week 8

Qualitative Interviewing Techniques

• Qualitative research utilizes interviews to capture participant perspectives, contrasting with the rigid structure of quantitative methods.
• Unstructured interviews resemble conversations, while semi-structured interviews follow a guide with flexibility for follow-up questions.
• Interview guides, transcription, and focus groups are essential aspects of qualitative interviewing.
• Focus groups encourage group interaction, but require careful participant selection and transcription management.
• Qualitative interviews provide in-depth data; ethnography offers a broader contextual understanding.

Lecture 8: Qualitative Interviews

• Qualitative interviews are a collaborative process, where meaning arises from the interaction between interviewer and interviewee.
• They are crucial for eliciting specific language forms, understanding the unobservable, and verifying data from other sources.
• "Member checking" (returning to participants for accuracy) is vital to ensure accurate interpretations.
• Different interview types (respondent, ethnographic, informant) serve distinct purposes in understanding social phenomena.
• Interview structures (schedules) use various question types (introducing, direct, indirect) to guide interviews.

Connection Between Chapter and Lecture

• Both highlight the flexibility and depth of qualitative methods.
• Both emphasize understanding participants' perspectives using their own terms.
• Interview guides are useful for semi-structured interviews, aided by question types for richer data collection.
• Focus groups are valuable tools for gathering collective insight.
• Focus groups, while presenting dynamic and transcription challenges, contribute to the overall significance of qualitative data gathering.