Intensive Interview Techniques

Intensive Interviews: Key Differences from Personal Interviews

• Intensive interviews frequently involve higher co-op payments, typically ranging from $100 to $1,000
• The amount of data collected is substantial, and analysis may extend from weeks to months
• Interviewees may experience fatigue and boredom, necessitating scheduling interviews several hours apart
• Due to the significant time commitment required, arranging intensive interviews can be challenging, especially for working professionals
• Small sample sizes limit the ability to generalize findings to the broader target population

Examples of Intensive Interviews

• Harrington (2003) interviewed a dozen people who knew the storylines for the soap opera, All My Children and how it covered homosexuality
• Lewis (2008) interviewed eight journalists who had either lost their jobs or were suspended for plagiarism
  • He found that a cause of the journalists loses was the vague way plagiarism defined
• Winn (2009) interviewed 20 families while they viewed prerecorded video material
  • The families considered this to be "family social time"

Online Intensive Interviewing: Two Main Types

• One type is a text-based approach, performed through email, chat rooms, bulletin boards, or social media
• A benefit of this type is the interview can occur at the respondent's convenience
  • Also, researchers can conduct interviews with people over a wide area
  • This method can be helpful for people who might be uncomfortable in a face-to-face situation
• Weaknesses include the process takes longer than face-to-face interactions
  • Less data is generated, and the respondent's typing and reading skills can influence the quality of the data
  • Nonverbal communication is also often missing
• The other type uses Skype or video conferencing software, allowing the interviewer and respondent to see each other
  • It permits the researcher to observe nonverbal behaviors that might influence verbal responses and ask follow-up questions
  • Real-time format provides the option of audio and visual recordings
• A disadvantage of the real-time approach is that the respondent can easily end the interview
  • There is also less rapport and trust between the interview participants

Case Studies Defined

• A case study systematically investigates individuals, groups, organizations, or events, aiming to understand or explain a phenomenon
• Employed in medicine, anthropology, clinical psychology, management science, and history
• Defined more formerly as an empirical inquiry using multiple sources of evidence to investigate a real-world contemporary phenomenon
• A case study has unclear boundaries between the phenomenon and its real-life context
• Case studies include both single and multiple cases, with comparative case study research being a multiple case study technique in political science

Four Essential Characteristics of Case Study Research

• Focuses on a particular situation, event, program, or phenomenon, making it ideal for studying real-world problems
• Provides a comprehensive and detailed account of the subject under examination
• Increases understanding of the subject, yielding interpretations, perspectives, meaning, and insights
• Relies on inductive reasoning, generating principles and generalizations through data examination and discovering relationships rather than verifying hypotheses

Advantages of the Case Study Method

• Most valuable when researchers seek a wealth of information and detail about the topic
• Particularly helpful for researchers exploring preliminary clues and ideas for additional research
• Used to gather descriptive and explanatory data, suggesting why events occurred
• Should be used with theory for a comprehensive understanding
• Enables researchers to manage a wide range of evidence, including documents, artifacts, interviews, observations, and surveys
• Increased likelihood of study validity comes with a broader range of data sources

Disadvantages of Case Studies

• Subject to a general lack of scientific rigor
• The case study researcher has equivocal evidence or biased views that influence the findings and conclusions
• Not readily amenable to generalization due to their specific context
• Often time-consuming, yielding large amounts of data that are difficult to summarize and present well

Conducting a Case Study

• Five stages to conducting a case study are design, pilot study, data collection, data analysis, and report writing
• The initial design concern is to ask "how" or "why" questions with a clear and precise focus, which then dictates what constitutes a "case" for analysis
• Cases can range from individuals to organizations or specific events, but researchers want to compare new findings to existing literature
  • A unit of analysis in available research literature is a rough guide for this purpose
• Before conducting the pilot study, create a study protocol, and describes the data-gathering instruments and procedures to be used
• A good plan has procedures for accessing people or organizations, data collection schedules, and logistical considerations
• Protocols contain the questions central to the investigation and possible sources of information
• The researcher refines the design and field procedures as study variables not originally seen and problems with the protocol are found
• The case study also allows the researcher to try different procedures and observe varied trial perspectives
• Used to revise and polish the study protocol

Four potential data sources for Case Studies

• Documents in the form of letters, memos, minutes, agendas, historical records, brochures, pamphlets, posters, and more
• Interviews using intensive interviewing or surveys
• Observation/participation, using general comments
• Physical artifacts to consider what tools, furniture, or computer printouts
• Researchers can use many of these methods and triangulate the phenomenon

Data Analysis

• There are no specific formulas or techniques to guide analysis so this stage is difficult
• It is impossible to generalize to all case types but three broad methods for Yin (2003) have been suggested
  • Match patterns or look at explanation building and time series
• The empirically based pattern will be compared with one or more predicted patterns
  • A researcher may predict stress between editors and writers, increased productivity, and weakened supervisory links
  • The results of the data in a case study is there to make conclusions of the change
  • If the predicted pattern is not matched then proposed analysis should be questioned
• There is the approach to construct an explanation by making statements about events that are the results of an issue
  • One can typically draft an initial statement from the outcome, compare them, reiterate, and change until necessary
    • Look at common issues and what might fail in general such as lack of expertise or improper market research