QUALITATIVE DATA COLLECTION 2: INTERVIEW

INTERVIEWS

INFORMAL CONVERSATIONAL INTERVIEW

Questions emerge from the immediate context & are asked in the natural course of things; there is no predetermination of question topics or wording.

STRENGTHS Increases the salience & relevance of questions; Interviews are built on & emerge from observations; The interview can be matched to individuals & circumstances.

WEAKNESSES Different information collected from different people with different questions; Less systematic & comprehensive if certain questions do not arise naturally; Data organization & analysis can be quite difficult.

INTERVIEW GUIDE APPROACH

Topics & issues to be covered are specified in advance, in outline form; interviewer decides sequence & wording of questions in the course of the interview

STRENGTHS Outline increases comprehensiveness of data & makes data collection somewhat systematic for each respondent. Logical gaps in data can be anticipated & closed. Interviews remain fairly conversational & situational.

WEAKNESSES Important & salient topics may be inadvertently omitted. Interviewer flexibility in sequencing & wording questions can result in substantially different responses from different perspectives, thus reducing the comparability of responses.

KEY INFORMANT INTERVIEW

Strengths Provide data & insights that cannot be obtained with other methods; info comes directly from knowledgeable people Provide flexibility to explore new ideas & issues that has not been anticipated in designing the study Not expensive to conduct Most researchers have the required training & experience

Limitations Not appropriate for quantitative data collection; very limited basis for quantification Results can be biased if informants are not carefully chosen Results are susceptible to interviewer biases May be hard to show validity of results if only few people are interviewed; hard to prove that KIs are indeed knowledgeable & are representative of their peers in their info

How to select KIs

Selection determines quality of KI interviews. By definition, KIs must possess expert knowledge of subject based on their unique social statuses, experiences or professional expertise. Step 1. Identify relevant groups from which KIs can be chosen Step 2. Choose a few informants from each group. Consult, get additional names.

How to improve reliability of KI interviews

Check for representativeness Assess the KIs credibility, impartiality, knowledgeability, willingness to respond, external constraints Check interviewer bias Check for negative evidence Get feedback from informants

6 types of interview questions

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Background or demographic questions find out the background characteristics of respondents. Knowledge questions find out what the respondents consider factual info. Experience or behavior questions find out what the respondent is doing or has done.

4. Opinion or values questions find out what people think about some topic or issue 5. Feelings questions find out how respondents feel about things. 6. Sensory questions find out what a respondent has seen, heard, tasted, smelled or touched.