{"id":584,"date":"2011-06-30T23:02:52","date_gmt":"2011-07-01T06:02:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kooleady.ca\/thoughts\/?p=584"},"modified":"2011-07-08T15:00:19","modified_gmt":"2011-07-08T22:00:19","slug":"more-on-the-qualitative-interview-%e2%80%9cone-might-have-to-disrobe-and-casually-stroll-in-the-nude-%e2%80%9d","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kooleady.ca\/thoughts\/?p=584","title":{"rendered":"More on the qualitative interview: \u201cOne might have to disrobe and casually stroll in the nude . . .\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Fontana, A., & Prokos, A. H. (2007). The Interview: From Formal to Postmodern<\/em> (p. 148). Left Coast Press, Inc. http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Interview-Formal-Postmodern-Andrea-Fontana\/dp\/1598741098<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In referring to the setting of some interviews: \u201cOne might have to disrobe and casually stroll in the nude if one is doing a study of nude beaches.\u201d (Douglas and Rasmussen, 1977 cited in Fontana & Prokos, 2007, p. 43)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It was the perfect day to spend reading on the deck. I sat in the shade of my umbrella with my kettle, teapot, silver tea strainer I purchased at the Mittal tea shop in Sunder Nagar Market in New Delhi in 2003, and a fresh book on interviewing. Fontana and Prokos\u2019 (F&P) book is really only 113 pages in length. It\u2019s a pleasant read replete with interesting examples.<\/p>\n

I appreciated their quick highlights of the history of interviewing. The historic background can help readers understand some of the philosophical issues behind the selection of interview types and how a given researcher believes she must conduct her interviews and her analysis of them.<\/p>\n

As I continue to explore the literature on interviews, I am becoming more and more comfortable with my own style. My concern for contaminating my results by inadvertently \u201cparticipating\u201d in the interview whilst playing the researcher role is dissipating. The domain of the structured interview seems to rest with those taking a more realist ontology and objectivist epistemology. Locating \u201cpure\u201d responses from participants to pre-formed questions and limiting the interviewer from co-constructing the conversation seem to be of greater concern in structured interviews. (Hmmm . . . The post-modern unstructured polyphonic <\/em>interview (p. 53) also attempts to minimize the influence of the interviewer, but involves recording multiple participants speaking freely to a topic. According to an example, the participants seem to be recorded separately. The researcher is expected to avoid using her own words and interpretations. The reader must do his\/her own interpretations.)<\/p>\n

I am more of a relativist and constructionist. As such, I am comfortable with the notion that my very presence is a valid part of the process. The important thing is to recognize it, acknowledge it, and document it. The researcher must be reflexive (p. 63) and transparently so. F&P in referring to the work of Hertz (1997) note that \u201cwe (as authors) express and write our stories, which data we include and which data we exclude, whose voices we choose to represent and whose voices we choose not to represent\u201d (p. 63).<\/p>\n

Whilst Hertz (1997 referred to in F&P) acknowledges that the researcher brings many selves<\/em> to the field of research, Behar (1996 referred to in F&P) \u201cmade us see that interviewer, writer, respondent, and the interview itself are not clearly distinct entities\u201d (p. 64). (Pardon my poor citations, but I\u2019m a little tired tonight.) The researcher must decide how to present herself knowing that the self she shows will impact upon the relationship and the co-creation of the dialogue. Then, she must reflexively work through sorting out (or accepting) the hopelessly intertwined entities that formed the discourse\u2014and which continue to shape the discourse well after the contact between the interviewer and the participant has ended. These notions suggest a complexity to the qualitative interview that, again, must be reflected in the final report.<\/p>\n

F&P do a clean sweep of structured, group, and unstructured interviews. F&P do not make the same distinction between semi-structured and guided interviews as Olson does (see previous entry). They simply refer to them generally as unstructured<\/em> and list a number of different types. These types are listed within the categories of creative and post-modern. Within the post-modern category of unstructured interviews, one type really caught my eye: interpretive interactionism<\/em><\/strong> (p. 54). F&P suggest that interpretive interactionism is related to polyphonic interviews (see paragraph above)<\/em>, but focuses on \u201cepiphanies\u201d derived from transformational experiences: \u201cThus, the topic of inquiry becomes dramatized by the focus on existential moments in people\u2019s lives, possibly producing richer and more meaningful data\u201d (p. 54). What is of interest to me here is whether or not this form of interviewing would be useful in studies involving threshold concepts and liminality (see Meyer & Land\u2019s work). In my own PhD thesis, I will be exploring identity positioning thresholds<\/em> (coined this phrase for my study) experienced by doctoral students.<\/p>\n

Moving to the online interview <\/strong><\/p>\n

As I near the first of my pilot interviews, I am wondering how the following non-verbal factors will play out online:<\/p>\n

Proxemic<\/em> communication is the use of interpersonal space to communicate attitudes, chronemic<\/em> communication is the use of pacing of speech and length and of silence in conversation, kinesic<\/em> communication includes any body movements or postures, and paralinguistic<\/em> communication includes all the variations in volume, pitch and quality of voice. (Gordon, 1980, p. 335 cited in F&P, 2007, p. 71)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Next blog entry will focus on the online interview . . .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fontana, A., & Prokos, A. H. (2007). The Interview: From Formal to Postmodern (p. 148). Left Coast Press, Inc. http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Interview-Formal-Postmodern-Andrea-Fontana\/dp\/1598741098. In referring to the setting of some interviews: \u201cOne might have to disrobe and casually stroll in the nude if one is doing a study of nude beaches.\u201d (Douglas and Rasmussen, 1977 cited in Fontana […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[110,12,31],"tags":[45,75,72,69,73,74],"class_list":["post-584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-identity","category-phd-2","category-research","tag-constructionism","tag-interpretive-interactionism","tag-interview","tag-interviews","tag-structured-interviews","tag-unstructured-interviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kooleady.ca\/thoughts\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kooleady.ca\/thoughts\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kooleady.ca\/thoughts\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kooleady.ca\/thoughts\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kooleady.ca\/thoughts\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=584"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/kooleady.ca\/thoughts\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":602,"href":"https:\/\/kooleady.ca\/thoughts\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584\/revisions\/602"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kooleady.ca\/thoughts\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kooleady.ca\/thoughts\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kooleady.ca\/thoughts\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}