-INTERVIEWING-

Interviewing

• Interviewing allows the researcher to check the accuracy of data collection.
• The purpose of conducting the interviews is to discover the views, opinions and thought of the samples as well as the things that the researcher often overlooked during the observation.

Recording data

• Recording data involves audio tapping, videotaping and also taking notes.
• This is essential to keep track the conscious and unconscious response of the respondents.

Ethics in interviewing: the necessity for informed consent.

• It is preferable to request participants to sign an informed consent form.
• This is to preserve the rights of participants and avoid misunderstanding of any issues regarding the interview.

There are four types of interviews that can be used in a qualitative research; structured, semi-structured, informal and retrospective.

• Structured and semi-structured interviews are conducted in a formal manner. In collecting data, the researcher asks a series of questions and later, the information will be compared and contrasted. This is effective in testing the hypothesis of the research.
• Informal interviews are conducted in a casual manner. There are no certain guidelines of asking the questions. The objective of this interview is to gain the views, thoughts and opinions of the samples.  
• Retrospective interviews could be conducted in various forms; structured, semi-structured or informal. However, this is the least favourable type of the interview as it requires the samples to recall and reconstruct of something that happened in the past. Therefore, there is a possibility that the data is not accurate thus unreliable for the research.

Four major interview strategies

There are four major interview strategies; informal conversational interview, interview guide approach, standardized open-ended interview and closed, fixed-response interview.

• The characteristic of informal conversational interview is the questions are not planned and they are asked in accordance to the situation. Therefore, the questions can fit in the samples. However, this leads to vast different responses from one sample to another thus the data could not be easy to analyse.
• In interview guide approach, the researcher has outlined the topics and issues to be asked. As for the questions and sequence, it will be determined during the interview. The outline offers a path for data analysis thus make the data easier to be analysed. However, since the responses are all due to the perspectives of the samples, the responses of the samples might be different from each other. Thus, the data could be difficult for the researcher to analyse.
• In practising standardized open-ended interview, the researcher has planned the questions and its sequence before the interview is actually conducted. Therefore, all the samples are asked the same questions by the researcher. As the samples are asked the same questions, it increases the comparability of the responses. However, it limits the naturalness and relevance of the questions to the samples.
• Before closed, fixed-response interview is actually conducted; the categories for the questions and responses are already prepared by the researcher. Although it limits the naturalness of the answers of the samples, the data becomes simpler and clearer to be analysed and compared.

Key actor interviews

The term ‘key actor’ derives from the term ‘key informant’.

• Key informant is the individuals who know their culture and history and are able to articulate better than others.
• Key actor is almost similar to key informant. Key actor is a knowledgeable and informative individual. In a research context, researchers should take some time to identify and build rapport with the key actors of a population.

Types of interview questions

There are six types of basic questions which are; background, knowledge, experience, opinion, feeling and sensory questions.

• Background questions feature questions related to respondents such as education level, age and many more.
• Knowledge questions refer to the facts that the respondents know such as the information of the school and many others.
• Experience questions revolve around the previous and current behaviour of the respondents.
• Opinion questions concern on the respondents’ views, opinions and thoughts.
• Feeling questions are related to how respondents feel on certain things.
• Sensory questions rely on the five senses. This is solely related to what is seen, heard, tasted, smelled and touched by the respondents.

Interviewing behaviour

There are a number of expectations of how the researchers should behave during the interview. The researcher should;

• be natural
• build rapport with the respondents
• respect the respondents and their culture etc

Focus group interviews

• A group of small people who is seated together and being asked a series of questions to think of.
• The objective is to identify what this group of people think of the questions asked.