32 * INTRODUCTION 2 0 0 0 . The Self WeLive By: Narrative Identity in aPostmodern World.New York:OxfordUni- versity Press. Hughes, E. C. [I9421 1984. The Sociological Eye: Selected Papers. Chicago:Aldine. Hymes, D. 1967. "Models o fthe Interaction ofLanguage and Social Setting." Journal of Social Issues 33:s-28. James,W [I8921 1961. Psychology: The Briefer Course. New York:Harper & Brothers. Kahn, R. L. and C. F. Cannell. 1957. The Dynamics of Interviewing: Theory, Technique, and Cases. New York:JohnWiley. Kent, R. 198 1. A History of British Empirical Sociology. Farnborough, England: Gower. Lidz, T. 1976. The Person. New York:Basic. Maccoby, E. E. and N. Maccoby. 1954. "The Interview: A Tool o f Social Science." Pp. 449-87 in Handbook of Social Psychology, Vol. 1, edited by G. Lindzey. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Miller, J. 1993. The Passion of Michel Foucault. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. Mishler, E. G. 1984. The Discourse of Medicine: Dialectics of Medical Interviews. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. . 1986. Research Interviewing: Context and Narrative. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Narayan, I<., in collaborationwith U.D. Sood. 1997.Mondays on theDark Night of theMoon: Hima- layan Foothill Folktales. New York: Oxford University Press. Oberschall, A. 1965. Empirical Social Research in Germany. Paris: Mouton. Pool, I. de S. 1957. " A Critique o f the Twentieth Anniversary Issue." Public Opilzion Quarterly 21:190-98. Reed-Danahay, D. E., ed. 1997. AutolEthnography: Rewriting the Self and the Social. New York: Berg. fiesman, D. and M . Benney. 1956. "Asking and Answering." Journal of Business of the University of Chicago 29:225-36. Rose, N. 1990. Governing the Soul: The Shaping of the Private Self: London: Routledge. . 1997.Inventing Ourselves:Psychology, Power, and Personhood. Cambridge:Cambridge Uni- versity Press. Rubin, H . J. and I. S. Rubin. 1995. Qualitative Interviewing: The Art of Hearing Data. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Sacks, H. 1992. Lectures on Conversation, Vols. 1-2. Edited by G. Jefferson.Oxford:Blackwell. Sacks, H., E. A. Schegloff,and G. Jefferson.1974. "ASimplest Systematics for the Organization of Turn-Taking for Conversation." Language 50:696-735. Selvin, H. C. 1985. "Durkheim, Booth andYule: The Non-Diffusiono f an Intellectual Innovation." Pp. 70-82 in Essays on the History of British Sociological Research, edited by M . Bulmer. Cam- bridge: Cambridge University Press. Silverman, D. 1987. Communication and Medical Practice. London: Sage. . 1993.Interpreting Qualitative Data: Methods for Analysing Talk, Text and Interaction. Lon- don: Sage. . 3 997. Qualitative Research: Theory, Method and Practice. London: Sage. Terltel,S. 1972. Working:People Talk about What TheyDo All Day and How TheyFeel about It. New York: Pantheon. Weiss, R. S. 1994. Learning fronz Strangers: The Art and Method of Qualitative Interview Studies. New York: Free Press. Wittgenstein, L. 1953. Philosophical Investigations. New York:Macmillan. ,...;p...n has existed, and described. It is most common for interview ,, both as a practice practice to be described when some aspect ogical term in cur- of that practice becomes salient because ,,, practice has not al- what has been done is seen as novel, or un- ed or distinguished from conventional. Even then, what is described calliring information; is commonly a policy or strategy rather jes ofpractices that than the actual practice, which in reality describe as interviewing, may not always conform to the stated pol- oraries did not. Inter- icy. This creates a problem of data, SO for imes been treated as a this historical account I must draw largely ut more often it has heen on prescriptions for practice asit should be. me broader methodologi- I have decided to concentrate here on uch as "survey," "case the book literature, although many articles story." have appeared on aspects of interviewing. e, more fully institutional- It is my assumption that the main points in ~ ~ T T Ph ~ ~ nIPPPIili-PI~itn he the journal literature are soon taken uu inU "" "b"" '-0" """,'" " U -- detail, except for trainees; books if they are practically influential, so fore exercise caution in gen- an emphasis on the book literature should- the n r e ~ r r i n t i v ~I i t ~ m t ~ ~ r ~to be adeauate for a broad overview of the..A- Y ~ - - - & ~- A , - &--- A - b - & - -- ce. In principle, my aim in pattern of development. It is with regret to look at both the theoriza- that I have also decided, given the limita- tice of the interview, with- tions of space, to focus entirely on the U.S. at there has always been a experience. For the pre-World War I1 pe- ence between the two. But riod, especially its earlier part, this is quite e has been very unevenly misleading, as other national sociologies 34 * INTRODUCTION The History of the Interview + 35 /EX Table 2.1 GENRES OF BOOKS RELATED TO lNTERVlEWlNG 18; Genre Examples Practitioner textbooks Garrett, Interviewing: Its Principles and Method (1942) ps Poll~ngand market research Gallup, A C u ~ d eto Publ~cOpinion Polls (1944);Amer~canMar- pract~ce 61 ketlng Assoclat~on,The Technique of Marketing Research (1 937) _$; Socral scrence methods Goode and Hatt, Methods in Soc~alResearch (1952) $2 textbooks Instruct~onsto survev Unlvers~tyof Mrchlgan, Survey Research Center, Manual for In bi6:g ~ntervlewers tervieweis (1954) Critiques of method, Christie and jahoda, Studies in the Scope and Method of "The general or particular Authoritarian Personality" (1954);Cicourel, Method and Measurement in Sociology (1964) '$ Emplr~calwork dlscuss~ng K~nsey,Pomeroy, and Mart~n,Sexual Behavior in the Human ?g rts methods 2.s Male (1948) 3&:xi Handbooks Denzrn and L~ncoln,Handbook of Qoal~tat~veResea~ch(2000) La81 b, Monographs on specral Dexter, El~teand Specialized Interv~ewing(1970), Douglas, Cre- 3 groups, novel approaches ative Interview~ng(1985) la Ph~losoph~cal/theoretical Sloberg and Nett, A Methodology for Social Research (1968)8- I % drscussron B, r9 $, Reports of methodolog~cal Hyman, Interv~ew~ngin Soc~alResearch (1954) Ii' research had some of their own distinct traditions and discussion. From about 1945 to 1960, U.S. social science and the survey became so hegemonic elsewhere that the U.S. litera- ture can perhaps be treated as representing the whole; after the high period of hege- mony, that becomes less reasonable.' Be- cause I am a sociologist, this chapter is un- avoidably written from a sociologist's perspective; the most likely bias is one to- ward work that sociologists have used and treated as important, whether or not the authors were sociologists. The choices of work to review might well differ somewhat if I were equally familiar with anthropol- ogy, political science, and psychology; scholars from other backgrounds are in- vited to supplement my examples with their own. The U.S. book literature on interviewing can be broken down into a number of cate- gories, of which some illustrative examples are listed in Table 2.1. (Where possible, these are chosen from works not exten- sively discussed below, to indicate more of the range of material drawn on.) There are a number of relatively distinct intellectual and practical traditions, despite overlaps and some strong influences across tradi- tions, and that needs to be taken into ac- count in any discussion of the stances and concerns of single texts. It is not always easy to decide what in the literature should be treated as a part of in- terviewing as such; for instance, some dis- cussions of questions to be put in an inter- view are only about the construction of schedules, without reference to how those are presented to the respondent, and many discussions of the interviewer's role include sections about sampling decisions that may fall to the interviewer. For the purposes of this chapter, my focus is on what happens while the interviewer is in contact with the respondent. I concentrate here on social scientific in- terviewing, but that has not always been distinguished from the interviewing tech- niques of psychiatrists, social caseworkers, or personnel managers. When distinctions have been made in the literature, social sci- entists still have often drawn upon work in such fields. But the character of the litera- ture has changed historically. The earliest relevant work was not specifically social scientific. As new practices and bodies (such as polling and survey organizations) emerged, they generated writing that ex- pressed their concerns, and their profes- sional commitment to work in the same area led to methodological research con- cerning issues in which they were inter- ested. Once an orthodoxy was established, there was room for critiques of it and decla- rations of independence from it. Those working on special groups developed spe- cial ways of dealing with them; then, with an understandable lag, theorists began to take an interest in more philosophical as- pects of interviewing. Textbooks regularly strove to keep up with the main devel- opments, whereas authors of empirical studies wrote about the special experiences and needs of their particular topics. In later times, as quantitative and qualitative worlds became increasingly separate, dis- cussions of interviewing diverged corre- spondingly. The quantitativists carried forward an established tradition with in- creasing sophistication, from time to time taking on technical innovations such as telephone interviewing, while qualitative workers blossomed out into focus groups, life histories, and own-brand novelties. However, an interesting recent link has been reestablished between the qualitative and quantitative camps in the use by sur- veyors of conversation-analytic techniques to analyze what is happening in their ques- tions and answers. In the rest of this chapter, I sketch the trajectory of the field of interviewingby us- ing selected examples of such writings, starting with the prescriptive methodologi- cal literature and going on to empirical work that has been treated as methodologi- cally important. P then review some key an- alytic themes in the literature. I consider the literature of research on interviewing as much for what the issues reflected there show us about the researchers' focuses of interest as for what the findings have been, although research has surely influenced practice. I briefly explore the interlinked is- sues of changing interest in and thinking about validity, the conceptions held of ap- propriate social relations between inter- viewer and respondent, and the types of data sought by those working in different styles; I make a particular effort to draw out points of potential interest to researchers whose concern is less with the history as such than it is with informing their own practice. Finally, I draw the strands of the discussion together to present a synthetic account of the ways in which interviewing and thinking about it have changed over time. + The Trajectory of Change in Mzthodological Writing To give a sense of the broad trajectory of change in methodological writing about in- terviewing, I present below, in order of his- torical appearance, descriptions of some arguably representative accounts of inter- viewing, its forms and purposes. I outline key points of content and assumptions, and briefly place each in its context. HOWARD W. ODUMAND KATHARINE JOCHER An Introduction to Social Research (1929) Odum and Jocher's volume is one of the first general social science methods text- u r e ~ Z o ~ d30 uo!s!n!a aur!ueM ayl auresaq 'IEA~ ayl alojaq a ~ n q n s ! ~ 8 ~30 luauruadaa ayl u~pallels ley1 meal e 30 slaquraur alaM 'ls!2010qsdsd -[e!sos I: pue I E ~ ! 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In this chapter they attempt to go beyond current rules of thumb and to draw on work in counseling and communication theory to understand the psychology of the interview. (Their later book The Dynamics of Interviewing carries this forward, coming to the formu- lation of objectives and questions only after three chapters on the interviewingrelation- ship; Kahn and Cannell 1957.) Note, in the following quotation, the relatively qualitative orientation, which nonetheless goes with a strong commit- ment to scientific procedure; one may de- tect some tension between the two: Even when the research objectives call for information which is beyond the in- dividual's power to provide directly, the interview is often an effective means of obtaining the desired data [e.g., Adorno et al.'s rating of anti-Sem- itism or personality features]. . . . Bias and lack of training make it impossible for an individual to provide such inti- mate information about himself, even if he is motivated to the utmost frankness. But only he can provide the data about his attitudes towards his parents, col- leagues, and members of minority groups from which some of his deeper- lying characteristics can be inferred. ... Considering . . . the interviewing pro- cess as a scientific technique implies that we are able, through the applica- tion of a specific instrument in a spe- cific manner, to achieve identical re- sults in given situations . . . [but] the interviewer cannot apply unvaryingly a specified set of techniques, because he is dealing with a varying situation. . . . [Given that] we cannot tailor the ques- tion for each respondent, the best ap- proximation to a standard stimulus is to word the question at a level which is un- derstandable to all respondents and then to ask the question of each respon- dent in identical fashion. ...The only instance in which the interviewer is per- mitted to vary this procedure is when an individual is unable to understand the question as worded. . . . the inter- viewer's role with respect to the ques- tionnaire is to treat it as a scientific in- strument designed to administer a constant stimulus to a population of re- spondents. This technique is necessary when quantifiable data are desired. (Pp. 332, 358) Cannell was a research student of Carl Rogers, recruited by Rensis Likert to the DPS to draw on what he had learned with Rogers about nondirective styles of ques- tioning. It is assumed in the book of which Cannell and Icahn's chapter is a part that an interview schedule is used, but this heritage was shown in the team's long-term commit- ment to more open-ended questions than those favored by other teams and explains some of the assumptions made here about interviewing. At an early stage there was controversy between the proponents of closed- and open-ended questions, con- trasted by one participant within the DPS as the "neat reliables" and the "sloppy valids." This was reflected in a classic paper by Paul F. Lazarsfeld (1944) in which he aimed to resolve the conflict between two wartime research outfits with divergent styles. Con- verse (1987:195-202) shows that the dis- pute was as much about the costs of more open-ended work, and whether the gains were worth it, as it was about validity. It be- came evident even to those committed in principle to the open style that it not only created coding problems, it was impossible to sustain when less educated interviewers were used, and interviewers were based all across the country, so that training and su- pervision were difficult. CLAIRE SELLTIZ, M A R E JAHODA, MORTON DEUTSCH, AND STUART W. COOK Research Methods in Social Relations (1965) This classic textbook, written by psy- chologists, has passed through many edi- tions. Selltiz et al. still distinguish between interview and questionnaire, seeing the in- terview, which may be structured or un- structured, as practically advantageous be- cause it does not require literacy, has a better response rate than postal question- naires, and is the more flexible and "the more appropriate technique for revealing information about complex, emotionally laden subjects, or for probing the senti- ments that may underlie an expressed opin- ion" (p. 242). However, much of the dis- cussion concerns question wording, with no distinction made between interview and questionnaire, and clearly a standard sur- vey interview, by now well established, is what the authors have in mind. They note that the interviewer should put the respon- dent at ease and create a friendly atmo- sphere, but "must keep the direction of the interview in his own hands, discouraging irrelevant conversation and endeavouring to keep the respondent to the point" (p.576);the interviewer must ask the ques- tions exactly as worded and not give im- promptu explanations. Complete verbatim recording is needed for free-answer ques- tions, "aside from obvious irrelevancies and repetitions" (p. 580). This shows development well beyond the approach of George Gallup (1944) in early work conducting the simple political poll designed for newspaper rather than ac- ademic publication. The interview there was unequivocally designed for quantifica- tion of the responses made to fixed ques- tions by members of the general public. The need for accuracy and precision was em- phasized, but uniformity of stimulus was not given the importance that it later ac- quired; reliability was seen primarily in terms of getting the public predictions right. Many of those involved in the early development of polling and market re- search into the survey were psychologists, and for them the experiment was usually the model, so they laid great emphasis, as here, on the importance of applying a uni- form stimulus. GIDEON SJOBERG AND ROGER NETT A Methodology for Social Research (1968) This book represents quite a new genre of work, reflecting wider movements in so- ciology. Sjoberg and Nett were not closely involved with survey units and were writ- ing not a conventional methods text but a textbook/monograph with a standpoint: "The scientist who employs . ..[structured interviews] is usually intent upon testing an existing set of hypotheses; he is less con- cerned with discovery per se. And, of course, standardization greatly enhances reliability" (p. 193). Standardization also saves time and money. However, it has the drawback of imposing the investigator's categories on informants: The unstructured type is most useful for studying the normative structure of organizations, for establishing classes, and for discovering the existence of possible social patterns (rather than the formal testing of propositions concern- ing the existence of given patterns). (l?195) Sjoberg and Nett describe four types of unstructured interviews: the free-association method interview, the focused interview, the objectifying interview, and the group interview. Of these, they prefer the objec- tifying interview: The researcher informs the interviewee from the start. . .concerning the kinds of information he is seeking and why. The informant is apprised of his role in the scientific process and is encouraged to develop his skills in observation (and even in interpretation). . . . Besides ex- amining his own actions, the inter- viewee is encouraged to observe and in- terpret the behavior of his associates in his social group. Ideally, he becomes a peer with whom the scientist can objec- 40 a, INTRODUCTION The History of the Interview 1) 41 tively discuss the ongoing system, to the extent that he is encouraged to criticize the scientist's observations and inter- pretations. (E 214) Throughout the discussion, Sjoberg and Nett stress the social assumptions built into different choices of questions. They discuss status effects in the interview situation and the consequences of varying cultural back- grounds, especially for work in the Third World. These authors approach the matter from a theoretical and-in a turn characteristic of the period-sociopolitica1 perspective; they propose to involve the respondent as an equal, not so much for instrumental rea- sons of technical efficacy as because they see a nonhierarchical, nonexploitative rela- tionship as intrinsically right. It is also nota- ble that this is a sociologists' version; there is no orientation to psychologists' usual concerns, and the topics envisaged are so- ciological ones. Although Johan Galtung (1967) and Norman K. Denzin (1970) wrote books that are more like conven- tional methods texts, theirs have key fea- tures in common with Sjoberg and Nett's: more theoretical and philosophical inter- ests, a more distanced approach to surveys and their mundane practicalities, and a clearly sociological frame of reference. In- terviewing of various kinds had by this pe- riod become a standard practice to which even those with theoretical interests related their ideas. STEVEN J. TAYLOR AND ROBERT BOGDAN Introduction to Qualitative Research Methods (1984) Taylor and Bogdan produced a special- ized methods textbook, again with a strong standpoint: In stark contrast to structured inter- viewing qualitative interviewingis flex- ible and dynamic. ...By in-depth quali- tative interviewing we mean repeated face-to-face encounters between the re- searcher and informants directed toward understanding informants' per- spectives on their lives, experiences, or situations as expressed in their own words. The in-depth interview is mod- eled after a conversation between equals, rather than a formal question- and-answer exchange. Far from being a robotlike data collector, the inter- viewer, not an interview schedule or protocol, is the research tool. The role entails not merely obtaining answers, but learning what questions to ask and how to ask them. (I? 77) Taylor and Bogdan note that without di- rect observation to give context to what people say in an interview, their responses may not be adequately understood, and there may be problems of deception and distortion; it is important, therefore, to in- terview in depth (see Johnson, Chapter 5, this volume), getting to know people well enough to understand what they mean and treat- ing an atmosphere in which they are likely to talk freely. .. .it is only by de- signing the interview along the lines of natural interaction that the interviewer can tap into what is important to peo- ple. In fact, the interviewer has many parallels in everyday life: "the good lis- tener" "the shoulder to cry on," "the confidante." . . . there has to be some exchange in terms of what interviewers say about themselves. . . . The best ad- vice is to be discreet in the interview, but to tall