Qualitative interviews in psychology: problems and possibilities

Abstract

This paper distinguishes a series of contingent and necessary problems that arise in the design, conduct, analysis and reporting of open-ended or conversational qualitative interviews in psychological research. Contingent problems in the reporting of interviews include: (1) the deletion of the interviewer; (2) the conventions of representation of interaction; (3) the specificity of analytic observations; (4) the unavailability of the interview set-up; (5) the failure to consider interviews as interaction. Necessary problems include: (1) the flooding of the interview with social science agendas and categories; (2) the complex and varying footing positions of interviewer and interviewee; (3) the orientations to stake and interest on the part of the interviewer and interviewee; (4) the reproduction of cognitivism. The paper ends with two kinds of recommendation. First, we argue that interviews should be studied as an interactional object, and that study should feed back into the design, conduct and analysis of interviews so that they can be used more effectively in cases where they are the most appropriate data gathering tools. Second, these problems with open-ended interviews highlight a range of specific virtues of basing analysis on naturalistic materials. Reasons for moving away from the use of interviews for many research questions are described.

Stumbling into Sexual Crime: The Passive Perpetrator in Accounts by Male Internet Sex Offenders

“…The interviews were recorded on a dictaphone and transcribed using a simplified version of the scheme developed by Gail Jefferson Jefferson's transcription conveyed various features of the delivery of talk to capture the subtlety of their delivery (Hepburn & Bolden, 2013) in order to discover and describe orderly practices of talk-in-interaction, allowing interaction features to be appreciated (Potter & Hepburn, 2005) (see Appendix for transcription notation).…”

“…As indicated above, participants were recruited because they belonged to the category of 'internet sex offender' and were invited to take part in the study with the 'task understanding' (Potter & Hepburn, 2005) that they would be discussing their 'internet sex offending ' and, more specifically, how they ended up in prison convicted of a sexual offence, what it means to them to be convicted for sexual offences over the internet, their views and feelings towards their offence, and, the effect that this has had on them and their family. The label of internet sex offender, combined with their incarceration and interviewing in a prison, already marks out participants' identities as troublesome, but our analysis highlights the sophisticated negotiation of this identity.…”

“…Line numbering is routinely inserted in discursive data extracts in order to facilitate attention to the sequential nature of interaction and hence analysis (Potter & Hepburn, 2005).…”

Discursive Approaches to Race and Racism

“…The popularity of individual interviews as a data course for qualitative research in general (Potter & Hepburn, 2005;Silverman, 2004) has been somewhat less marked in discursive approaches, with the epistemological assumptions and research foci of such approaches leading in many cases to the pursuit of other forms of talk and texts as data sources. Despite this tendency, however, discursive researchers have been able to make effective use of interview data in a number of ways in examining phenomena relating to race and racism.…”

“…A consequence of the degree of control the researcher is able to exercise in using interviews for purposes such as those described above is that the data produced are shaped by researchers' agendas in terms of sampling participants, designing the questions they will be asked, and by other contingencies associated with interview-based interactions (see, e.g., Potter & Hepburn, 2005). As a result, while interviews offer a valuable means of capturing race-related discourses produced by ordinary people, it is typically the interviewer who introduces race as a topic of discussion, whether as a pre-specified basis of the interview and/or of the selection and recruitment of participants, or in the design of particular questions during its course.…”