Doing Interview based Qualitative Research A Learner’s Guide 1st edition by Eva Magnusson,Jeanne Marecek 1316418278 9781316418277

1 Introduction

Introducing interpretative research

The theoretical framework for the book: some building blocks

Culture

Meaning

Talk and language

Interviews

Our aims for the book: bringing practice and theory together

The road map for the book

2 Some examples of interpretative research

Self-esteem as folk theory: comparing mothers in Taiwan and the USA

1 The researcher’s knowledge interest

2 The researchable questions that the researcher developed for the project

3 What the researcher did to gather material

4 Examples of analyses and findings in the project

Repeated hospitalizations for severe mental disorders in an American community

1 The researcher’s knowledge interest

2 The researchable questions that the researcher developed for the project

3 What the researcher did to gather material

4 Examples of analyses and findings in the project

The spiral of suicide-like behavior among adolescent girls in Sri Lanka

1 The researcher’s knowledge interest

2 The researchable questions that the researcher developed for the project

3 What the researcher did to gather material

4 Examples of analyses and findings in the project

Heterosexual couples in the Nordic countries forming their identities within and against gender equality ideologies

1 The researcher’s knowledge interest

2 The researchable questions that the researcher developed for the project

3 What the researcher did to gather material

4 Examples of analyses and findings in the project

Canadian women’s medicalized accounts of depression

1 The researcher’s knowledge interests

2 The researchable questions that the researcher developed for the project

3 What the researcher did to gather material

4 Examples of analyses and findings in the project

In conclusion: what unites interpretative research?

3 Planning and beginning an interpretative research project

Keeping a research journal

Reading as an interpretative researcher

Learning from knowledgeable people

Assessing feasibility

Researchable questions in interpretative research

Expect to modify your researchable questions

4 Making decisions about participants

Specifying the group(s) of people to study

Specifying groups to study is always purposive

Setting the number of participants for your study

Reaching out to potential participants

Putting the recruitment techniques into use

Composing the message to potential participants

Contacting and enlisting participants

Setting up the interview situation

Compensating participants

Ethical regulations of research

5 Designing the interview guide

Semi-structured interviews and open-ended questions

Rich talk in interviews

The interviewer–participant relationship

Researchable questions are not interview questions

Developing the interview content

Composing interview questions about your topics

Follow-up questions

Putting the items in sequence

The first segment of the interview guide

The main body of the interview guide

Ending the interview guide

Pretests and pilot tests

6 Doing the interview

An overview of the research interview

The preliminaries

Opening the interview

The main body of the interview

Closing the interview

Practical techniques: typical situations

How to establish and maintain a conversational tone and atmosphere

How to provide structure for the interview conversation

How to guide the content of the conversation

How to be an active listener

Practical techniques: complicated situations

When a participant seems reluctant

When a participant is taciturn and takes few initiatives to speak

When a topic or question does not “work”

Uncomfortable or painful feelings in interviews

The interviewer in the interview

The relationship between interviewer and participant in the interview

Pilot-testing the interview guide and practicing the interview

Why should you pilot-test the interview guide?

How to pretest, pilot-test, and revise the interview guide

How to use pretesting to develop your interviewing skills

7 Preparing for analysis

Transcribing your interviews

When to transcribe

What to transcribe

Completing the transcription

Ethical issues in transcribing

Original language in transcripts and publishing language

Our use of transcripts in this book

Ensuring that your project meets a high standard

Turning to analysis

Overview of the analysis chapters

Chapter 8: Finding meanings in people’s talk

Chapter 9: Analyzing stories in interviews

Chapter 10: Analyzing talk-as-action

Chapter 11: Analyzing for implicit cultural meanings

Appendix: Notation system for transcribing interview talk

8 Finding meanings in people’s talk

Formulating sub-questions for analysis

Karin’s project

Matt’s project

Selecting excerpts and assembling a file for each sub-question

How much material should be included in an excerpt?

Examples of excerpts

Deciding if an interview segment is relevant to a sub-question

Annotating the excerpts

Examples of notes about excerpts

Finding repeating ideas and composing integrative summaries and labels

Example 1

Example 2

Example 3

Things to keep in mind while you select excerpts and make summaries

Exploring differences between people

Drawing your analyses together

9 Analyzing stories in interviews

Analytical framework

Dimensions of stories

“Trouble”: the instigation to make a story

The teller’s “Theory of the Event”

The teller’s evaluative perspective

Canonical narratives

How to interpret stories: reading content and form together

Analytical procedures

Creating a file of excerpts

Becoming familiar with the contents of the file

Selecting dimensions of stories for analysis

Making notes about participants’ stories

Example 1: Katie

Notes

Example 2: Jennifer

Notes

Example 3: Lucy

Notes

Example 4: Maribeth

Notes

Finding similar meanings and composing integrative summaries of them

Stories in the file Theory of the Event

Integrative summary

Verifying the analyses

What to do if you are stuck

Drawing the analyses together

Example 1

Example 2

Exploring differences between groups of people

Comparing daughters and mothers: what is the Trouble or problematic event?

Comparing mothers and daughters: taking a canonical narrative into use

Synthesizing the analyses

10 Analyzing talk-as-action

What is talk-as-action?

Analytical framework

Rhetoric

Talking, thinking, and rhetoric

Language, categorization, and argumentation

Rhetorical contexts

The rhetorical context of interview interactions

Analytical procedures

Talk-as-action and the researchable questions in a study

Identifying pieces of talk to study

The phases of the analysis

Analyzing conversational features

“Witcraft” – statements plus justifications

Expressions of disagreement

Contrasting and extreme cases

Metacommunication in interviews

Variability in accounts: when participants contradict themselves

Emphasizing consensus and corroboration by others

Reported speech in interviews

Descriptions and facts

Descriptions and vivid descriptions

Systematic vagueness in descriptions

Empiricist accounting in descriptions

Category entitlement

The purposes of analyzing talk-as-action

11 Analyzing for implicit cultural meanings

Analytical framework: implicit cultural meanings

Terminology in this chapter

Analytical procedures

(A) Group-focused analysis of implicit cultural meanings

The first step: selecting the material to analyze

The second step: from researchable questions to group commonalities

The third step: from group commonalities to implicit cultural meanings

Toward drawing conclusions: bringing in the larger picture of the study to verify ideas

Toward synthesizing and drawing conclusions

Outline of the steps in the analysis

Analytical procedures

(B) Studying an individual’s meaning-making in a cultural context

The analysis example

Birgitta, her husband, and the professional women

How to select excerpts for analysis

Reading and reflecting: the preliminary step

Subjects and verbs: beginning to identify the action in Birgitta’s account

Textual subjects in Birgitta’s story

Identifying textual subjects that seem to disagree

Textual subjects that seem to agree: on the way to identifying cultural meanings

Identifying textual subjects that agree

From agreeing textual subjects to implicit cultural meanings

Discussing the implicit cultural meanings

Toward synthesizing the results

Outline of the steps in analysis of individual excerpts for implicit cultural meanings

12 Reporting your project

What the research report contains

The Methods section

(1) About the participants

(2) About the interview

(3) About the procedures for analyzing

The Results and Discussion section

The Introduction

The Conclusion

Language, style, and ethics in scientific writing

Using material from your interviews in your report

Avoid formal language

Avoid imprecise or misleading terms borrowed from other fields

Avoid discriminatory language

Safeguard the anonymity of your participants and their communities

Languages and writing styles

When you move between languages

Plagiarism

Authorship

Where to publish

Epilogue

Using semi-structured interviews

Selecting research participants purposively

Formulating open researchable questions

Refining and augmenting the researchable questions as the research unfolds