Interviewing

I have been repeatedly asked by students to talk more about qualitative studies, so let's begin that with talking about interviewing. I will be using as the basis for my posts Seidman's (2013) book on interviewing. So why do interviews? Interviewing is hearing people's stories, understanding the meaning of their behavior and how they see the world.  

The purpose of interviewing is not to test a hypothesis or to evaluate, rather it is to discover the lived experience of people and to understand the meaning they give the experience. So this means listening to people, and as an interviewer realizing you are not having a mutual discussion – instead you are listening to what the participant has to say. You need to show that you are valuing their opinion and not leading them to respond in a way that serves your own agenda. 

Phrasing your research question becomes very important – you must not have a predetermined outcome in mind. Thus if you are interested in the experience of online students in writing a dissertation – you DO NOT want to ask: Do online dissertation students hate working in an online environment? You are predicting an outcome. Instead, a more general question is better: What is the lived experience of being an online dissertation student? 

Next time I will consider when you should not consider doing interviews.  Do you have an issue or a question that you would like me to discuss in a future post? Would you like to be a guest writer? Send me your ideas! leann.stadtlander@waldenu.edu 

Seidman, I. (2013). Interviewing as qualitative research, 4^th Ed. NY: Teacher's College Press.