methods Svend Brinkmann, PhD University of Aalborg, Denmark

Transcription

1 Qualitative interviews as methods Svend Brinkmann, PhD Professor (MSO) University of Aalborg, Denmark

2 Features of qualitative inquiry ir 1. Qualitative i inquiry i embeds the study of psychology in rich contexts of history, society, and culture. 2. It resituates the people p whom we study in their life worlds, paying special attention to the social locations o they occupy. 3. It regards those whom we study as reflexive, meaning-making, making and intentional actors. (Marecek, 2003, p. 49).

3 Different methods to obtain data in qualitative research Interviews Focus groups Observations Fieldwork Document analysis Action research Case studies Clinical research Autoethnography Evaluation

4 Different paradigmatic approaches to qualitative research 1. Phenomenology 2. Grounded theory 3. Hermeneutics 4. Discourse analysis 5. Conversation analysis 6. Poststructuralism 7. Psychoanalysis 8. Narratology 9. Critical theory 10. Actor-network theory

5 Seven Stages of Inquiry in a Qualitative Interview Project 1. Thematising. Ask what before how! 2. Designing. g 3. Interviewing. 4. Transcribing. 5. Analysing. 6. Verifying Validity, reliability and generalizability. 7. Reporting. Develop a readable product.

6 Elton Mayo s method of interviewing 1. Give your whole attention ti to the person interviewed, i and make it evident that t you are doing so. 2. Listen don t talk. 3N 3. Never argue; never give advice. di 4. Listen to: (a) what he wants to say (b) what he does not want to say (c) what he cannot say without help 5. As you listen, plot out tentatively and for subsequent correction the pattern (personal) that is being set before you. To test this, from time to time summarize what has been said and present for comment (e.g. is this what you are telling me? ). Always do this with the greatest caution, that is, clarify in ways that do not add or distort. 6. Remember that everything said must be considered a personal confidence and not divulged to anyone. Mayo: The Social Problems of an Industrial Civilization, 1933, p. 65.

7 Phenomenology Phenomenology is the study of the structure, and the variations of structure, of the consciousness to which any thing, event, or person appears (Giorgi, 1975, p. 83). The goal is to arrive at an investigation of essences by shifting from describing separate phenomena to searching for their common essence. A phenomenological reduction calls for a suspension of judgment as to the existence or nonexistence of the content of an experience.

8 Twelve Aspects of Qualitative Research Interviews Life World. The topic of qualitative interviews is the every-day lived world of the interviewee and his or her relation to it. Meaning. The interview seeks to interpret the meaning of central themes in the life world of the subject. Qualitative. The interview seeks qualitative knowledge expressed in normal language, it does not aim at quantification. Descriptive. The interview attempts to obtain open nuanced descriptions of different aspects of the subjects' life worlds. Specificity. Descriptions of specific situations and action sequences are elicited, not general opinions. Deliberate Naiveté. The interviewer exhibits an openness to new and unexpected phenomena, rather than having ready-made categories and schemes of interpretation. Focused. The interview is focused on particular themes. Ambiguity. Interviewee statements can sometimes be ambiguous, reflecting contradictions in the world the subject lives in. Change. The process of being interviewed may produce new insights and awareness, and the subject may in the course of the interview come to change his or her descriptions and meanings about a theme. Sensitivity. Different interviewers can produce different statements on the same themes, depending on their sensitivity to and knowledge of the interview topic. Interpersonal Situation. The knowledge obtained is produced through the interpersonal interaction in the interview. Positive Experience. A well carried out research interview can be a rare and enriching experience for the interviewee.

9 An interview on learning R (Researcher): Could you describe in as much detail as possible a situation in which learning occurred for you? S (Subject): (24 year-old female, housewife and educational researcher): The first thing that comes to mind is what I learned about interior decorating from Myrtis. She was telling me about the way you see things. Her view of looking at different rooms has been altered. She told me that when you come into a room you don't usually notice how many vertical and horizontal lines there are, at least consciously, you don't notice. And yet, if you were to take someone who knows what's going on in the field of interior decorating, they would intuitively feel if there were the right number of vertical and horizontal lines. So, I went home, and I started looking at the lines in our living room, and I counted the number of horizontal and vertical lines, many of which I had never realized were lines before. A beam... I had never really thought of that as vertical before, just as a protrusion from the wall. (Laughs) I found out what was wrong with our living room design: many, too many, horizontal lines and not enough vertical. So I started trying to move things around and change the way it looked. I did this by moving several pieces of furniture and taking out several knick-knacks, knacks, de-emphasizingemphasizing certain lines, and... it really looked differently to me. It's interesting because my husband came home several hours later and I said, Look at the living room; it's all different. Not knowing this, that I had picked up, he didn't look at it in the same way I did. He saw things were different, he saw things were moved, but he wasn't able to verbalize that there was a deemphasis on the horizontal lines and more of an emphasis on the vertical. So I felt I had learned something.

10 Phenomenological meaning condensation Natural unit Central theme The first thing that comes to mind is what I learned about interior decorating from Myrtis. She was telling me about the way you see things. Her view of looking at different rooms has been altered. She told me that when you come into a room you don t usually notice how many vertical and horizontal lines there are, at least consciously, you don t notice. And yet, if you were to take someone who knows what s going on in the field of interior decoration, they would intuitively feel there was the right number of vertical and horizontal lines. Role of vertical and horizontal lines in interior-decorating. So, I went home, and I started looking at the lines in our living i room, and I S looks for vertical counted the number of horizontal and vertical lines, many of which I had never and horizontal lines realised were lines before. A beam... I had never really thought of that as vertical in her home. before, just as a protrusion from the wall. (Laughs) I found out what was wrong with our living room design: many, too many, horizontal lines and not enough vertical. So I started trying to move things around and change the way it looked. I did this by moving several pieces of furniture and taking out several knick-knacks, de-emphasizing emphasizing certain lines, and... it really looked differently to me. It s interesting because my husband came home several hours later and I said Look at the living i room, it s all different. Not knowing this, that I had picked up, he didn t look at it in the same way I did. He saw things were moved, but he wasn t able to verbalize that there was a de-emphasis on the horizontal lines and more of an emphasis on the vertical. So I felt I learned something. S found too many horizontal lines in living room and succeeded in changing its appearance. Husband confirms difference not knowing why.

11 Discourse analysis Discourse analysis is: the study of how talk and texts are used to perform actions. (Potter, 2003, p. 73). Discourse is the organization of language into certain kinds of social bonds (Parker, 2005, p. 88). It is a central insight of discursive psychology that we can usefully use conversation as a model or analogue for studying other complex forms of social interaction. (Harré, 1998, p. 37)

12 Discourse analysis: Basic assumptions 1. Language as a system of actions: Utterances are speech-acts. 2. Social practice: Individual id actions are meaningful only given certain social practices of carrying out those actions. 3. Power: Different discourse have different forms of power and often compete for access to defining a part of reality. 4. Decentering the subject: Language speaks through the person

13 Crossing interview discourses I: One thing I have been wondering. A lot of you guys stay after work to do troubleshooting on your own equipment or moonlighting? B: Yes. I: What do you learn from that? B: It depends on what kind of moonlighting we do. Of course it is just routine, our interest to be allowed to potter around with something in which we see some benefit. If you have an old computer monitor at home and it s broken then you bring it and fiddle with it to see if you can find the trouble. It s not... you know, we are not allowed to potter with our television at work. You do not learn that, you learn about an instrument. To build your own amplifier is also something else than measuring some electronic equipment down here. I: Okay, so you do it to get some experience with more types of instruments and equipment? B: No, it s not to become experienced, it s done to apply what you have learned at school for your own profit. Such a computer monitor you get a new one without having to buy one. If you build an amplifier, well, then you might, it s much cheaper than having to buy one yourself. It s not to learn something extra; it s done simply out of simple interest. Or because there is some cool cash involved in repairing the video of a friend. -- I: Okay. You express sort of a contradiction when you say it s not to learn something, it s just your interest? B: You don t think of it as learning. I: But you learn something through it? B: Yes, but it s not like when you come home from school and say, I don t understand this, now I want to learn. And then you go and ask for a task where it s involved. It s not like you go and choose a monitor to learn about it. You have a monitor at home which is broken and you decide to fix it. Then you find out something about it. Tanggaard (2007) The Research Interview as Discourses Crossing Swords, in Qualitative Inquiry

14 Two discursive strategies Top-down (Foucault): Analysis of macro discourses. Identified through media, advertising, i laws, magazines, reports and other documents. Bottom-up (Goffman): Analysis of individual, p ( ) y face-to-face interactions and how these unfold and constitute social life. Can be studied through naturally occurring talk, fieldwork and also interviews.

15 Five dilemmas in current qualitative inquiry 1. Lived experience (phenomenology) vs. linguistic discourse (discourse analysis)? 2. Receptive/doxastic vs. active/epistemic researchers 3. Method vs. craft 4. Solid evidence vs. subjective anecdotes? 5. Ethical progressivism i vs. new ethical challenges?

16 Re 2: Doxastic and epistemic interviewing Doxastic interviewing Epistemic interviewing Interview content Doxa opinions and experiences Episteme justified knowledge Model of interviewer Ad modum Carl Rogers Ad modum Socrates Model of interviewee Way to knowledge Client / consumer Knowing the self Accountable citizen Knowing the subject matter Private vs. public Private disclosure Public debate Scientific goal Give voice to personal narratives Create knowledgeable citizenry

17 Re 3: Method vs. craft (what is qualitative quality?) SK: Is there an anthropological method? If yes, what is an anthropological method? JL: I think it is complete nonsense to say that we have a method. First of all I don't think that anyone should have a method. But in the sense that there are "instruments" that characterise the "methods" of different disciplines sociological surveys, questionnaire methods, in psychology various kinds of tests and also experiments there are some very specific technical ways of inquiring into the world. Anthropologists refuse to take those as proper ways to study human being. I think the most general view is that t the only instrument t that t is sufficiently i complex to comprehend and learn about human existence is another human. And so what you use is your own life and your own experience in the world (Lave and Kvale 1995, p. 220).

18 The researcher as craftsman Be a good craftsman: Avoid any rigid set of procedures. Above all, seek to develop and to use the sociological imagination. Avoid the fetishism of method and technique. Urge the rehabilitation of the unpretentious intellectual craftsman, and try to become such a craftsman yourself. Let every man be his own methodologist; let every man be his own theorist; let theory and method again become part of the practice of a craft. (C. Wright Mills, 1959, p. 224).

19 5. Ethical progressivism or new ethical challenges? Ethical dangers in qualitative research soft power: trust is the foundation for acquiring the fullest, most accurate disclosure a respondent is able to make [ ] In an effective interview, both researcher and respondent feel good, rewarded and satisfied by the process and the outcomes. The warm and caring researcher is on the way to achieving such effectiveness (Glesne & Peshkin, 1992, p. 79, p. 87).

20 Power Asymmetry in Qualitative Research Interviews The interview entails an asymmetrical power relation. The research interview is not an open everyday conversation between equal partners. The interview is a one-way dialogue. An interview is a one-directional questioning the role of the interviewer is to ask, and the role of the interviewee is to answer. The interview is an instrumental dialogue. In the research interview an instrumentalisation of the conversation takes place. The interview may be a manipulative dialogue. A research interview may follow a more or less hidden agenda. The interviewer has a monopoly of interpretation. The researcher usually upholds a monopoly of interpretation over the subject s statements.