Qualitative Research Interviewing

Definition of Qualitative Research

“Qualitative research, study people and things in their natural settings, attempting to make
sense or to interpret a phenomenon in terms of the meanings people bring to them.” (Denzin
1994).
Features
 Inductive approach
 Focus on specific situations or people
 Emphasis on words rather than numbers
Qualitative Research…involves finding out
People perception and experiences
o What people think-how people think?
o What feel people feel-how they feel?
o What they say-how they say?
This kind of information is subjective

Advantages of Qualitative Research

 Produces more in-depth, comprehensive information.

 Uses subjective information
 Participant observation to describe the context, nature and variables as well
as the interactions of the different variables in the context
 It seeks a wide understanding of the entire situation.
 Personal opinion and judgment
 More flexible
Disadvantages of Qualitative Research

 The very subjectivity of the inquiry leads to difficulties in establishing the reliability
and validity of the approaches and information.
 It is very difficult to prevent or identify researcher induced bias.
 Its scope is limited due to the in-depth, comprehensive data gathering approaches
required.
 Cannot be mathematically analyze
 Unique and cannot be exactly recreated

Definition of interview
“An interview is a conversation between two people (the interviewer and the interviewee)
where questions are asked by the interviewer to obtain information from the interviewee”
Punch (1998)
Definition of Qualitative Interview
“Qualitative Interviews are particularly useful for getting the story behind a participant’s
experiences. The interviewer can pursue in-depth information around the topic.
Interviews may be useful as follow-up to certain respondents to questionnaires, e.g., to
further investigate their responses.” (McNamara, 1999)

What are Qualitative Interviews?

 Attempts to understand the world from the subjects' point of view

 To unfold the meaning of peoples' experiences
 To uncover their lived world prior to scientific explanations
 Conversations in which responses are the main source of raw data
 Participant's responses are open-ended and not restricted to choices provided by the
researcher
Qualitative Vs. Quantitative Interview

Qualitative Quantitative
Concerned with how people think and Asks all respondents the same
feel about the topics of concern to the questions in the same order to
research allow for statistical analysis

Micro analysis Macro analysis

Closed questions for

Open questions for greater depth and
quantification, can be coded
personal data
and processed quickly

Why Use Qualitative Interview?

 May be the only data gathering technique for the study

 Can lead to the development of new ideas and hypotheses,
 To the discovery of new dimensions of a problem to be studied.
 Complements and supports other research methods
 Can be used to develop valid and understandable questionnaires.
 May be used as a follow-up to explore issues that have emerged from a questionnaire
in more depth.
Interview cycle

Planning Phase

 Formulating relevant questions

 Designing motivating questions
 Establishing an communicative atmosphere
Doing Phase

 Delivering the question

 Listening to the interviewee
 Observing the interviewee’s non-verbal behaviour
 Evaluating the response
 Examining the response
  Recording the information
Analyzing Phase

 Write down the interview

 Making interview records
 Short notes
Identify

 Identifying information gaps

 Preparing for the next interview

Types of interview
 Structured interviews (quantitative)
 Unstructured interview (qualitative)
 Semi-structured interview (qualitative)

Structured interviews

 Interviewer adheres to a strict script.

 Interviewers can be less experienced or knowledgeable.
 Easier to compare or analyze data

Unstructured Interviews

 Interviews in which neither the question nor the answer are predetermined
 Rely on social interaction between the researcher and informant to bring out
information
 A way to understand the complex behavior of people without imposing any a priori
categorization which might limit the field of inquiry
 A natural extension of participant observation relying entirely on the natural
generation of questions in the natural flow of an interaction

Semi-Structured Interview

 The researcher has an outline of topics or issues to be covered, but is free to vary the
wording and order of the questions to some extent.
 Data somewhat more systematic and comprehensive than in the informal
conversational interview.
 Tone of the interview still remains fairly conversational and informal.
 Requires an interviewer who is relatively skilled and experienced.
 Difficult to compare or analyze data.