Week 3, 01/25/17: data from interviews

Topics:

Data from interviews, unstructured, semi-structured and structured interviews, interview techniques and tricks, protection of human subjects. Guest: Prof. John Wihbey

Readings for this Class:

• Weiss, Robert Stuart. Learning from Strangers. Simon and Schuster, 1995. (intro + sampling)
• The Ethnographic Interview. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1979.

Notes on Readings:

Learning from Strangers - Weiss, Robert Stuart

Interviewing gives us access to the observations of others.

Weiss discusses the different types of interviews. Fixed-item, precategorized-response survey interviews because they ask the same question of every respondent allowing for the quantitative reporting of the percentage of respondents who choose each option. This standardization of the results allows for comparison across groups and subgroups as the results can be presented as a table of numbers.

Interviews that seek to achieve fuller development of information at the expense of sacrificing uniformity of questions are called qualitative interviews. Because of the time and effort required to conduct an effective qualitative interview a smaller sample size is often used. The analysis of the results require interpretation, summary, and integration, which is often supported more by quotations than tables or statistical measures.

The research aims should dictate the research method. Below are a list of some research aims that could make a qualitative interview preferable.

1. Developing detailed descriptions
2. Integrating multiple perspectives
3. Describing process
4. Developing holistic description
5. Learning how events are interpreted
6. Bridging intersubjectivities (making it easier for readers to grasp a situation from the inside)
7. Identifying variables and framing hypotheses for quantitative research

Time is a limitation of qualitative interviews, but it may be time well invested. Those who conduct qualitative interviews often end up knowing a lot about the topic of their study.

Weiss doesn’t recommend the compromise of a fixed question, open response interview, which is directed by a schedule rather than the respondent’s associations. The respondent feels forced to answer questions in a short amount of time.

Before determining who to interview for a study, the substantive frame of the study must be determined. This includes a set of topics the study will explore.

“The breadth of a study’s substantive frame is often a compromise between the investigator’s desires for clarity of focus and for inclusiveness.”

Clarity of focus should always be given preference.

The Ethnographic Interview — Spradley, James

I found this reading to be very helpful in understanding the challenges of interviewing subjects.

According to Spradley, the ethnographic interview involves developing rapport and attaining meaningful information.

Rapport refers to a harmonious relationship between ethnographer and informant.

Spradley notes that rapport can exists in the absence of fondness and affection. Although building rapport can be at times unpredictable it often develops in a patterned way. He calls this the Rapport Process, which consists of four stages.

1. Apprehension by both the subject and the researcher. Ethnographic interviews always begin with a sense of uncertainty that can be alleviated by getting the informant talking. Descriptive questions can be useful in starting the conversation and move more quickly through the apprehension stage.
2. Exploration leads to comfort with each other. This is the natural next step of becoming familiar with a new situation. Relaxation comes once a sense of sharing occurs but first informants need to be able to move through this stage without feeling a pressure to fully cooperate. The exploration stage has three important principles: (1) Make repeated explanations (2) restate vs. reinterpret what the informant says without judgement, and (3) ask for use, not how or why.
3. Cooperation is when mutual trust is established by both parties. This occurs when both informant and ethnographer know the goal of the interview is to discover the culture of the informant in the language of the informant.
4. Participation occurs after the subject perceives their role as teacher to the researcher. The informant becomes a participant observer in their own cultural scene.

ETHNOGRAPHIC QUESTIONS

In an ethnographic interview both questions and answers must be discovered.

There are three main ways to discover questions when studying another culture:

1. Record the questions that people ask in the course of their everyday life.
2. Inquire directly about questions used by participants in a cultural scene.
3. Ask informants to talk about a particular cultural scene.

The third approach uses general descriptive questions that aim to get the informant to give long answers in their native language. It is often helpful to expand the length of the question in order to expand the length of the response.

DESCRIPTIVE QUESTION TYPES

1. Grand tour questions ask the informant to physically or mentally take you through a space, time, event, activity or grouping of objects or people.
2. Mini-tour questions are similar to grand tour questions but break down a smaller unit of experience or period of time.
3. Example questions ask for an example of a single act or event identified by the informant during the interview.
4. Experience questions are open ended questions that ask the informant for any experiences they have had in a particular setting. These are often useful after grand or mini-tour questions.
5. Native-Language questions ask the informant how they would refer to terms in their native language.

Notes from class:

perspectives on visual knowledge

visualization and knowledge production:

measurement: assigning symbols to observations

• counting
• ordering
• classifying

each of these attributes can benefit from visualization

In order to choose a visual language first look at data structure and determine the task.

one approach to visualization

Data structure → task → visual language

this is a narrow schematism with clearly defined elements

another approach to visualization

Diagramatic Reasoning — Peirce = computation through diagrams

Diagrams have a position between images and text

Use when there are opportunities to use visual to explain a concept more easily than with text.

Using geometric diagrams to display relationships

• have a diagram
• feed it with data
• see whats going on
• and then make conclusions

Diagramatic Operations

• taking things apart (analytic) — e.g. explosion diagrams, ikea instructions,
• putting things together (synthetic) — e.g. composites, aggregations, overlays, families of things, heat maps, corpus analysis
• setting things in context (relational — comparison) —

Usually have all 3 present to some extent

Guest speaker: Prof. John Wihbey on Interviewing:

journalism — don’t need a degree anyone can do it

guidelines:

• interview people in their environment
• people in native environment tend to be more comfortable
• gives an opportunity for spacial organization