Tracy Ch. 7

Qualitative Research Methods

Interview Planning and Design: Sampling, Recruiting, and Questioning

The value of interviews

Interviews should be thought of as guided conversations, and we need to remember that they are not always face-to-face, one-on-one. Interviews can occur through various media and can involve small groups as well. The goal is to access subjectively lived experiences and viewpoints related to a particular topic. Because the interviewer has power in the situation, it is up to them to treat the interviewee and the resulting data ethically. Interviews should be seen as a process of mutually creating a story or meaning, and so the process of conducting an interview is just as important as the data collection.

Interviews provide the unique ability to gain access to motivations, thoughts, and reasoning that would otherwise be unaccounted for. Furthermore, they can provide information about things that cannot be otherwise observed-- private or past experiences. Interviews are also a good opportunity for getting more information about observations; they can act almost as a member check.

Who, what, where, how, and when: Developing a sampling agenda

The sampling plan or sampling agenda is a proposed way to choose sources for interview data. In qualitative work, most researchers use purposeful sampling, which chooses participants and data that will work especially well with the goal of the research project.

Random samples - Every member of a population has equal chance of being interviewed (or otherwise have data collected).
Convenience/opportunistic sampling - This type of sampling is very common, and it involves using participants that are convenient to the researcher. It is often quicker to use this type of sampling, although it is not often considered enough data for a full study.
Maximum variation samples - When there is significant variation within a population, researchers may choose to portray this variation through purposefully choosing participants from the far ends of the spectrum.
Snowball sampling - This type of sampling is good for reaching difficult-to-access or hidden populations. It begins by choosing a few participants and then asking them to suggest friends, family members, or colleagues who may be open to participating.
Theoretical-construct samples - When working with a theory that requires participants to meet certain goals or have certain characteristics, theoretical-construct sampling purposefully chooses those people.
Typical, extreme, and critical instance sampling - Typical instance sampling looks for average participants; extreme instance sampling looks for participants who exhibit a chosen characteristic in the extreme; and critical instance sampling requires participants that have experienced something in particular (which may be extreme).

A sampling agenda can often be determined through your research question and chosen theories. If doing participant observation, it is often a good idea not to set a strict sampling agenda very early-- doing so can restrict your ability to observe what the field has to offer.

Interview structure, type, and stance

Structured interviews are those that repeat the same questions for each participant. This is often done with the help of an interview schedule. These are most useful when using a large sample that needs to be analyzed. These types of interviews may be good for quantity, but their depth suffers.

Unstructured interviews are far more flexible. What structure they have is provided by an interview guide-- it goes through required topics, but not specific questions. Unstructured interviews require interviewers to be more skilled and empathetic; they need to be able to pick up on emotional cues and keep the conversation on the research topic.

Types of interviews: ethnographic (informal, emergent, instigated by researcher), informant (interviews with those who are savvy in the scene, requires long-term relationship), respondent (group of participants with similar subject positions, speak only for themselves), narrative (open-ended, participants tell stories, related to oral history), life-story or biographic (includes stories, asks about life as a whole, provides understanding or empathy), and discursive (focuses on structures of power and their effects on knowledge, asks how participants navigate power).

There are multiple stances for the interviewer to take. Deliberate naivete falls between overt honesty and deceit, with the interviewer losing any presuppositions and judgments. Collaborative or interactive interviewing places the interviewer and participant on the same plane, with each interviewing the other. Pedagogical interviews ask for expert knowledge or emotional support. Responsive interviewing "suggests that researchers have responsibilities for building a reciprocal relationship, honoring interviewees with unfailingly respectful behavior, reflecting on their own biases and openly acknowledging their potential effect." The friendship model is similar to this, coming out of feminist scholarship. When interviewers deliberately provoke the people they are interviewing, the technique is called confrontational interviewing.

Creating the interview guide

Interview questions should not use jargon or overly-complicated language. They should focus on one topic at a time, and they should be open-ended. Questions should also be neutral and not lead to particular answers. They should uphold the participants' identities, and they should be followed by appropriate probes for further information.

Interviews should be sequenced as follows:
Opening - Breaks the ice, sets expectations, and begins with experience-related questions.
Generative questions - Questions that generate frameworks for the interview.This can ask for descriptions of experiences or processes that act as tours. They can also include examples or timelines. Hypotheticals can also work here. Behavior and answer questions can use past experiences to ask for factual reports of behavior. It is also productive to ask about participants ideal visions of certain things. This is also the part of the interview to ask participants to compare and contrast things, ask about their motivations (or others' motivations) and for predictions about the future.
Directive questions - Direct questions call for specific type of answers, and these direct the trajectory of the interview. Close-ended questions require very specific answers. Typology questions can ask for respondents to categorize certain knowledge, and elicitation questions prompt discussion by showing some kind of stimuli (video, image, text, etc.). Data-referencing questions ask participants for commentary on data gathered by the researcher in the past. Member reflection questions can be used to get participants' opinions on observations made by the researcher, and devil's advocate questions make participants respond to skeptical positions. This is also the point to use what may be potentially threatening questions. They are best left for the end of the interview in case they somehow effect the participant.
Closing the interview - At the very end, it is appropriate to ask catch-all questions and questions that enhance the identity or self-perception of the interviewee. You can also ask at this point if the interviewee has a preferred pseudonym.