In: Interpreting Interviews, by Mats Alvesson pages: 9-42
This is another great article that provides an introduction and an overview of one of the research methods. I’ve never used the interviews in research, and I think that reading this text gave me a good basis to start thinking on if I want to use this method, and if yes, how do I want to approach it.
Major positions taken to interviewing:
- Neo-positivism – traditional, still dominating position – advocates to establish a context free truth = being neutral and avoiding being personal.
- Romanticism – advocates a more ‘genuine’ human interaction; building trust and commitment between interviewer and interviewee and turning interview into a ‘warm’ situation. Interviewer and interviewee collaborate in ‘co-construction of knowledge’. Practice of performing repeat interviews was especially interesting for me – this could help with establishing familiarity and reletionships with respondents. Additionally, it allows for evaluation of the accounts and their consistency over time.
- Localism – this approach emphasises that interview statements must be seen in their local, situation-specific context. This view suggests that “the products of an interview are the outcome of a socially situated activities” p.9 Localist position = “an interview (…) should not be treated as tool for the collection of data on something existing outside this empirical situation.” (p.9)
- Mixed positions – it considers both localist and romantic aspects. Local circumstances don’t need to stop the interviews to answer our questions, to hold facts and details from ‘outside’ the interview situation.
The article made me aware how complex the interviews as a research method are. There is lots of things to consider before conducting the interviews, such as my positionality, positionality of the respondents and ways it is going to influence our interaction; how and what language we use. What are my motives or motives of the interviewees? What is ‘knowing’ and ‘telling’ – how do I factor this in?
At this stage of my studies and planning for the unit, I think I would like to use interviews in my research. It is crucial for me to learn a bit more about it and will need to read more on the subject.