Learning From Strangers: Interviewing

Text Exploration

In this text, the author provides practical tips on interviewing techniques, exemplified with annotated transcripts of real interviews.

At its most base level, interviewing requires establishing partnership with the interviewee. This then allows the interview to proceed effectively. One way to establish this partnership is by showing authenticity; another is by indicating the interview is a collaborative process.

Good interview questions elicit specific cases, rather than generalizable answers. A generalized account “expresses a kind of theory of what is most typical or more nearly essential in the class of the event. By doing this, respondents preempt the investigator’s task of analysis; it is they who have decided what is important.” A test to examine if a detail is sufficient in specificity is to consider visualizability: an interviewer should be able to call up the scene and imagine being there.

Some concrete interviewing techniques can be used to extract concrete information. These include extending what a participant said, asking for additional detail, confirming and prompting detail on actors, and probing on “inner events,” such as perceptions, beliefs, and emotions.