
something she didn’t have control over. When Diana
told other people about problems in their relation-
ship, she felt that was okay because all people had
problems. Most of them wouldn’t make her seem
crazy, except the jealousy thing. She never could
tell if she was just being paranoid, or if Diana was
actually doing the things she feared.
Interpretive interactionism follows in the footsteps

of creative and polyphonic interviewing, but, borrowing
from James Joyce, it adds a new element—that of epiphanies,
which Denzin (1989a) described as “those interactional
moments that leave marks on people’s lives [and] have
the potential for creating transformational experiences for
the person” (p. 15). Thus, the topic of inquiry becomes
dramatized by the focus on existential moments in people’s
lives, possibly producing richer and more meaningful data.
Consider the following example in which the narrator
re-lives his own past while trying to help an alcoholic person:
Yesterday I went on a 12-Step call. To a motel. I

stayed at the same motel, once when I went on a
week’s drunk. It was good for me to go back to that
place. To see what it’s like if you pick up that first
drink. I was busy when the call came and I didn’t
want to go. But I’m glad I did. We got into the Big
Book, into alcoholism and into my disease. I’m just
glad I don’t have to drink today. This was my first
12-Step call and I was scared as hell. There was a

bottle of 4-Roses on the table and beer in the sink.
Three months ago I would have had a drink. I’m
sure. I don’t think I’ll ever forget how it felt in that
room with that alcoholic who wanted our help. Empty
beer cans, the smell of whiskey and stale cigarettes,
cartoons on the TV. I’m grateful to be sober today.
(Denzin 1989a: 41–42)
Finally, as postmodernists seek new ways of under-

standing and reporting data, we note the concept of mystory:
“a genre for academic discourse that could function across
all our media—voice, print, and video” (Ulmer 1989: 1).
In mystory, the traditional product of interviewing, talk,
is coupled with the visual, providing a product consonant
with a society that is dominated by the medium of tele-
vision (Ulmer 1989). Ulmer, in his book, provides his own
example of a mystory, “Derrida at Little Big Horn” which
“is provided as an example of an alphabetic miming of a
filming mode—the compilation film. Like films made from
other films, the compilation text is made from other writings,
consisting primarily of citations. The ‘originality’ of the
piece rests with the action of selection and combination”
(Ulmer 1989: 209–210). It is hard to render a mystory by
a single quote; the following provides the flavor of the
integration of different media (pp. 216–217):
[Photograph, Huffman collection, “First Monument.

Custer Battlefield”]
“Hell, with the fires out.” (General Sully’s descrip-
tion of the badlands)
Like Huffman, my father was a County Commissioner.
One of their responsibilities was to keep the roads
clear and in good repair. It being Custer County,
the county vehicles all had this portrait of Custer
on the door, in romantic style, yellow hair and white
56 Chapter 5
hat, red scarf and shoulders of the buckskin jacket.

It was the Errol Flynn look. He would drive one of
these pickups out to check on the roads.
[Photograph, still, Errol Flynn as Custer]
[Still, Ronald Reagan as a young Custer, in Santa
Fe Trail, 1940]
[Painting: “Custer’s Last Stand”]
Grounded Theory and the Interview

Grounded theory as an approach to social research influ-
ences the character and process of interviews. Our em-
phasis here is on the position of the interview as a
data-gathering technique. For this reason, this section does
not delve into a complete and detailed explanation of all
aspects of grounded theory, but instead emphasizes the
place of the interview in the grounded theory process and
the influence that process has on the interview practice.
We discuss issues related to the framing of interviews and
interpreting data in detail later in the book.
The most important aspect of grounded theory for
interviewing is that the processes of data collection, cod-
ing, and analysis are simultaneous (Glaser and Strauss
1967). The goal of grounded theory is to use data to develop
theory rather than to test existing theory (Glaser and Strauss
1967). Grounded theory methods guide data collection
so that researchers’ data collection, analysis, and find-
ings are ostensibly more closely linked than they are when
using other methods. The grounded theory method can
be applied to a variety of data collection strategies, in-
cluding in-depth interviews, ethnographic methods, con-
tent analysis, and historical analysis (Charmaz 2002). Glaser
and Strauss (1967) are known as the founders of grounded
theory, and their intent was to provide a rigorous method
for inductive analysis of society that other researchers would

accept as “scientific.”
We focus on how grounded theory methods influ-
ence in-depth interviews, because, as Charmaz notes, “in-
depth qualitative interviewing fits grounded theory
particularly well” (Charmaz 2002: 676). This is the case
because interviewers have the control to hone in on par-
ticipants’ particular issues, interests, and concerns with
ever more increasing specificity. As the issues become clearer
and more specific, researchers can use more directed ques-
tions, and even choose specific participants for their in-
terviews.
Charmaz (2000) posits that grounded theory methods
can be either constructivist or objectivist. The form of
grounded theory has implications for the interview, par-
ticularly the perspective of the relationship between the
interviewer and interviewee, as well as the perspective
of how each participant contributes to the construction
of reality within the interview context. Specifically, “ob-
jectivist” researchers, according to Charmaz, see them-
selves as gathering existing data from respondents through
interviews. In contrast, “constructivist” researchers acknowl-
edge the researcher as an active participant in the con-
struction of the data. For this reason, constructivist researchers
emphasize the necessity of situating data from interviews
in their social context. Furthermore, a constructivist ap-
proach implies that researchers will be reflective about
their role in the data collection and analysis process. We
return to issues related to the role of reflexivity in inter-
viewing in a later section of the book.
Glaser (2002) argues that Charmaz’s perspective on
grounded theory is inherently flawed, and that “Constructivist
Grounded Theory is a misnomer” because the data that
Charmaz refers to as being mutually constructed is only
a small part of the grounded theory method. According
58 Chapter 5
to Glaser, there is a clear distinction between the data

and the method. The whole point of grounded theory,
according to Glaser, is to use the method to accomplish
abstraction from the data to the level of theory. In this
way, Glaser continues to echo the “scientific/positivistic”
roots of grounded theory in which the researcher attempts
to be an unbiased observer of social phenomena.
Regardless of the approach to grounded theory
(constructivist, objectivist, or what one might call tradi-
tional), several issues related to the interview process are
similar, particularly the approach to open-ended interviews
in general as well as the potential benefits of multiple
interviews. The grounded theory approach demands that
the open-ended interview technique be sufficiently open
to draw out participants’ experiences and stories, just like
any good open-ended or in-depth interview. The idea of
conducting multiple interviews, while not unique to grounded
theory methods, is of exceptional value in a grounded theory
framework. Multiple interviews with respondents allow
researchers to follow up on earlier lines of thought and
observe how participants’ lives unfold. Further, research-
ers can use additional interviews to delve deeper into areas
that ongoing analysis deems important or that are in need
of more data. Thus, the analysis can inform the data-gathering
process.
The intertwined nature of the process of data gath-
ering and analysis means that grounded theory is par-
ticularly well suited for research that is “true to data” and
built clearly on respondents’ experiences. This perspec-
tive implies that the approach to interactive processes as
well as how individuals construct meaning uncover “the
significant social and social-psychological processes in
particular settings” (Glaser 2002: 676).
Although some disagreement exists among those who
practice grounded theory, there are similarities in how
the method influences interviews. Most important is the

focus on researchers conducting multiple interviews that
delve deeply into social phenomena or processes. While
some who practice grounded theory emphasize the im-
portance of reflexivity in the interview process and the
co-construction of reality, we discuss these in more gen-
eral terms in a later chapter of the book.
Gender and Interviewing

The housewife goes into a well-stocked store to look
for a frying pan. Her thinking probably does not
proceed exactly this way, but it is helpful to think
of the many possible two-way choices she might
make: Cast iron or aluminum? Thick or thin?
Metal or wooden handle? Covered or not? Deep
or shallow? Large or small? This brand or that? Rea-
sonable or too high in price? To buy or not? Cash
or charge? Have it delivered or carry it? . . . The
two way question is simplicity itself when it comes
to recording answers and tabulating them. (Payne
1951: 55–56)
The preceding quote represents the prevalent pa-

ternalistic attitude toward women in interviewing (Oakley
1981: 39) as well as the paradigmatic concern with cod-
ing answers and, therefore, with presenting limited
dichotomous choices. Apart from a tendency to be conde-
scending to women, the traditional interview paradigm
does not account for gender differences. In fact, Babbie’s
(1992) classic text, The Practice of Social Research, briefly
referenced gender only three times and did not even men-
tion the influence of gender on interviews. Over time,
Babbie has incorporated more examples of research
by women as well as a section on feminist paradigms.
However, even the most recent edition of the text fails to
60 Chapter 5
mention gender in the discussion of survey interviews,

even in the section about the appearance and demeanor
of interviewers: “[C]learly, the interview will be more
successful if the interviewer can become the kind of per-
son the respondent is comfortable with” (2007: 266), says
Babbie, ignoring gender (as well as race). And while he
now includes a discussion of Smith’s “institutional eth-
nography” in the Qualitative Field Research chapter, he
still fails to mention how gender may influence qualita-
tive interviews.
Feminists and others have called attention to women’s
marginalization in the interview process, both as inter-
viewers and as participants/respondents. Early in the
development of drawing attention to the patriarchal bias
in scholarship, the focus was squarely on women’s exclu-
sion, but more recent scholarship emphasizes the gendered
experiences of men as well as women. This shift parallels
the one in sociological theory from an understanding of
women as outsiders to the perspective that all social re-
ality is gendered, thus men also participate in gender con-
struction as both women and men “do gender” (West and
Zimmerman 1987). More broadly, it is important to rec-
ognize that gender is not synonymous with women. Thus,
two distinct approaches exist relevant to gender and in-
terviewing. The first emphasizes women’s experiences and
the second focuses on how gendered processes influence
the interview procedure.
The first of these approaches is highlighted in the
quotation that began this section and much of the litera-
ture about distinct approaches to interviewing women and
the kind of knowledge that is produced through research
with women. It is these approaches we turn to first. This
is followed by a brief discussion of how gender, not just
the category “woman,” influences knowledge production.
As Oakley (1981) cogently pointed out, both the

interviewer and the respondent are considered to be faceless
and invisible, and they must be if the paradigmatic as-
sumption of gathering value-free data is to be maintained.
Yet, as Denzin (1989a: 116) told us, “gender filters knowl-
edge”; that is, the sex of the interviewer and the sex of
the respondent make a difference because the interview
takes place within the cultural boundaries of a paternal-
istic social system in which masculine identities are dif-
ferentiated from feminine ones.
In the typical interview, there exists a hierarchical
relation, with the respondent being in the subordinate
position. The interviewer is instructed to be courteous,
friendly, and pleasant:
The interviewer’s manner should be friendly, cour-

teous, conversational and unbiased. He should be
neither too grim nor too effusive; neither too talk-
ative nor too timid. The idea should be to put the
respondent at ease, so that he will talk freely and
fully. (Selltiz et al. 1965: 576; emphasis added)
Yet, as the last line of this quote shows, this demeanor is

a ruse to gain the trust and confidence of the respondent
without reciprocating those feelings in any way. The in-
terviewer is not to give her or his own opinions and is to
evade direct questions. What seems to be a conversation
is really a one-way pseudo-conversation, raising an ethi-
cal dilemma (Fine 1984) inherent in the study of people
for opportunistic reasons. When the respondent is a woman,
the interview presents added problems because the pre-
established format directed at information relevant for
the study tends both to ignore the respondent’s own con-
cerns and to curtail any attempts to digress and elabo-
rate. This format also stymies any revelation of personal
feelings and emotions.
62 Chapter 5
Warren (1988) discussed problems of gender in both

anthropological and sociological fieldwork, and many of
these problems are also found in the ethnographic inter-
view. Some of these problems are the traditional ones of
entrée and trust, which may be heightened by the gender
of the interviewer, especially in highly sex-segregated
societies: “I never witnessed any ceremonies that were
barred to women. Whenever I visited compounds I sat
with the women while the men gathered in the parlors or
in front of the compound. . . . I never entered any of the
places where men sat around to drink beer or palm wine
and to chat” (Sudarkasa 1986: 181).
Solutions to the problem have been to view the female
anthropologist as androgynous or to grant her honorary
male status for the duration of her research. Warren (1988)
also pointed to some advantages of the researcher’s be-
ing female and, therefore, being seen as harmless or in-
visible. Other problems are associated with the researcher’s
status and race and with the context of the interview, and
again these problems are magnified for female research-
ers in a paternalistic world. Female interviewers at times
face the added burden of sexual overtures or covert sexual
hassles (Warren 1988: 33).
Feminist researchers are suggesting ways in which
to circumvent the traditional interviewing paradigm. Oakley
(1981) noted that interviewing is a masculine paradigm
that is embedded in a masculine culture and stresses
masculine traits while at the same time excluding traits,
such as sensitivity and emotionality, that are culturally
viewed as feminine traits. However, there is a growing
reluctance, especially among female researchers (Oakley
1981; Reinharz 1992; Smith 1987) to continue interviewing
women as “objects” with little or no regard for them as
individuals. Although this reluctance stems from moral
and ethical reasons, it is also relevant methodologically.
As Oakley pointed out, in interviewing there is “no inti-

macy without reciprocity” (1981: 49). Thus, the empha-
sis is shifting to allow the development of a closer relation
between the interviewer and the respondent. Research-
ers are attempting to minimize status differences and are
doing away with the traditional hierarchical situation in
interviewing. Interviewers can show their human side and
can answer questions and express feelings. Methodologi-
cally, this new approach provides a greater spectrum of
responses and a greater insight into the lives of the re-
spondents—or “participants,” to avoid the hierarchical pitfall
(Reinharz 1992: 22)—because it encourages them to control
the sequencing and language of the interview while also
allowing them the freedom of open-ended responses (Oakley
1981; Reinharz 1992; Smith 1987). To wit, “Women were
always . . . encouraged to ‘digress’ into details of their
personal histories and to recount anecdotes of their working
lives. Much important information was gathered in this
way” (Yeandle 1984; quoted in Reinharz 1992: 25).
Hertz (1997a) made the self of the researcher vis-
ible and suggested that it is only one of many selves the
researcher takes to the field. She asserted that inter-
viewers need to be reflexive; that is, they need to “have
an ongoing conversation about experience while simul-
taneously living in the moment” (p. viii). By doing so,
they will heighten the understanding of differences of
ideologies, culture, and politics between interviewers and
interviewees.
Hertz also underscored the importance of “voices”—
how we (as authors) express and write our stories, which
data we include and which data we exclude, whose
voices we choose to represent and whose voices we choose
not to represent. The concern with voices is also found,
very powerfully, in Vaz’s (1997) edited volume, Oral
Narrative Research with Black Women. One of the contributors,
64 Chapter 5
Obbo (1997), stated,
This chapter is a modest exercise in giving expres-

sion to women’s voices and in rescuing their per-
ceptions and experiences from being mere murmurs
or backdrop to political, social and cultural hap-
penings. Women’s voices have been devalued by male
chronicles of cultural history even when the men
acknowledge female informants; they are overshad-
owed by the voice of male authority and ascendance
in society. (pp. 42–43)
This commitment to maintaining the integrity of the

phenomena and preserving the viewpoint of the respon-
dents, as expressed in their everyday language, is very
akin to phenomenological and existential sociologies (Douglas
and Johnson 1977; Kotarba and Fontana 1984) and also
reflects the concern of postmodern ethnographers (Marcus
and Fischer 1986). The differences are (a) the heightened
moral concern for respondents/participants; (b) the at-
tempt to redress the male/female hierarchy and existing
paternalistic power structure; and (c) the paramount
importance placed on membership, because the effectiveness
of male researchers in interviewing female respondents
has been largely discredited.
Behar (1996) addressed the ambiguous nature of
the enterprise of interviewing by asking the following
questions: Where do we locate the researcher in the field?
How much do we reveal about ourselves? How do we
reconcile our different roles and positions? Behar made
us see that interviewer, writer, respondent, and the inter-
view itself are not clearly distinct entities; rather, they
are intertwined in a deeply problematic way. Behar and
Gordon (1995) also cogently pointed out that the semi-
nal work by Marcus and Fischer (1986) broke ground with
modernistic ethnography but remains an example of
paternalistic sociology because it did not address women’s

concerns.
Some feminist sociologists have gone beyond the
concern with interviewing or fieldwork in itself. Richardson
(1992a) strove for new forms of expression to report the
findings and presented some of her fieldwork in the form
of poetry. Clough (1998) questioned the whole enterprise
of fieldwork under the current paradigm and called for a
reassessment of the whole sociological enterprise and for
a rereading of existing sociological texts in a light that is
not marred by a paternalistic bias. Their voices echoed
the concern of Smith (1987), who eloquently stated,
The problem [of a research project] and its particular

solution are analogous to those by which fresco painters
solved the problems of representing the different
temporal moments of a story in the singular space
of the wall. The problem is to produce in a two-
dimensional space framed as a wall a world of action
and movement in time. (p. 281)
More recently scholars have begun to problematize

gender in terms of men and masculinity in the research
process. For example, Schwalbe and Wolkomir (2002), in
their chapter on the particularities of interviewing men,
discuss how masculinities—and particularly hegemonic
masculinity (Connell 1995)—influence the interview process.
In addition to explaining that masculinity is constructed
through the interview process, they offer practical sug-
gestions for interviewing men, which they acknowledge
will work differently for women and men interviewers. It
is noteworthy, however, that they do not discuss the gendered
implications for interviewers.
A growing number of researchers believe that we
cannot isolate gender from other important elements that
also “filter knowledge.” For example, Collins (1990) wrote
66 Chapter 5
eloquently about the filtering of knowledge through

memberships—of being black and female in American
culture, in her case. Weston (1998) made just as power-
ful a case for sexuality, contending that it should not be
treated as a compartmentalized subspecialty because it
underlies and is integral to the whole of social sciences.
It is clear that gender, sexuality, and race cannot be con-
sidered in isolation; race, class, hierarchy, status, and age
(Seidman 1991) all are part of the complex, yet often ignored,
elements that shape interviewing.
An example of research that changed prevailing
knowledge through the inclusion of women was Kanter’s
(1977) groundbreaking work “Men and Women of the
Corporation.” This study drew on individual, group, and
“conversational” interviews (in addition to several other
data sources) and redirected the field of organizational
sociology. The inclusion of women in her study of a large
bureaucratic organization showed how previously unstudied
aspects of organizational structure influenced the work-
ings of organizations. Kanter’s research had a profound
influence on organizational studies and on feminist re-
search in the area of gender and work. She did not, how-
ever, challenge the prevailing techniques of interview
methodology in her research.
“Sugar’s Life in the Hood: The Story of a Former
Welfare Mother” (2002) authored by both Sugar Turner,
a former self-described “welfare mother,” and Tracy Bachrach
Ehlers, an anthropologist, is a prime example of a femi-
nist effort to preserve the viewpoint of the respondent in
the research process. In fact, the book is a collaborative
effort between the two authors, and is a “testimonio” de-
signed to give voice to nontraditional, usually silenced,
voices. In this case, it was intended to give voice to a
black woman who is a former welfare mother, among other
designations, and it is intended to be the story of a whole
person, not simply a book about “the poor” (Turner and

Ehlers 2002).
The insight that interviews, no matter the type, carry
gendered meanings and reproduce gendered realities has
been tremendously influential to social research both
substantively and methodologically. In fact, institutional
review boards now generally require justification for the
exclusion of women as the subjects of research (social,
medical, and beyond). And, as we will see, the insight
that gender is reproduced through interviews has had
influence far beyond those who study gender.
68 Chapter 5
Framing and Interpreting Interviews 69
Framing and
Interpreting Interviews
Aside from the problem of framing real-life events in a

two-dimensional space, we face the added problems of
how the framing is being done and who is doing the framing.
In sociological terms, this means that the type of inter-
viewing selected, the techniques used, and the ways of
recording information all come to bear on the results of
the study. In addition, data must be interpreted, and the
researcher has a great deal of influence over what part of
the data will be reported and how the data will be re-
ported.
Framing Interviews
Numerous volumes have been published on the techniques
of structured interviewing (see, e.g., Babbie 1992; Brad-
burn et al. 1979; Kahn and Cannell 1957; Gorden 1980).
There is also a voluminous literature on group interview-
ing, especially on marketing and survey research (for a
69
70 Chapter 6
comprehensive review of literature in this area, see Stewart

and Shamdasani 1990). The uses of group interviewing
have also been linked to qualitative sociology (Morgan
1988). Unstructured interviewing techniques also have
been covered thoroughly (Denzin 1989b; Lofland 1971;
Lofland and Lofland 1984; Spradley 1979).
As we have noted, unstructured interviews vary widely
given their informal nature and depending on the nature
of the setting, and some eschew the use of any pre-
established set of techniques (Douglas 1985). Yet there
are techniques involved in interviewing whether the in-
terviewer is just being “a nice person” or he or she is follow-
ing a format. Techniques can be varied to meet diverse
situations, and varying one’s techniques is known as using
tactics. Traditionally, the researcher is involved in an in-
formal conversation with the respondent. Thus, the re-
searcher must maintain a tone of “friendly” chat while
trying to remain close to the guidelines of the topics of
inquiry that she or he has in mind. The researcher begins
by “breaking the ice” with general questions and gradu-
ally moves on to more specific ones while also—as incon-
spicuously as possible—asking questions intended to check
the veracity of the respondent’s statements. The researcher
should avoid getting involved in a “real” conversation in
which he or she answers the questions asked by the re-
spondent or provides personal opinions on the matters
discussed. The researcher can avoid “getting trapped” by
shrugging off the relevance of his or her opinions (e.g.,
“It doesn’t matter how I feel, it’s your opinion that’s
important”) or by feigning ignorance (e.g., “I really don’t
know enough about this to say anything; you’re the ex-
pert”). Of course, as we have seen in the case of gendered
interviewing, the researcher may reject these techniques
and “come down’” to the level of the respondent to
engage in a “real” conversation, with give and take and

shared empathetic understanding.
The use of language, particularly the use of specific
terms, is important to create a “sharedness of meanings”
in which both the interviewer and the respondent under-
stand the contextual nature of specific referents. For in-
stance, in studying nude beaches, Douglas and Rasmussen
(1977) uncovered that the term “nude beach virgin” had
nothing to do with chastity; rather, it referred to the fact
that a person’s buttocks were white, indicating to others
that he or she was a newcomer to the nude beach. Lan-
guage is also important in delineating the type of ques-
tion asked (e.g., broad, narrow, leading, instructive).
Consider the following exchange between a welfare
recipient (SN) contesting termination of his benefit and
the state hearing officer (HO) (Gubrium and Holstein 1998:
175):
HO: So you didn’t contact employers because you

didn’t feel [the welfare agency worker] was giving
you adequate assistance?
SN: I was looking out for my own.
HO: Wait, just a moment. Just answer my question.
In this example, the hearing officer is controlling the form

of the answer expected and does not allow the interviewee
to continue narrating his story but is leading him to conform
with format expected by the bureaucracy.
Nonverbal techniques are also important in inter-
viewing. There are four basic modes of nonverbal com-
munication:
Proxemic communication is the use of interpersonal

space to communicate attitudes, chronemic commu-
nication is the use of pacing of speech and length
72 Chapter 6
of silence in conversation, kinesic communication

includes any body movements or postures, and
paralinguistic communication includes all the varia-
tions in volume, pitch and quality of voice. (Gorden
1980: 335)
All four of these modes represent important techniques

for the researcher. In addition, the researcher should carefully
note and record respondents’ use of these modes, because
interview data are more than verbal records and should
include, as much as possible, nonverbal features of the
interaction. Finally, techniques vary with the group be-
ing interviewed; for instance, interviewing a group of children
requires a different approach from the one that the inter-
viewer may use when interviewing a group of elderly widows
(Lopata 1980).
An interesting proposal for framing interviews came
from Saukko (2000), who asked, “How can we be true
and respect the inner experiences of people and at the
same time critically assess the cultural discourses that form
the very stuff from which our experiences are made?” (p.
299). Using the metaphor of patchwork quilts (which have
no center), Saukko patched and stitched together the stories
of five anorexic women. Thus, she rejected the idea of
framing characters as monological and instead, borrow-
ing from Bakhtin (1986), presented them as “dialogic char-
acters” (Saukko 2000: 303).
Interpreting Interviews
Many studies that use unstructured interviews are not
reflexive enough about the interpreting process. Common
platitudes proclaim that data speak for themselves, and
that the researcher is neutral, unbiased, and “invisible.”
The data reported tend to flow nicely, there are no con-
tradictory data, and there is no mention of what data were
excluded and why. Improprieties never happen, and the

main concern seems to be the proper (if unreflexive) fil-
ing, analyzing, and reporting of events. But anyone who
has engaged in fieldwork knows better. No matter how
organized the researcher may be, he or she slowly be-
comes buried under an increasing mountain of field notes,
transcripts, newspaper clippings, and audiotapes. Tradi-
tionally, readers were presented with the researcher’s
interpretation of the data, cleaned and streamlined and
collapsed in a rational, noncontradictory account. More
recently, sociologists have come to grips with the reflex-
ive, problematic, and sometimes contradictory nature of
data and with the tremendous, if unspoken, influence of
the researcher as author. What Van Maanen (1988) called
“confessional style” began in earnest during the 1970s
(Johnson 1976) and has continued unabated to our days
in a soul cleansing by researchers of problematic feelings
and sticky situations in the field. Although perhaps somewhat
overdone at times, these “confessions” are very valuable
because they make readers aware of the complex and
cumbersome nature of interviewing people in their natu-
ral settings and lend a tone of realism and veracity to
studies. Malinowski (1967/1989) provided a good example:
“Yesterday I slept very late. Got up around 10. The day
before I had engaged Omaga, Koupa, and a few others.
They didn’t come. Again I fell into a rage” (p. 67).
Showing the human side of the researcher and the
problematics of unstructured interviewing has taken new
forms in deconstructionism (Derrida 1976). Here, the
influence of the author is brought under scrutiny. Thus,
the text created by the rendition of events by the researcher
is “deconstructed”; the author’s biases and taken-for-granted
notions are exposed, and sometimes alternative ways of
looking at the data are introduced (Clough 1998).
74 Chapter 6
Postmodern social researchers, as we have seen,

attempt to expose and minimize the role of the researcher
as field worker and as author. For instance, Crapanzano
(1980) reported Tuhami’s accounts, whether they were
sociohistorical renditions, dreams, or outright lies, because
they all constituted a part of this Moroccan Arab respondent’s
sense of self and personal history. In interviewing Tuhami,
Crapanzano learned not only about his respondent but
also about himself:
As Tuhami’s interlocutor, I became an active par-

ticipant in his life history, even though I rarely appear
directly in his recitations. Not only did my pres-
ence, and my questions, prepare him for the text
he was to produce, but they produced what I read
as a change of consciousness in him. They produced
a change of consciousness in me too. We were both
jostled from our assumptions about the nature of
the everyday world and ourselves and groped for
common reference points within this limbo of in-
terchange. (p. 11)
No longer pretending to be a faceless respondent and an

invisible researcher, Tuhami and Crapanzano were por-
trayed as individual humans with their own personal histories
and idiosyncrasies, and the readers learn about two people
and two cultures.
Gubrium and Holstein (2002) actually considered
the interview as a contextually based, mutually accom-
plished story that is reached through collaboration be-
tween the researcher and the respondent. Thus, just to
tell what happened (the “what”) is not enough because
the what depends greatly on the ways, negotiations, and
other interactive elements that take place between the
researcher and the respondent (the “how”). Others have
addressed the same concerns, at times enlarging the
one-to-one interaction to interaction between the researcher

and a whole community or outlining the various types of
collaborative interviewing (Ellis and Berger 2002).
The discovery of reflexivity proved to be an epiphanic
moment for Banister (1999). Once she was able to real-
ize that her study of midlife women resonated strong personal
notes with her own midlife experience, Banister acknowl-
edged that she was not just a witness to her respondents
and came to see the liminality of her position. Thus, she
was able to understand the women’s midlife experience
as well as her own, and to reach a deep ethnographic
understanding.
Another powerful way in which to accentuate re-
flexivity in interviewing is through narrative, where in
trying to understand “other” we learn about (our)“selves,”
reaching the hermeneutic circle, that is, the circle of
understanding (Rabinow and Sullivan 1987; Warren 2002).
Denzin (2003b) noted that writers can gain knowledge
about themselves by bringing forth their autobiographi-
cal past; in a way, they are bringing the past into the present
(Pinar 1994). Denzin (2003a) proposed that this perhaps
can best be achieved through the use of performances rather
than traditional writing modes as a way in which to reach
across the divide and extend a hand to those who have
been oppressed. In performance, we infuse powerful feelings
and try to recreate a way in which to understand those
we study and ourselves in our relationship to them, that
is, not merely to create new sociological knowledge but
also to use that hand to grasp and pull the downtrodden
out of the mire in which they are suffocating.
Consider the following dialogue, from a performance
based on HBO’s Six Feet Under (Fontana et al. 2005). David,
the funeral director, is talking to the Corpse, who is sit-
ting on the embalming table. The Corpse acts as the
sociological commentator in the performance, not unlike
76 Chapter 6
the chorus in ancient Greek plays. David, who is gay, is

shaken by having had to embalm the corpse of a gay person
killed by hoodlums. The conversation raises the deep feelings
about being gay and having to be an embalmer.
David: They killed that man just because he was

gay. It could have been me. (More intensely) It could
have been me. When I’m downstairs, alone with the
bodies, I sometimes hear their voices, the people
we bury. I heard him. His voice. All the time. It’s so
weird, I’m embalming them and they are sitting right
next to me making comments on how they look or
giving me advice about what I should be doing. It’s
very unsettling. (Cool look to the Corpse to drive
home the irony).
The Corpse: I just think it’s hard for you living folks
to know who you really are, what you want to do,
what your true self is, and then you go and give us
dead ones our final look. (2005: 115)
Ethical Considerations 77
Ethical
Considerations
Because the objects of inquiry in interviewing are humans,

extreme care must be taken to avoid any harm to them.
Traditionally, ethical concerns have revolved around the
topics of informed consent (receiving consent by the re-
spondent after having carefully and truthfully informed
him or her about the research), right to privacy (protect-
ing the identity of the respondent), and protection from
harm (physical, emotional, or any other kind).
No sociologists or other social scientists would dis-
miss these three ethical concerns, yet there are other ethical
concerns that are less unanimously upheld. The contro-
versy over overt/covert fieldwork is more germane to
participant observation but could include the surreptitious
use of tape-recording devices. Warwick (1973) and
Douglas (1985) argued for the use of covert methods
because they mirror the deceitfulness of everyday-life reality,
whereas others, including Erickson (1967), vehemently
opposed the study of uninformed respondents.
77
78 Chapter 7
Another problematic issue stems from the researcher’s

degree of involvement with the group under study. Whyte
(1943) was asked to vote more than once during the same
local elections (i.e., to vote illegally) by the members of
the group to which he had gained access and befriended,
thereby gaining the group members’ trust. He used “situ-
ational ethics,” that is, judging the legal infraction to be
minor in comparison with the loss of his fieldwork if he
refused to vote more than once. Thompson (1985) was
faced with a more serious possible legal breach. He was
terrified at the prospect of having to witness one of the
alleged rapes for which the Hell’s Angels had become
notorious, but as he reported, none took place during his
research. The most famous, and widely discussed, case of
questionable ethics in qualitative sociology took place during
Humphreys’ s (1970) research for Tearoom Trade. Humphreys
studied homosexual encounters in public restrooms in parks
(“tearooms”) by acting as a lookout (“watch queen”).
Although this fact in itself may be seen as unethical, it is
the following one that has raised many academic eyebrows.
Humphreys, unable to interview the men in the tearoom,
recorded their cars’ license plate numbers, which led him
to find their residences with the help of police files. He
then interviewed many of the men in their homes with-
out being recognized as having been their watch queen.
A twist in the degree of involvement with respon-
dents came from a controversial article by Goode (2002)
in which he summarily dismissed years of research with
a fat civil rights organization, which defends the rights of
obese people, as a “colossal waste of time.” Goode dis-
cussed the problematics of sexual intimacy between re-
searchers and respondents and acknowledged that he had
casual sexual liaisons with some of the respondents. In
fact, he fathered a child with a person he had met at research
meetings. Goode’s (2002) article was published along with
a number of responses, all of them very critical (in differ-

ent ways) of Goode’s cavalier approach (Bell 2002; Man-
ning 2002; Sagui 2002; Williams 2002). Perhaps the following
quote from Williams best summarizes the feelings of the
scholars responding to Goode: “I would hope and expect
that sociologists and their audiences could understand
public discrimination without sleeping with its victims”
(2002: 560).
Another ethical problem is raised by the veracity of
the reports made by researchers. For example, Whyte’s
(1943) famous study of Italian street corner men in Bos-
ton has come under severe scrutiny (Boelen 1992) as some
have alleged that Whyte portrayed the men in demean-
ing ways that did not reflect their visions of themselves.
Whyte’s case is still unresolved, and illustrates the deli-
cate issue of ethical decisions in the field and in report-
ing field notes, even more than 50 years later (Richardson
1992b).
A growing number of scholars, as we have seen (Oakley
1981), feels that most of traditional in-depth interview-
ing is unethical, whether wittingly or unwittingly. The
techniques and tactics of interviewing, they say, are re-
ally ways of manipulating the respondents while treating
them as objects or numbers rather than as individual humans.
Should the quest for objectivity supersede the human side
of those we study? Consider the following:
One day while doing research at the convalescent

center, I was talking to one of the aides while she
was beginning to change the bedding of one of
the patients who had urinated and soaked the
bed. He was the old, blind, ex-wrestler confined in
the emergency room. Suddenly, the wrestler decid-
ed he was not going to cooperate with the aide
and began striking violently at the air about him,
80 Chapter 7
fortunately missing the aide. Since nobody else was

around, I had no choice but to hold the patient pinned
down to the bed while the aide proceeded to change
the bedding. It was not pleasant: The patient was
squirming and yelling horrible threats at the top of
his voice; the acid smell of urine was nauseating;
I was slowly losing my grip on the much stronger
patient, while all along feeling horribly like Chief
Bromden when he suffocates the lobotomized Mac
Murphy in Ken Kesey’s novel. But there was no choice,
one just could not sit back and take notes while the
patient tore apart the aide. (Fontana 1977: 187; em-
phasis added)
A chapter in a recently edited volume presented new

insight on the ethics of feminist research. Edwards and
Mauthner (2002) outlined the various models of ethics
currently existing: the universalist models based on “uni-
versal principles such as honesty, justice, and respect” or
a second model based on “‘goodness’ of outcomes of re-
search” (p. 20). In contrast, a third model is based on
“contextual or situational ethical position” (p. 20). The
authors noted that a majority of feminist researchers, if
not all of them, have focused on care and responsibility,
that is, on contextually based “feminist-informed social
values” (p. 21). The authors lauded the work of Denzin
(1997) for applying these feminist principles to social
research. However, they found that some of Denzin’s ideas
could be refined to some degree. For instance, Denzin (1997)
advocated a symmetrical relation between researchers and
respondents, whereas others (e.g., Young 1997) criticized
this as “neither possible nor desirable” (Edwards and
Mauthner 2002: 26) and called instead for “asymmetri-
cal reciprocity.” In the words of Edwards and Mauthner,
“Rather than ignoring or blurring power positions, ethi-
cal practice needs to pay attention to them” (2002: 27).
Clearly, as we move forward with sociology, we

cannot—to paraphrase what Blumer said so many years
ago—let the methods dictate our images of humans. As
Punch (1986) suggested, as field-workers we need to exercise
common sense and responsibility—and, we would like to
add, to our respondents first, to the study next, and to
ourselves last. As Johnson empathically proclaimed, re-
gardless of what criteria we wish to adopt for interview-
ing, “the most important ethical imperative is to tell the
truth” (2002: 116).
82 Chapter 8
New Trends in Interviewing 83
New Trends in
Interviewing
The latest trends in interviewing have come some dis-

tance from structured questions; we have reached the point
of the interview as negotiated text. Ethnographers have
realized for quite some time that researchers are not in-
visible, neutral entities; rather, they are part of the inter-
action they seek to study, and they influence that interaction.
At last, interviewing is being brought in line with ethnog-
raphy. There is a growing realization that interviewers
are not the mythical neutral tools envisioned by survey
research. Interviewers are increasingly seen as active
participants in an interaction with respondents, and in-
terviews are seen as negotiated accomplishments of both
interviewers and respondents that are shaped by the contexts
and situations in which they take place. As Schwandt (1997:
79) noted, “It has become increasingly common in quali-
tative studies to view the interview as a form of discourse
between two or more speakers or as a linguistic event in
83
84 Chapter 8
which the meanings of questions and responses are con-

textually grounded and jointly constructed by interviewer
and respondent.” We are beginning to realize that we cannot
lift the results of the interviews out of the contexts in
which they were gathered and claim them as objective
data with no strings attached.
The Interview as a
Negotiated Accomplishment
Let us briefly recap the traditional approaches to the interview,
following Holstein and Gubrium (1995, 1997). The au-
thors use Converse and Schuman’s (1974) Conversations
at Random as an exemplar of the interview as used in
survey research. In this context, the interviewer is care-
fully instructed to remain as passive as possible so as to
reduce his or her influence; the scope of the interviewer’s
function is to access the respondent’s answers. This is a
rational type of interviewing; it assumes that there is an
objective knowledge out there and that one can access it
if she or he is skilled enough, just as a skilled surgeon
can remove a kidney from a donor and use it in a differ-
ent context (e.g., for a patient awaiting a transplant).
Holstein and Gubrium (1995, 1997) regarded Douglas’s
(1985) creative interviewing as a romanticist type of
interviewing. Douglas’s interviewing is based on feelings;
it assumes that researchers, as interviewers, need to “get
to know” the respondents beneath their rational facades
and that researchers can reach respondents’ deep well of
emotions by engaging them and by sharing feelings and
thoughts with them. Douglas’s interviewer is certainly more
active and far less neutral than Converse and Schuman’s
interviewer, but the assumptions are still the same—that
the skills of the interviewers will provide access to knowledge
and that there is a core knowledge that the researcher can

access.
Holstein and Gubrium (1995) finally considered the
new type of interviewing, although “new” is not exactly
accurate given that their reference for this is the work of
Ithiel de Sola Pool, published in 1957. To wit, “Every interview
. . . is an interpersonal drama with a developing plot”
(Pool 1957: 193, quoted in Holstein and Gubrium 1995:
14). Holstein and Gubrium (1995) went on to discuss that
so far we have focused on the “whats” of the interview
(the substantive findings) and that now it is time to pay
attention to the “hows” of the interview (the context, par-
ticular situation, nuances, manners, people involved, etc.,
in which interview interactions take place). This concept
harks back to ethnomethodology, according to Holstein
and Gubrium: “To say that the interview is an inter-
personal drama with a developing plot is part of a
broader claim that reality is an ongoing, interpretive
accomplishment” (1995: 16). Garfinkel, Sacks, and oth-
ers clearly stated during the late 1960s that reality is an
ever-changing, ongoing accomplishment based on the
practical reasoning of the members of society. It is time
to consider the interview as a practical production, the
meaning of which is accomplished at the intersection of
the interaction of the interviewer and the respondent.
In a later essay, Gubrium and Holstein (1998) con-
tinued their argument by looking at interviews as storytelling,
which they saw as a practical production used by mem-
bers of society to accomplish coherence in their accounts.
Once more, they encouraged us to examine the “hows” as
well as the “whats” of storytelling. Similarly, Sarup (1996:
17) told us,
86 Chapter 8
Each narrative has two parts, a story (histoire) and

a discourse (discourse). The story is the content, or
chain of events. The story is the “what” in a narra-
tive, the discourse is the “how.” The discourse is
rather like a plot, how the reader becomes aware
of what happened, the order of appearance of the
events.
Gubrium and Holstein are not alone in advocating

this reflexive approach to interviews. Both Silverman (1993)
and Dingwall (1997) credited Cicourel’s (1964) classic
work, Method and Measurement in Sociology (1964), with
pointing to the interview as a social encounter. Dingwall
(1997: 56) noted:
If the interview is a social encounter, then, logi-

cally, it must be analysed in the same way as any
other social encounter. The products of an inter-
view are the outcome of a socially situated activity
where the responses are passed through the role-
playing and impression management of both the
interviewer and the respondent.
Seidman (1991) discussed interviewing as a rela-

tionship by relying on a principal intellectual antecedent
of the ethnomethodologist Alfred Schutz (1967). Seidman
analyzed the interviewer-respondent relation in terms of
Schutz’s (1967) “I-Thou” relation, where the two share a
reciprocity of perspective and, by both being “thou” ori-
ented, create a “we” relationship. Thus, the respondent is
no longer “an object or a type” (Seidman 1991: 73); rather,
the respondent becomes an equal participant in the inter-
action.
Ellis and Berger (2002) note that interactive inter-
viewing requires interviewers to be empathetic with the
respondents, identify with them, and show respect to them.
Both interviewer and respondent must be reflexive in this

type of interview. By so doing the interviewers will learn
something about themselves, not only about the respon-
dents. This type of research at times involves people al-
ready known to the researcher such as her family or herself.
Emphasis is often given to emotional topics (Ellis and Berger
2002: 853):
The interviewing process becomes less of a conduit

of information from informants to researchers that
represents how things are, and more a sea swell of
meaning making in which researchers connect their
own experiences to those of others and provide stories
that open up conversations about how we live and
cope.
To recapitulate, in the interview as a negotiated

accomplishment, we must find someone willing to talk to
us (Arksey and Knight 2002). Then we go through many
creative stratagems to find more respondents (Warren 2002;
Weiss 1994). Then, we talk to the respondents and at-
tend to the meaning of the stories they weave while in-
terjecting our own perspectives. Warren (2002: 98) puts
it beautifully: “ In the social interaction of the qualitative
interview, the perspectives of the interviewer and the
respondent dance together for the moment but also ex-
tend outward in social space and backward and forward
in time.” Finally, we try to piece together the kaleido-
scope of shapes and colors into a coherent story—some-
thing that has some meaning and, in the common
understanding that we achieve, brings us all closer to-
gether (Atkinson 2002).
This type of interviewing supports research inter-
ested in reflexivity and the interplay between researcher
88 Chapter 8
and respondent. Also, it is useful for those researchers

wishing to express the emotionality of the research.
Carolyn Ellis co-authored a chapter with two former
students who wrote stories about their bulimia in one of
Ellis’s classes (Ellis, Kiesinger, and Tillman-Healy 1997).
The two took turns at interviewing each other after much
apprehension. The following quote (p. 128) clearly shows
the interactive nature of the interview:
Listening to Lisa speak of her father, I am disap-

pointed and ashamed. I feel much like I did in
elementary school when my friends bragged about
their “daddies.” I fear that she will turn the ques-
tion back on me and I will lie, much like I did in
third grade, proclaiming, “My daddy is the great-
est!” My cheeks flush with shame.
“Please God, don’t let her ask me,” I pray.
Lisa talks of the great relationship she and her
dad share. She says they “flirt.” I imagine Lisa as a
little girl charming her dad. He scoops her up in
his arms. She throws her head back, giggling. The
image is too much to bear. Inside, I shrink. Lisa
had a “daddy.” I feel ashamed because . . . I did
not.
Empathetic Interviewing
“Empathetic” emphasizes taking a stance, contrary to the
scientific image of interviewing, which is based on the
concept of neutrality. Indeed, much of traditional inter-
viewing concentrates on the language of scientific neu-
trality and the techniques to achieve it. Unfortunately,
these goals are largely mythical.
As many have argued convincingly (Atkinson and
Silverman 1997; Fontana 2002; Hertz 1997b; Holstein and
Gubrium 1995; Scheurich 1995), interviewing is not merely
the neutral exchange of asking questions and getting answers.

Two (or more) people are involved in this process, and
their exchanges lead to the creation of a collaborative effort,
called the interview. The key here is the “active” nature of
the process (Holstein and Gubrium 1995) that leads to a
contextually bound and mutually created story—the in-
terview. Some have highlighted the problematics of the
interview. Atkinson and Silverman (1997) drew attention
to the asymmetric nature of the interview and to the fact
that the final product is a pastiche that is put together by
fiat. Scheurich (1995) observed that the interviewer is a
person, historically and contextually located, carrying
unavoidable conscious and unconscious motives, desires,
feelings, and biases—hardly a neutral tool. Scheurich
maintained, “The conventional, positivist view of inter-
viewing vastly underestimates the complexity, uniqueness,
and indeterminateness of each one-to-one human inter-
action” (p. 241).
If we proceed from the belief that neutrality is not
possible (even assuming that it would be desirable), then
taking a stance becomes unavoidable. An increasing number
of social scientists have realized that they need to inter-
act as persons with the interviewees and acknowledge
that they are doing so. Long ago Douglas (1985) advo-
cated revealing personal feelings and private situations
to the interviewee as a quid pro quo of good faith. Yet
Douglas, despite his openness, still placed primary im-
portance on the traditional notion of obtaining better and
more comprehensive responses; he failed to see that his
openness was merely a technique to persuade the inter-
viewee to reveal more and be more honest in his or her
responses.
New empathetic approaches in interviewing differ
from the conventional approach; they see that it is time
to stop treating the interviewee as a “clockwork orange,”
90 Chapter 8
that is, looking for a better juicer (techniques) to squeeze

the juice (answers) out of the orange (living person/in-
terviewee). Scheurich (1995: 241) concurred: “The mod-
ernist representation is not sheer fabrication, but all of
the juice of the lived experience has been squeezed out.”
The new empathetic approaches take an ethical stance in
favor of the individual or group being studied. The inter-
viewer becomes an advocate and partner in the study, hoping
to be able to use the results to advocate social policies
and ameliorate the conditions of the interviewee. The
preference is to study oppressed and underdeveloped groups.
Rothman (1986) provided years ago a classic and
very moving example of “taking sides” in her study of
women’s experiences with undergoing amniocentesis for
prenatal diagnosis. Rothman herself had a child who was
slow in developing and feared the worst, only to finally
be reassured that she had a healthy baby. Thus, Rothman
felt “survivor’s guilt” in witnessing the agony of women
who were less fortunate:
All winter long I grieved. I cried. I had no energy.

Life had no meaning. I was angry, so very very angry.
People told these women they had no right to grieve—
they had used the new technology to avoid the birth
of a “defective” child and they achieved that. They
were supposed to be grateful.
And if they were not supposed to grieve—well,
then, whatever can I say about my grief? How in-
appropriate it was. What right had I, with my healthy
children, to be grieving? But what right had I to
rejoice? More survivor’s guilt. Then the guilt of having
catalogued, indexed, and filed grief and pain. I had
taken my friend’s note, written before the results
came, and typed it onto a damned index card and
filed it. (1986: 52)
Kong, Mahoney, and Plummer (2002), in “Queering

the Interview,” focus on the changing public perception
of gays and lesbians in the United States during the past
few decades, and on how that changing perception al-
tered the tone of interviewing those groups. Decades ago,
when gays were “homosexuals,” the interview “was clearly
an instrument of pathological diagnosis” (p. 140); yet when
the milieu became one of social reform, “the interview
became a tool of modernist democratization and ultimately
of social reform” (p. 240).
Kong and colleagues (2002) showed that the change
toward empathy might not be so much of an individual
decision as it is the result of changing historical, politi-
cal, and cultural perspectives. They discussed changes in
interviewing regarding same-sex experiences. They showed
that during the past few decades, as Americans under-
went a profound change from “homosexuals” to “gays,”
“the sensibilities of interviewing are altered with the changing
social phenomena that constitutes the ‘interview’” (p. 240,
italics in original). Thus, interviews changed from “in-
struments of pathological diagnosis” (p. 240) to become
much more humanized in the wake of social reform. In-
terviews became “a methodology of friendship” (p. 254).
Kong and colleagues concluded that the interview is bound
in historical, political, and cultural moments and that as
those moments change, so does the interview. The work
by these three coauthors was radical in that it collapsed
decades of alleged “objective interview findings.” As they
clearly stated, framing the interview within specific pa-
rameters (e.g., “we are interviewing pathological, sick,
deviant individuals” vs. “we are interviewing individuals
who should not be ostracized because of their diverse sexual
sensibilities”) will lead to entirely different results. These
results will be anything but neutral; they will be politi-
cally laden and used for or against the group studied.
92 Chapter 8
Researchers have strongly emphasized the removal

of barriers between the interviewer and the interviewee
in the process of interviewing women. Many female re-
searchers advocate a partnership between the researcher
and respondents, who should work together to create a
narrative—the interview—that could be beneficial to the
group studied. Most researchers address factors beyond
that of gender. Hertz and Ferguson (1997) addressed the
plight of single mothers—both heterosexuals and lesbi-
ans. Weston (1998) also attended to groups of same-sex
preferences in academia. Collins (1990) added the ele-
ment of being black to that of being female. Denzin (2003a,
2003b) extended the interest in amelioration of oppressed
groups to that in reporting the results of the study. He
maintained that traditional reporting modes are ill-equipped
to capture the attention and hearts of the readers (see
also Behar 1996). Denzin (2003a: 202) issued a “mani-
festo” calling for performance ethnography: “We need to
explore performance ethnography as a vehicle for enact-
ing a performative cultural politics of hope.”
Some researchers are becoming keenly attuned to
the fact that in knowing “others” we come to know “our-
selves.” Holstein and Gubrium (1995) urged researchers
to be reflexive not only about what the interview accom-
plishes but also about how the interview is accomplished,
thereby uncovering the ways in which we go about cre-
ating a text. Wasserfall (1993) noted that even when the
researcher and respondents are women, if there is a dis-
cordant view of the world (in her study a political one),
there is a great divide between the two. She added that,
despite claims to “friendship and cooperation,” it is the
researcher who ultimately cuts and pastes together the
narrative, choosing what will become a part of it and what
will be cut. Similarly, El-Or (1992) pointed to a gap be-
tween the researcher and respondents created by religious
differences (in her study, when a nonreligious ethnogra-

pher studies an ultra-orthodox group). El-Or also reflex-
ively addressed the notion of “friendship” between the
researcher and respondents and concluded that it is fleet-
ing and somewhat illusory: “We can’t be friends because
she [the respondent] was the object and we both know
it” (p. 71). Atkinson and Silverman (1997) also empha-
sized self-restraint and self-reflexivity in warning that
researchers should not replace a false god (the authorial
monologue of classical sociology) with another (the
monologue of a privileged speaking respondent). Researchers
should not privilege any ways of looking at the world or
any particular technique, but should instead continue to
question, question, and question.
Atkinson and Silverman’s (1997) chilly warning can
be turned on the proponents of the empathetic approach,
because they strongly privilege a method of inquiry over
all others. Yet as Denzin (2003a: 202) observed, “Sym-
bolic interactionism is at a crossroad. We need to reclaim
the progressive heritage given to us by Du Bois, Mead,
Dewey, and Blumer.” As Fontana (2003) pointed out, perhaps
Denzin (and, we could add, all of the others) are being
postmodern Don Quixotes in their approach, yet the wind-
mills of racism, sexism, and ageism are not mere shad-
ows in our minds; rather, they are very real and very
oppressive. The empathetic approach is not merely a “method
of friendship”: it is a method of morality, because it at-
tempts to restore the sacredness of humans, before
addressing any theoretical or methodological concerns.
Krieger (1996) in The Family Silver narrates beau-
tifully the unique experiences of women with a series of
lesbian-feminist personal essays. She does so in the con-
text of her relationship with her family. Krieger’s hope is
that her stories will open the readers to the pain, the struggle,
the feelings of women and spur others women to tell their
94 Chapter 8
stories and maybe one day, “Lesbians will no longer lose

their jobs, and women students will not need to be taught
to value themselves” (p. 8).
The following excerpt captures poignantly the gen-
erational familial relationship of women. The focus here
is on understanding women, not on constructing social
theory (Krieger 1996: 80–81):
When women hold on to silver in their worlds—

their mother’s, or their mother’s mother’s, some-
body else’s or their own—when they pass it on, whether
the silver is used or kept in a bottom drawer, whether
it is a single piece or a set, something is being said.
When the silver must be sold for money because
the woman is poor, or needs the money, or no longer
wants or can keep it, when a woman takes out her
silver and asks her daughter, “Do you like my pat-
tern? Would you like to have it? . . . something more
than silver is in the air. . . . Why is it so easy to lose
family silver? . . . When the silver is lost, what else
is lost? What does this silver represent—the kept
female past, the precariousness of the female present,
the need to guard what is women’s?
The Problematics
of New Approaches
Some of the proponents of the ethnomethodologically
informed interview are critical of both interactionist and
positivist interview methods. Dingwall (1997), as well as
others, spoke of the romantic movement in ethnography
(and interviewing)—the idea that the nearer we come to
the respondent, the closer we are to apprehending the
“real self.” This assumption neglects the fact that the self
is a process that is ever negotiated and accomplished in
the interaction. Dingwall also faulted the “postmodern”
turn; that is, if there is no real self, then there is no real

world and so we can create one of our own. Finally, Dingwall
was troubled by the “crusading” nature of the romantics
and asked, “What is the value of a scholarly enterprise
that is more concerned with being ‘right on’ than with
being right?” (p. 64).
In a similar vein, Atkinson and Silverman (1997)
rejected the postmodern notion of “polyphonic voices,”
correctly noting that the interviewer and the respondent
collaborate together to create an essentially monologic
view of reality. This same rejection could be made by using
Schutz’s (1967) argument, that is, “I” and “thou” create
a unified “we,” rather than two separate versions of it.
Even in Krieger’s early study of women (1983), where
she lets the women speak for themselves, it is the author
who ultimately decides what is included in the text and
what is left out, and it also the author who orchestrates
the order in which the interviews are presented.
Ethnomethodologically informed interviewing is
not, however, immune from criticism itself. Schutz
(1967) assumed a reciprocity of perspective that might
not exist. Granted, in our interview society, we all know
the commonsense routines and ground rules of interview-
ing, but in other societies this might not be the case.
Bowler (1997) attempted to interview Pakistani women
about their experience with maternity services and found
a total lack of understanding of the value of social re-
search and interviewing:
I had told them that I was writing a book on my

findings. Yams, who spoke the better English, translated
this with a look of disbelief on her face, and then
they both dissolved into laughter. The hospitals were
very good. There weren’t any problems. All was well.
(p. 72)
96 Chapter 8
Bowler was forced to conclude that interviewing might

not work when there is no “shared notion of the process
of research” (p. 66).
Silverman (1993) envisioned a different problem.
He seemed to feel that some ethnomethodologists have
suspended their interest in substantive concerns of ev-
eryday life, claiming that they cannot address them until
they knew more about the ways in which these realities
are accomplished. He noted, “Put simply, according to one
reading of Cicourel, we would focus on the conversational
skills of the participants rather than on the content of
what they are saying and its relation to the world outside
the interview” (p. 98).
Cicourel (1970) stated that sociologists need to outline
a workable model of the actor before engaging in the study
of self and society. Garfinkel held similar beliefs. For instance,
in his famous study of a transsexual named Agnes, Garfinkel
(1967) examined the routines by which societal members
pass as males or females; he had little or no interest in
issues of transsexuality per se. Thus, it would follow that,
according to Silverman’s reading of ethnomethodology,
we should learn the conversational methods before at-
tempting to learn substantive matters in interviewing.
Future Directions 97
Future
Directions
To borrow from Gubrium and Holstein (1997: 97), “Where

do we go from here?” We share with these two authors a
concern with appreciating the new horizons of interview-
ing while simultaneously remaining committed to the
foundations and history of interviewing in the social sciences.
Below we discuss the future possibilities of different types
of interviews, as well as potential areas for new, cutting-
edge developments in interview methods.
Formal Interviews
Structured interviews are still the quickest way to gather
a large amount of generalizable data relatively quickly,
and we are likely to continue to see their use and prolif-
eration within and beyond sociological research. None-
theless, recent changes, including the saturation of the
public with interviews from multiple sources, have result-
ed in declining response rates to structured interviews,
97
98 Chapter 9
particularly telephone surveys (House et al. 2004). Si-

multaneously, we are witnessing a new electronic revolu-
tion that is changing the shape of social research, and it
is influencing the character of the structured interview,
as well as its delivery, in profound ways. We discuss these
issues below.
One of the most dramatic challenges to the use of
structured interviews is continued declines in response
rates to telephone surveys (House et al. 2004). These declines
are partly a result of two key technological changes, the
proliferation and increased use of call-screening devices
and the rapid growth in cellular phone use (Curtin, Presser,
and Singer 2005; Nathan 2001). These trends are diffi-
cult to track in part because of the current speed of tech-
nological change. For example, Curtin, Presser, and Singer
(2005) discuss how, in just the few years since 1996, declines
in the response rate in the Survey of Consumer Attitudes
changed markedly. They cite as one possible factor Tuckel
and O’Neill’s (2002) finding that there has been expo-
nential growth in the presence of caller identification (caller
ID) in U.S. homes, increasing from only 10 percent of
households in 1995 to almost 50 percent in 2000. Re-
search is also beginning to address the issues in coverage
bias that may result from cellular phones replacing fixed
phones, particularly among specific populations (c.f. Kuulesa
and Vikki 1999). At some point the problems this creates
for probability models may become insurmountable. Re-
searchers are coming up with alternative sampling meth-
ods to deal with the difficulties posed to obtaining
representative samples, but these require new multiple-
frame methodologies to deal with the confusion of both
fixed and cellular phone use (Nathan 2001). At present,
FCC regulations prohibit the use of automatic telephone
dialing systems (like those used for Random Digit Dial-
ing) to contact any numbers assigned to cellular telephones
or any service where the person would be charged for the

call (Federal Communications Commission 2006).
Although declining response rates do not necessar-
ily influence the interview itself, other factors (including
technological changes and opportunities for new ways of
implementing surveys) are changing the very nature of
the interview. At the same time, the use of the internet is
becoming more widespread and specialized, and new tools
such as the online company “SurveyMonkey” allow even
amateur and student researchers to conduct their own surveys
for free. It is likely that more researchers and even large-
scale research programs will turn to electronic data gath-
ering as a primary tool for survey data collection, potentially
leaving behind the quasi-personal method of telephone
data collection as it becomes less and less representative
of the population (we discuss this further in the section
on electronic interviewing below).
Cellular phones also offer advantages and poten-
tially increasing coverage for surveys. Cunningham and
colleagues report on the effectiveness of having field-workers
provide cellular phones to respondents without fixed
telephone connections, such as those in rural areas
(Cunningham et al. 1997; Nathan 2001). This opportu-
nity can allow researchers to reduce the influence of the
mode of the survey (face-to-face versus telephone) by using
the same method for all respondents (Cunningham et al.
1997; Nathan 2001).
Another promising direction for survey data gath-
ered through structured interviews is the potential for the
interplay of these data with other research methods,
particularly geographical methods. “Adequate methods for
collecting, linking, and analyzing such cross-level data
have become available only in the last couple of decades”
(House et al. 2004: 450). Researchers can now merge data
gathered from structured interviews with aggregate data
100 Chapter 9
for geographic areas, organizations, and other social in-

stitutions.
Declining response rates are already inspiring those
who conduct large-scale surveys to use multiple methods
of data collection, including computer-assisted telephone,
electronic internet, and face-to-face. Given the prolifera-
tion of “the interview society” and the widespread use of
surveys for marketing research, these trends of declining
response rates will no doubt continue (House et al. [2004]
show that noncontact and refusal rates continue to in-
crease), and we are likely to see the use of multiple modes
of data collection as well as multi-frame methodology in
order to better obtain adequate coverage of specified popu-
lations.
The resources required to implement a nationally
representative survey and use structured interviews, whether
in person or over the telephone, are vast. For this reason,
we are likely to see the further concentration and insti-
tutionalization of nationally representative surveys in select
institutions. For structured interviews to be the most
beneficial, they need to draw on high-quality survey re-
search. The best examples come from places with high-
level institutional support. Infrastructure, expertise, and
prestige allow such institutions the ability to gather high-
quality data and achieve higher response rates.
One continuing avenue of high-quality data collec-
tion is through federal government data collection efforts.
Federal data sources that will continue to be useful to
sociologists include the American Community Surveys, which
have replaced the long form of the U.S. Census, as well
as numerous datasets from the National Science Founda-
tion, National Center for Educational Statistics, and De-
partment of Justice. In addition, states and voluntary
organizations regularly collect data through structured in-
terviews.
This is not to imply that researchers without such
institutional advantages cannot or should not take ad-
vantage of structured interviews. In fact, the structured
interview can aid in speedy and inexpensive data gather-
ing of small and specialized populations. While telephone
surveys may become less frequent if response rates con-
tinue to decline, the use of other types of structured in-
terviews may increase to replace them.
Group Interviews
Since Morgan’s call for increased research on focus groups
as a method over a decade ago, research on focus groups
has advanced to some degree. Within sociological research,
however, the amount of research using focus groups still
outweighs the research about group interviews as a dis-
tinct method. Nevertheless, recent research points to some
new directions and understandings of the limitations of
group interviews. Overall, the general trend for the fu-
ture indicates that knowledge about group interviews will
continue to become more sophisticated, even if they are
less often used than other interviewing techniques.
Sociologists’ training in research methods means that
the ever-increasing reliance on advanced statistical methods
comes into conflict with expanding the breadth of research
methods sociologists in training formally learn through
their graduate programs and beyond. Group interviews
continue to be a “supplemental method” and a “supple-
mental topic” within this context. A brief search of graduate
research methods syllabi indicates that group interviews
and focus groups receive only cursory attention, if that.
This difference in emphasis alone ensures that group
interviews will continue to take a back seat to more en-
102 Chapter 9
trenched methods, both qualitative and quantitative.

It is likely that group interviews will continue to
have a place in sociological research, but that place will
continue to be where it is currently: on the sidelines, often
complementary to other research methods. However,
increasingly available archives of qualitative data, including
group interview data, mean more researchers have access
to these types of data than in the past, and as secondary
analysis of data source becomes more feasible, we may
see more research that draws on such sources. For example,
Morgan and Martin (2006) draw on focus group data pre-
viously collected and archived by Catalyst (a nonprofit
organization).
Unstructured Interviews
Gubrium and Holstein (1998) introduced a technique they
called “analytic bracketing” to deal with the multiple levels
of interviewing (and ethnography):
We may focus, for example on how a story is being

told, while temporarily deferring our concern for
the various whats that are involved—for example,
the substance, structure, or plot of the story, the
context within which it is told, or the audience to
which it is accountable. We can later return to these
issues. (p. 165)
The use of this analytic bracketing allows the authors to

analyze interviewing in its coherence and diversity as an
event that is collaboratively achieved and in which prod-
uct and process are mutually constituted.
A pressing problem in interviewing concerns the kinds
of standards that we should apply to these new and dif-
ferent types of interviews. To assume absolute relativism
is not the solution because it would lead, in Silverman’s
words, to the “sociology of navel-gazing” (1997b: 240).

Silverman proposed an aesthetic for research, rejecting
attempts to use literary forms in sociology: “If I want
to read a good poem, why on earth should I turn to a
social science journal?” (p. 240). Silverman’s critique of
interactionist sociology and proposal for aesthetic values
seemed to focus on the following three points. First, he
attacked the grandiose political theorizing of British so-
ciology and invokes a return to more modest, more minute
goals. Second, he rejected the romanticist notion of equating
experience (from the members’ viewpoint) with authen-
ticity. Third, he noted that in sociology we mimic the mass
media of the interview society, thereby succumbing to the
trivial, the kitschy, the gossipy, and the melodramatic while
ignoring simplicity and profundity.
Silverman’s (1997b) notions that we should pay
attention to minute details in sociological studies, rather
than embarking on grandiose abstract projects, in a way
was not dissimilar to Lyotard’s (1984) appeal for a return
to local elements and away from metatheorizing. For
Silverman, the “minute” details are the small details that
go on in front of our eyes in our everyday lives—very
similar to Garfinkel’s mundane routines that allow us to
sustain the world and interact with each other.
We agree with Silverman that we need to stop de-
luding ourselves that in our particular method (which-
ever it may be), we have the key to the understanding of
the self. We also agree that it is imperative that we look
for new standards, given that we are quickly digressing
into a new form of the theater of the absurd (and without
the literary flair, we fear). But we cannot wait to find a
model of the methods used by participants in interviews
or in everyday life before we proceed; Cicourel’s (1970)
invariant properties of interaction turned out to be so general
104 Chapter 9
as to be of little use to sociological inquiry.

We need to proceed by looking at the substantive
concerns of the members of society while simultaneously
examining the constructive activities used to produce order
in everyday life and, all along, remaining reflexive about
how interviews are accomplished (Gubrium and Holstein
1997, 1998). For instance, as Baker (1997) pointed out,
a researcher telling a respondent that “I am a mother of
three” versus telling the respondent that “I am a univer-
sity professor” accesses different categories and elicits
different accounts. We need to move on with sociological
inquiry, even though we realize that conditions are less
than perfect. To paraphrase Robert Solow, as cited in Geertz
(1973), just because complete asepsis is impossible does
not mean that we may just as well perform surgery in a
sewer.
A different kind of future direction for interviewing
stems largely from the new feminist interviewing prac-
tices. The traditional interview has painstakingly attempted
to maintain neutrality and achieve objectivity, and has
kept the role of the interviewer as invisible as possible.
Feminists instead, are rebelling against the practice of
exploiting respondents and wish to use interviewing for
ameliorative purposes. To wit, “As researchers with a
commitment to change, we must decenter ourselves from
the ‘ivory tower’ and construct more participatory, demo-
cratic practices. We must keep people and politics at the
center of our research” (Benmayor 1991: 172–173; em-
phasis added). Denzin (1989a) referred to this approach
as the “feminist, communitarian ethical model” (see also
Lincoln 1995), and told us,
The feminist, communitarian researcher does not

invade the privacy of others, use informed consent
forms, select subjects randomly, or measure research
designs in term of their validity. This framework

presumes a researcher who builds collaborative,
reciprocal, trusting, and friendly relations with those
studied. . . . It is also understood that those stud-
ied have claims of ownership over any material that
are produced in the research process, including field
notes.
Combining the roles of the scholar and the feminist

may be problematic and sometimes may lead to conflict
if the researcher has a different political orientation from
that of the people studied (Wasserfall 1993), but this approach
may also be very rewarding in allowing the researcher to
see positive results stemming from the research (Gluck
1991).
A third kind of future direction, one that is already
here but is likely to expand greatly in the next few years,
is that of performance and poetics. We combine the two
since they stem from the same concerns for speaking with
the voices of the respondents and taking a helping stance
toward them. Also, they both possess an expressional trope
that goes beyond the traditional one of social sciences—
prose. Denzin (2003a) championed performance to the
exclusion of other modes of relating social science (eth-
nography and interview). Performance does not become
fixed in a written text to be read later; rather, performance
is doing, is now, and has feelings, passions, joy, tears, despair,
and hope. Performance can reach to people’s hearts and
not only their minds. Performance can be a powerful
instrument for social reform, for righting wrongs, and for
helping those in need. Performance relates to people in
our media society; it draws interest, draws attention, and
leads to questioning.
Poetics operates in a similar way by encapsulating
in a welter of feelings and emotions a life story, an epiphanic
moment in that life, a tragedy, a moment of sorrow, or a
106 Chapter 9
moment of utter joy. Consider the reply of Louisa May, a

sort of average woman from Tennessee, when her part-
ner asked her to terminate her pregnancy:
Jody May’s father said,

“Get an Abortion.”
I told him,
“I would never marry you.
I would never marry you.
I would never.
I am going to have this child.
I am going to.
I am. I am.”
Laurel Richardson’s (1997a) masterful poem captured the

soul of Louisa May, and through the poem we come to
know that woman, we know her feelings, and our heart
goes out to her.
Richardson (2002), in speaking about poetry, pointed
out that prose is privileged only because it is empowered
by the current system. Yet prose is only one of many tropes
of expression, including performance and poetry, in a newly
fragmented world in which not only metatheories but also
modes of expression have been fragmented, and we can
now speak in many voices and in different tropes.
Richardson has often been queried by traditional
sociologists about the sociological import of her work.
She has eloquently replied both verbally and in her play
Educational Birds (1997b) in which, to the question “but
is it sociology?” she summons the ghost of Lundberg, who
admonishes the audience by stating: “Sociology is what
sociologists do.”
On the wake of Richardson , Bochner (2000:
266) feels that when traditional sociologists speak of
“validity” in questioning new modes of sociology, they

are comparing apples and oranges: “One side believes that
‘objective’ methods and procedures can be applied to de-
termine the choices we make, whereas the other side believes
these choices are ultimately and inextricably tied to our
values and our subjectivity.” Yet, as these new expressions
still purport to be sociology, the question of how we
sociologically judge performances and poetry remains a
valid one and an unanswered one at that.
Electronic Interviewing
Another direction currently being taken in interviewing
is related to the changing technologies available. The reliance
on the interview as a means of information gathering most
recently has expanded to electronic outlets, with ques-
tionnaires being administered by fax, electronic mail, and
Web sites. Estimates suggest that nearly 50 percent of all
households have computers and that nearly half of these
use the Internet. Software that allows researchers to schedule
and archive interview data that are gathered by chat room
interviews is now available. The limited population of
potential respondents with access to computers makes surveys
of the general population unfeasible, but electronic in-
terviewing can reach 100 percent of some specialized
populations (Schaefer and Dillman 1998).
It is now possible to engage in “virtual interview-
ing,” where Internet connections are used synchronously
(used simultaneously by the interviewer and respondent)
or asynchronously (the researcher and respondent use
the connection at different times). The advantages in-
clude low cost (as the result of no telephone or interviewer
charges) and speed of return. Of course, face-to-face
interaction is eliminated, as is the possibility of both the
interviewer and the respondent reading nonverbal be-
havior or of cueing from gender, race, age, class, or other
108 Chapter 9
personal characteristics. Thus, establishing an interviewer-

interviewee “relationship” and “living the moment” while
gathering information (Hertz 1997a) is difficult if not im-
possible. Internet surveys make it easy for respondents to
manufacture fictional social realities without anyone knowing
the difference (Markham 1998). Of course, interviewers
can deceive respondents by claiming to have experiences
or characteristics that they do not have in hopes of estab-
lishing better rapport. They can feign responses for the
same purpose by claiming “false nonverbals,” for example,
telling the respondents that they “laughed at” or “were
pained by” particular comments. Markham (1998), in her
autoethnography of Internet interviewing, reported that
electronic interviews take longer than their traditional
counterparts and that responses are more cryptic and less
in-depth; however, the interviewer has time to phrase follow-
up questions or probes properly.
It is also virtually impossible to preserve anonym-
ity in Internet e-mail surveys, but chat rooms and similar
sites permit the use of pseudonyms. Although electronic
interviews are currently used primarily for quantitative
research and usually employ structured questionnaires, it
is only a matter of time before researchers adapt these
techniques to qualitative work, just as they have adapted
electronic techniques of data analysis. For example, Markham
(1998) immersed herself in the process of engaging with
various electronic or Internet formats (e.g., chat rooms,
listservs) to interview other participants and to document
her journey in the virtual world, learning the experience
of cyberspace and the meanings that participants attached
to their online lifestyles. She asked an intriguing ques-
tion: “Can I have a self where my body does not exist?”
(p. 8).
The future may see considerable ethnography
by means of computer-mediated communication, where
virtual space—rather than a living room or workplace—

is the setting of the interview. It remains to be seen whether
electronic interviewing will allow researchers to obtain
“thick descriptions” or accounts of subjective experiences
or whether such interviewing will provide the “process
context” that is so important to qualitative interviews. In
addition, researchers conducting such interviewing can
never be sure that they are receiving answers from de-
sired or eligible respondents.
Interviewing by way of the Internet is so prominent
today that researchers are studying its effects on response
quality and other such methodological issues. A plethora
of articles details issues such as response rates, response
quality, incentives for participation in online research, and
comparisons to other methods of interviewing. Schaefer
and Dillman (1998), for example, found that e-mail sur-
veys achieved response rates similar to those of mail surveys
but yielded better quality data in terms of item comple-
tion and more detailed responses to open-ended questions.
Much of the research in this area is published in the Social
Science Computer Review.
There are clearly many unanswered questions and
problems related to the use of electronic interviewing.
This mode of interviewing will obviously increase during
the new millennium as people rely increasingly on elec-
tronic modes of communication. But just how much Internet
communication will displace face-to-face interviewing is
a matter that only time will tell.
An example of the utility of this kind of research is
Kuran and McCaffery’s (2004) research on discrimination.
The authors conducted telephone and web surveys to examine
perceptions about whether discrimination on the basis of
physical appearance, economic status, or ethnicity was
greater. They conclude that people were more willing to
divulge views about discrimination over the web than over
the telephone (Kuran and McCaffery 2004).
110 Chapter 9
Conclusion 111
10
Conclusion
In this book we have examined the interview, from struc-

tured types of interview to interview as negotiated text.
We outlined the history of interviewing, with its qualita-
tive and quantitative origins. We looked at structured, group,
and various types of unstructured interviewing. We ex-
amined the importance of gender in interviewing and the
ways in which framing and interpreting affect interviews.
We examined the importance of ethics in interviewing.
Finally, we discussed the new trends in interviewing.
We have included discussion of the whole gamut of
the interview, because we believe that the researchers must
be cognizant of all the various types of interviews, both
modern and postmodern, if they are to gain a clear un-
derstanding of interviewing. Clearly, certain types of in-
terviewing are better suited to particular kinds of situations,
and researchers must be aware of the implications, pitfalls,
and problems of the types of interview they choose. If we
111
112 Chapter 10
wish to find out how many people oppose the establish-

ment of a nuclear repository in their area, then a struc-
tured type of interview, such as that used in survey research,
is our best tool; we can quantify and code the responses
and can use mathematical models to explain our find-
ings. If we are interested in opinions about a given prod-
uct, then a focus group interview will provide us with the
most efficient results. If we wish to know about the lives
of Palestinian women in the resistance (Gluck 1991), then
we need to interview them at length and in depth in an
unstructured way. In the first example just cited, and perhaps
in the second, we can speak in the formal language of
scientific rigor and verifiability of findings. In the third
example, we can speak of understanding a negotiated way
of life.
More scholars are realizing that to pit one type of
interviewing against another is a futile effort—a leftover
from the paradigmatic quantitative/qualitative hostility
of past generations. Thus, an increasing number of re-
searchers are using a multimethod approach to achieve
broader and often better results. This multimethod ap-
proach is referred to as triangulation (Denzin 1989b; Flick
1998) and allows researchers to use different methods in
different combinations. For instance, group interviewing
has long been used to complement survey research and
is now being used to complement participant observation
(Morgan 1988). Humans are complex, and their lives are
ever changing. The more methods we use to study them,
the better our chances will be to gain some understand-
ing of how they construct their lives and the stories they
tell us about them.
The brief journey we have taken through the world
of interviewing should allow us to be better informed
about, and perhaps more sensitized to, the problematics
of asking questions for sociological reasons. We must
Conclusion 113
remember that each individual has his or her own social

history and an individual perspective on the world. Thus,
we cannot take our task for granted. As Oakley (1981:
41) noted, “Interviewing is rather like a marriage: Every-
body knows what it is, an awful lot of people do it, and
yet behind each closed front door there is a world of secrets.”
She was quite correct. We all think that we know how to
ask questions and talk to people, from common everyday
folks to highly qualified experts. Yet to learn about people,
we must treat them as people, and they will work with us
to help us create accounts of their lives. So long as many
researchers continue to treat respondents as unimportant,
faceless individuals whose only contributions are to fill
one more boxed response, the answers that researchers
get will be commensurable with the questions they ask
and the way in which they ask them. As researchers, we
are no different from Gertrude Stein, who, while on her
deathbed, asked her lifelong companion, Alice B. Toklas,
“What is the answer?” When Alice could not bring herself
to speak, Gertrude asked, “In that case, what is the ques-
tion?”
114 Glossary
Glossary 115
Glossary
Analytic bracketing. It addresses multiple levels of

interviewing allowing the interviewer to focus on the process
of how the story is being told, temporarily suspending
focusing on the substance and structure of the interview.
Census. A count or tally of a population. The U.S. cen-

sus is undertaken once per decade.
Closed-ended question. Pre-established question with

a limited set of response categories.
Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing (CATI).

Telephone interviews in which the interviewer is guided
through the questionnaire by commands and survey questions
and responses on a computer screen. The clear directions
and the limits set by the computer program reduce varia-
tion and error in questionnaire delivery and the coding
of responses.
115
116 Glossary
Confessional style. Researchers divulge the problems

they encountered in the interviewing process.
Creative interviewing. The interviewers must be cre-

ative and adapt themselves to the ever-changing situa-
tions they face. Creative interviewing goes beyond the
length of conventional interviews, taking place in mul-
tiple sessions over many days.
Deconstructed. The author’s biases and taken-for-granted

notions are exposed.
Electronic interviewing. Information gathering via

interviews through electronic outlets, with questionnaires
being administered by fax, electronic mail, and Web sites.
Empathetic interviewing. It emphasizes taking a stance.

The interviewer becomes a partner in the study, attempt-
ing to use the results to advocate social policies and ameliorate
the conditions of the interviewees.
Epiphany. A moment of sudden insight that strongly impacts

a person’s life and has potential for transforming his or
her life.
Establishing rapport. The researcher must be able to

take the role of the respondents and see the situation from
their viewpoint rather than superimpose his or her pre-
conceptions upon them.
Ethnography. (See also participant observation.)

The researcher temporarily becomes a member of the group
studied in order to understand its way of life and be able
to describe it from the inside.
Ethnomethodology. The study of the methods used by

the members of society, especially conversation and ges-
tures, to construct a commonsense view of the world.
Glossary 117
Face-to-face interview. Interview or questionnaire

conducted in person with respondents answering directly
to those who are conducting the research.
Focus groups. The systematic qualitative questioning

of several individuals simultaneously in a formal or in-
formal setting. According to Morgan (1996), marketing
researchers sometimes rely on a very strict definition of
a focus group, one in which a specified number of re-
spondents who are strangers to each other participate in
a highly structured interview, and this distinguishes fo-
cus groups from other group interviews.
Framing interviews. The type of interviewing selected,

the techniques used, the ways of recoding information,
and the mode of interpretation all come to bear on the
result of the study; they frame it.
Gaining trust. Gradually gaining the confidence of the

interviewees so that they will freely talk to the interviewer.
Gender. The social and cultural meanings, roles, and

expectations associated with biological sex categories.
Going native. The interviewer becomes so immersed

in the group studied that he or she becomes a member of
that group and abandons the research and academia.
Grounded theory. A research process that builds so-

ciological theory inductively based on careful observation.
The most important aspect of grounded theory for inter-
viewing is that the processes of data collection, coding,
and analysis are simultaneous (Glaser and Strauss 1967).
Group interview. Formal or informal questioning

of several individuals simultaneously. (See also focus
groups.)
118 Glossary
Informant. An insider, a member of the group studied,

willing to provide the interviewer with privileged infor-
mation. The informer acts as a guide and a translator of
cultural mores, jargon, and language.
Informed consent. Receiving consent by the respon-

dent after having carefully and truthfully informed him
or her about the research.
Interpretive interactionism. An unstructured type

of interviewing that focuses on capturing epiphanies, those
revelation moments that transform a person’s life.
Interpreting interview. Refers to the researcher’s

interpretation of the data and the influence brought by
the researcher on the data.
Interview society. Interviewing has become so com-

monplace in all public sectors of American society that a
number of scholars have referred to the United States as
the interview society.
Mystory. Couples talk with the visual, providing a prod-

uct consonant with a society that is dominated by the medium
of television.
Negotiated accomplishment. Interviewers are seen

as active participants in an interaction with respondents,
and interviews are seen as the collaborative effort of both
interviewer and respondent that are shaped by the con-
text in which they take place.
Open-ended question. The interviewer does not elicit

a response from a pre-established range of questions but
allows the respondent to provide a personal narrative as
a response.
Glossary 119
Opinion polling. Surveys of opinions, attitudes, or beliefs

that are intended to measure public opinion and gather
data that are generalizable to the population of interest.
Oral history. An unstructured interview about a person’s

memory of her or his experiences. Often oral history tran-
scripts are not published, but many may be found in li-
braries.
Participant observation. (See also ethnography.)

The researcher temporarily becomes a member of the group
studied and participates in its interaction while observ-
ing its customs.
Performance ethnography. Performance does not

become fixed in a text to be read later, it happens now
and it has feelings, passions, joy, tears, despair, and hope.
It makes the audience feel part of the story and is a powerful
instrument for social reform, in our media society.
Respondent. The individual being interviewed, also

called the interviewee.
Polyphonic interviewing. The voices of the respon-

dents are recorded with minimal influence from the re-
searcher and are not collapsed together and reported as
one voice.
Postmodernism. A twentieth-century set of ideas in

architecture, literature, and the social sciences that de-
part from modernism and its reliance on grand theories.
It advocates studying the everyday details of society. Its
features include the mixing of different styles often in-
cluding images from the consumerism of late twentieth-
century capitalism and mass communication.
120 Glossary
Postmodern interviewing. Comprises a variety of new

ways to conduct interviews that attempt to minimize the
interviewer’s influence and allow the respondents’ voices
to be heard as they are, with minimal interpretation.
Probability sampling. Sample selection based on prob-

ability theory, intended to produce samples that are rep-
resentative of a population (or can be adjusted to be so
based on known probabilities of inclusion or exclusion
from the sample).
Representative sample (or representativeness).

A sample that has the same qualities or characteristics as
the population from which it was drawn.
Response effects. Errors that can be attributed to

questionnaire administration process.
Response rate. The proportion of people who partici-

pate in a survey relative to those who were selected to
participate, usually reported as a percentage.
Right to privacy. Protecting the identity of the respon-

dent, usually guaranteed through anonymity or confiden-
tiality.
Sampling. The process of selecting respondents for re-

search. (See also probability sampling.)
Self-administered questionnaire. A paper or elec-

tronic questionnaire that is completed by a respondent
and is generally distributed through the mail, although
increasingly disseminated via computer technology such
as e-mail.
Structured (formal) interviewing. A form of inter-

viewing that requires the interviewer ask all respondents
Glossary 121
the same series of pre-established questions with a lim-

ited set of response categories. There is generally little
room for variation in response except where open-ended
questions (which are infrequent) may be used.
Survey research. Research based on large representa-

tive samples of respondents using data from structured
interviews. Survey research allows researchers to make
predictions about social phenomena with specified degrees
of accuracy.
Telephone interview. Structured interviews that take

place over the telephone. (See also Computer Assisted
Telephone Interview [CATI].)
Triangulation. A multimethod approach that allows

researchers to use diverse research and data-gathering
methods in different combinations intended to achieve
broader and often better results.
Unstructured interviewing. The questions asked are

not written down in advance; the interviewer has an agenda
but does not aim at capturing precise data. Instead, the
interviewer attempts to understand the conduct of the
respondent without imposing any a priori categorizations.
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Index 141
Index
accessing setting, 43 Bureau of Applied Social Re-

advocate, interviewer as, 90– search, 16, 17
92 Burgess, E. W., 15
American Community Surveys,
100 caller identification, 98
American Institute of Public cellular phones, 98
Opinion, 14 censuses, 13, 110, 115
American Soldier, The (Stouffer), chat rooms, 108
16 Chicago School, 15
analytic bracketing, 102, 115 chronemic communication, 71
answering respondents’ ques- closed-ended questions, 115
tions, 40, 70 computer-assisted interviewing,
attitudes, study of, 14, 119 23, 107–109, 116
computer-assisted self-inter-
balanced rapport, 20 viewing (CASI), 27
barriers, removal of, 92 computer-assisted telephone
Blumer, Herbert, 15, 16 interviewing (CATI), 27,
Booth, Charles, 13–14, 15 115
brainstorming interviews, 31, confessional style, 73, 116
33 constructivism, 57
141
142 Index
conversational methods, learn- Family Silver, The (Krieger), 93–

ing, 96 94
Conversations at Random (Con- federal data sources, 100
verse and Schuman), 84 feminism. See also gender
Converse, J. M., 17 and communitarian research,
covert methods, 77–78 104–105
creative interviewing, 51–52, and ethics, 80
84, 116 and oral history, 50
culture of respondents, under- Field, Harry, 16
standing, 43–44 fieldwork settings, 31–33
filtering of knowledge
dangerous areas, respondents via gender, 60
in, 24 via group memberships, 65
deconstructionism, 73, 116 focus groups, 29, 30, 33, 101,
“Derrida at Little Big Horn” 117
(Ulmer), 55–56 formal interviews. See struc-
dialogic characters, 72 tured interviews
Du Bois, W. E. B., 14 framing interviews, 69–72, 117
friendship, interviewer-respon-
Educational Birds (Richardson), dent, 92–93
106 future directions
Egyptians, ancient, 13 computer-mediated inter-
elderly respondents viewing, 107–109
accessing, 41, 43 group interviewing, 101–102
and face-to-face interview- structured interviews, 97–101
ing, 23 unstructured interviews, 102–
electronic interviewing, 107– 106
109, 116
e-mail surveys, 108 Gallup, George, 14
empathetic interviewing, 88– gender, 59–67, 117
94, 116 General Social Survey (GSS),
epiphanies, 54, 116 25–26
ethical issues, 61–63, 77–81 geographic research methods,
ethnographic method, 15 99–100
ethnography, defined, 116 going native, 117
ethnomethodology, 17, 116 grounded theory, 17, 56–59,
exploratory interviews, 32 117
group interviewing
face-to-face interviewing advantages and disadvan-
defined, 117 tages of, 34, 35
structured, 23–24 defined, 29, 30, 117
Index 143
and framing interviews, 69– and declining response rates,

70 100
future directions, 101–102 defined, 10, 118
skills for, 32, 34 interviewing outside of, 95–
types of, 31–33 96
uses of, 29–31, 35–37 and mass media, 103
GSS (General Social Survey), as set of instructions for
25–26 respondent, 42
“I-Thou” relation, 86, 95
harm, protection from, 77
health problems, respondents jargon, 44
with Joyce, James, 54
and face-to-face interview-
ing, 23 kinesic communication, 72
identifying, 41
hierarchical relations, 61–64 language
Hughes, Everett C., 15 and context, 71
history of interviewing, 13–18 of respondents, 43–44
honorary males, 62 Lazarsfeld, Paul, 16, 17
human-to-human relation, 41 learning from respondents, 41–
42
identifying respondents, 41 legal breaches, 78
immigrants, attitudes toward, Life and Labour of the People
25–27 of London (Booth), 13–14
informants, 44–45, 118 Likert, Rensis, 16
informed consent, 77, 118 listservs, 108
institutional ethnography, 60
institutional support, 100 Malinowski, B., 39–40, 46–47
intercept interviews, 20 marginalized groups
interested listening, 20 and face-to-face interview-
Internet, 107–109 ing, 23
interpersonal style, 61, 70 and gender, 66
interpreters, 44 and oral history, 50–51
interpreting interviews, 72–76 Mead, George H., 15
interpretive interactionism, 54– memory
55, 118 faulty, 21
interpretive role, minimizing and oral history, 51
of, 53–54 “Men and Women of the Cor-
interviewer effects, 21–22 poration” (Kanter), 66
interview society, 11–13 Merton, R. K., 17
144 Index
Method and Measurement in open-ended questions, 118

Sociology (Cicourel), 86 opinion polling, 14, 119
Middletown in Transition (Lynd oral histories, 49–51, 119
and Lynd), 14 Oral History Project, 49
Middletown (Lynd and Lynd), Oral Narrative Research with
14 Black Women (Vaz), 63–64
Mills, C. Wright, 16, 17
minorities, attitudes toward, Panel Study of Income Dynam-
25–27 ics (PSID), 24–25
minute details, 103 paralinguistic communication,
Multi-Ethnic U.S. (MEUS) sur- 72
vey, 25–27 Park, Robert, 15
multi-frame methodology, 100 participant observation, 119
mystory, 55–56, 118 paternalism. See gender
performance, 105, 119
narrative, 75 personal feelings, influence by,
National Center for Educational 40
Statistics, 100 phenomenological interviews,
National Opinion Research 32
Center, 16, 25 Plain Speaking (Miller), 49–50
National Science Foundation, poetry, 65, 103, 105–106
100 polyphonic interviewing, 53–
negotiated accomplishment, 54, 95, 119
84–88, 118 positivism, 57
neutrality postmodernism
impossibility of, 89 defined, 119
in structured interviews, 29 and ethnography, 18
Nevins, Allan, 49 and interviewing, 52–56, 120
new trends in interviewing, 83– Practice of Social Research, The
84 (Babbie), 59
empathetic interviewing, 88– presentation of self, 44
94 pretest interviews, 32
interview as negotiated ac- privacy, right to, 77, 120
complishment, 84–88 probability sampling, 120
problematics of, 94–96 proxemic communication, 71
nominal/delphi groups, 31–32, PSID (Panel Study of Income
33 Dynamics), 24–25
noncontact rates, 100
nonsampling errors, 21 qualitative interviewing, his-
nonverbal techniques, 71–72 tory of, 17–18
notetaking in field, 47
Index 145
quantitative survey research, social encounter, interview as,

history of, 16–17 86
quantophrenics, 17 Social Science Computer Review,
questionnaires, self-adminis- 109
tered, 120 sociological introspection, 51
Sorokin, Pitirin, 16–17
race status, 21–22
attitudes concerning, 25–27 Stein, Gertrude, 113
of interviewers, 22 story, interview as, 74, 85–86
rapport, establishing, 46–47, Stouffer, Samuel, 16, 17
116 Strauss, Anselm, 15
real conversation, avoidance of, Street Corner Society (Whyte),
61, 70 45, 79
reality, nature of, 42, 85 structured interviewing
reflexivity, 72–76, 84–88 contributions of, 24–27
refusal rates, 100 criticisms of, 42
relationship, interview as, 86 data gathered by, 24
representativeness, 120 defined, 120–121
respondent, defined, 119 future directions, 97–101
response effects, 21, 120 general characteristics, 19
response rates, 97–98, 120 levels of interaction, 23–24
romanticism, 84, 94–95, 103 response effects, 21–22
typical guidelines, 20
sampling, defined, 120 student interviewers, 21
Schlesinger, Arthur, Jr., 16, 17 Studies in Social Psychology in
self World War II, 16
apprehension of, 94–95 “Sugar’s Life in the Hood: The
presentation of, 44 Story of a Former Welfare
visibility of, 63 M o t h e r ” ( Tu r n e r a n d
self-administered question- Ehlers), 66
naires, 120 Survey of Consumer Attitudes,
sensitive topics, 23–24 98
setting survey research
absence of, 40–41 defined, 120
accessing, 43 history of, 13–14
sexual intimacy, 78–79 and structured interviews, 20
situational ethics, 78 Survey Research Center, 16
Six Feet Under (television pro-
gram), 75–76 tactics, using, 70
skills, interviewing, 22, 32, 34 Tearoom Trade (Humphreys),
Small, Albion, 15 78
146 Index
telephone interviewing future directions, 102–106

computer-assisted, 27 and gender, 59–67
defined, 121 grounded theory, 56–59
structured, 20, 24 oral history, 49–51
telephone surveys, 98–99, 109 philosophy behind, 42
Telescope on Society, A (House postmodern interviewing, 52–
et al.), 24 56
Thomas, W. I., 14–15 U.S. Census, 100, 115
Toklas, Alice B., 113
triangulation, 112, 121 virtual interviewing, 107–109
trust, gaining, 45–46 voices, 63–64, 66
defined, 117
and interpersonal style, 61 Warner, W. Lloyd, 15
and legal breaches, 78 Wirth, Louis, 15
Working (Terkel), 49
understanding vs. explaining, World War I, 13
41 World War II, 15–16
unstructured interviewing
challenges of, 43–47 Years of Poverty, Years of Plenty
creative interviewing, 51–52 (Duncan et al.), 25
defined, 121
examples of, 39–42 Znaniecki, Florian, 14
Index 147
About the Authors
Andrea Fontana is Professor of Sociology and depart-

ment chair at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He
received his Ph.D. from the University of California, San
Diego. He has published articles on aging, leisure, theory,
and postmodernism. He is the author of The Last Fron-
tier: The Social Meaning of Growing Old (1977), co-au-
thor of Social Problems (1981), Sociologies of Everyday
Life (1980), and coeditor of The Existential Self in Society
and Postmodernism and Social Inquiry (1994). He is a former
president of the Society for the Study of Symbolic Inter-
action and a former editor of the journal Symbolic Inter-
action. Among Fontana’s last published essays are a
deconstruction of the work of the painter Hieronymus Bosch,
a performance/play about Farinelli, the castrato, an eth-
nographic narrative about land speed records at the
Bonneville Salt Flats, and a performance based on “Six
Feet Under.” Fontana is currently working on a text, Death
in America, for Polity Press.
147
148 About the Authors
Anastasia H. Prokos is an Assistant Professor of Soci-

ology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She received
her Ph.D. from Florida State University. Her primary re-
search area is Gender and Work, which includes an em-
phasis on labor market inequalities as they relate to gender,
race, and family. Most recently she has published papers
on the earnings gap in science and engineering occupa-
tions (in Gender & Society), and on gender and ethnoracial
inequalities in employer-provided health insurance access
and coverage (in Sociological Inquiry). Prokos is currently
expanding her research on health insurance disparities and
continues to study gender and labor market inequality.

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1. Interviewing in Perspective ................................ 9

2. Structured Interviewing ................................... 19

3. Group Interviewing ........................................ 29

4. Unstructured Interviewing ............................. 39

5. Types of Unstructured Interviewing ............... 49

6. Framing and Interpreting Interviews ............. 69

7. Ethical Considerations .................................... 77

8. New Trends in Interviewing ........................... 83

9. Future Directions ............................................ 97

10. Conclusion .................................................. 111

Glossary ........................................................................ 115

References .................................................................... 123

Index ............................................................................ 141

About the Authors ........................................................ 147

Books on interviewing are not scarce, yet we felt that there

at the numerous types of unstructured interviewing. We

Asking questions and getting answers is a much harder

can be a one-time brief exchange, such as five minutes

our criticisms later in the book. Following our examina-

The Interview Society

sensitive, probing, upsetting, or accusatory—is fair game

relation, and the result is as much a product of this social

The History of Interviewing

Labour of the People in London (Booth 1902–1903). In his

The data were checked and supplemented by visits

Many other surveys of London and other English

documentary method to introduce the study of attitudes

years. But during World War II, there was a tremendous

Sorokin felt that “the new emphasis on quantitative work

between ethnographic observation and ethnographic in-

In structured interviewing, the interviewer asks all respon-

• Never get involved in long explanations of the study;

Telephone interviews, face-to-face interviews in house-

Researchers hope that in a structured interview

effect than do lower status interviewers, and the race of

Recently, new developments in computer-assisted

questionnaires than through telephone interviews (Aquilino

research about poverty based on the Panel Study of In-

Americans’ attitudes toward minorities and immigrants

to be, to some extent, linked to a particular form of

While bigotry cannot be eliminated by education

As Singleton and Straits (2002) observed, many surveys

The group interview is essentially a qualitative data-gathering

laureates, Thompson and Demerath (1952) looked at man-

In any group interview, the interviewer/moderator

neighborhood tavern, can be conducive to settings for casual

Focus group Formal, preset Directive Structured Exploratory, pretest

Brainstorming Formal or informal Nondirective Unstructured Exploratory

Nominal / Delphi Formal Directive Structured Exploratory, pretest

Field, natural Informal, Moderately Very unstructured Exploratory