EstablishingAccess to, Making
Contact with, and Selecting
Participants
Before selecting participants for an interview study, the interviewer must
both establish access to them and make contact. Because interviewing-
involves a relationship between the interviewer and the participant, how
interviewers gain access to potential participants and make contact with
them can affect the beginning of that relationship and every subsequent
step in the interviewing process. In this and subsequent chapters, I discuss
an idea that I think is equivalent to the First Commandment of interview-
ing: Be equitable. Respect the participant and yourself. In developing the
interviewing relationship, consider what is fair and just to the participant
and to you.
THE PERILS OF EASY ACCESS
Beginninginterviewers, likerunning water, tend to look for the easiest
path to the goal, their potential participants. They oftenwant to select peo-
ple with whom they already have a relationship: friends, those with whom
theywork, studentstheyteach, or others with whom they havesometangen-
tial connection. This is understandable but problematic. My experience is
that the easierthe access, the morecomplicated the interview.
lnterviewing PeopleWhom You Supervise
Conflicts of interest are inherent in interviewing people you supervise.
For example, I worked with a doctoral candidate who was the principal
ACCESSING, CONTACTING, AND SELECTING PARTICIPANTS
of an elementary school. She wanted to interview teachers in her school
about their experience in developing collaborative learning projects in
their classrooms. She had been deeply involved in the project with her
teachers and was eager to understand what effect it had had on their
experiences.
In discussions with me, the principal said that her school was small
and not a large, unfeeling bureaucracy. She had a close working relation-
ship with the teachers. Shefelt that they trusted her. Finally, she thought
that despite her investment in the project, she could be impartial in the
interview.
One of the principles of an equitable interviewing relationship, how-
ever, is that the participants not make themselves unduly vulnerable by
participating in the interview. In any hierarchical school system, no mat-
ter how small, in which a principal has hiring and firing power and
control over other working conditions, a teacher being interviewed by the
principal may not feel free to talk openly. That is especially the case when
the teachers know that the interviewer has an investment in the program.
The issue in such cases is not whether the principal can achieve enough
distance from the subject to allow her to explorefully, but rather whether
the teachers feel securein that exploration. If they do not, the outcomes of
such interviews are not likely to be productive.
As a general principle then, it is wise to avoid interviewing partici-
pants whom you supervise; That does not mean in this case that the doc-
toral candidate could not explore the experiences of elementary teachers
in collaborative learning projects; it does mean that she had to seek to
understand the experienceof teachers in schools other than her own.
lnterviewing Your Students
Inexperienced interviewers who are also teachers often conceptualize
a study that involves interviewing students, and they are often sorely
tempted to interview their own. As legitimate as it may be to want to
understand the effectiveness of, say, a teaching method or a curriculum, a
student can hardly be open to his or her teacher who has both so much
power and so much invested in the situation. The teacher-researcher
should seek to interview students in some other setting with some other
teacher who is using a similar method or curriculum.
lnterviewingAcquaintances
Sometimes new interviewers want to select participants whom they
know but not in a way related to the subject of study. For example,

1
36 INTERVIEWINGAS QUALITATIVE RESEARCH
one doctoral candidate was contemplating an interview study about the
complexities of being a cooperating teacher for social studies student
teachers. He wanted to interview a-participant with whom he did not
work professionally but with whom he had regular contact at church.-Even experienced interviewers cannot anticipate some of the uncomfort-
able situations that may develop in an interview. Having to consider not
only the interviewing relationship but a church relationship as well might
limit the full potential of such an interview.
For example, in an interview about the experience of being a cooper-
ating teacher, the acquaintance from church might reveal that the reason
he or she takes on student teachers is for the free time it allows. Normally
an interviewer would want to follow up on an aspect of an interview that
made him or her feel uneasy, but to do so in this case could affect his
relationship with the participant at church. The interviewer may avoid a
follow-up, slant the follow-up, or in some other way distort the interview
processbecause of concern for his or her other relationshipwith the partic-
ipant. The result is either incomplete or distorted information on a key
aspect of the subject of study.
InterviewingFriends
Some new interviewers with whom I have worked want to interview
participants to whom they have easy access because of friendship. The
interviewing relationship in such cases can seldom develop on its own
merit. It is affected by the friendship in obvious and less obvious ways.
One of the less obvious is that the interviewers and the participants
who are friends usually assume that they understand each other. Instead
of exploringassumptionsand seekingclarity about events and experiences,
they tend to assume that they know what is being said. The interviewer
and the participant need to have enough distance from each other that
they take nothing for granted (seeBogdan & Taylor, 1975;Hyman et al.,
1954; McCracken, 1988; Spradley, 1979).
Taking Oneself JustSeriously Enough
In addition to feeling shy about a process with which they have had
little practice (Hyman et al., 1954), a major reason that some doctoral
candidates with whom I have worked want to capitalize on easy access is
that they tend not to take themselves seriously as researchers. Beginning
interviewers find it difficult to imagine askingstrangers to spend 4Yz hours
with them.
Many doctoral candidates see research as something others do. Our
ACCESSING, CONTACTING, AND SELECTING PARTICIPANTS 37
educational system is structured so that most people consume research but
seldom produce it. This has led many to adopt an uncritical attitude about
published material and to regard it as somehow sacred. Doing research is
seen as an elite occupation, done only by those at the top of the hierarchy
(seeBernstein, 1975).
At the same time, when dissertation research does not grow organi-
callyout of the coursework, clinical experiences, and independent reading
that have gone before, it becomes a requirement to be overcome. Doctoral
candidates who have had little practice in doing research and who see it as
a hurdle rather than an opportunity find it difficult to affirm their own
interest in their subject, their own status as researchers, the power of
their research method, or the utility of their work other than to fulfill a
requirement.
Cumulative societal inequities can exact a heavy toll on researchers at
this juncture. Research in our society has long been seen as a male pre-
serve, especially a White male preserve, associated with class and privi-
lege. New researchers who are not middle-class,White males may have to
struggle against social conventions to take themselves seriously in their
task. Some doctoral candidates need bracing from their advisors and their
peers at this point in their program in order to affirm themselves as re-
searchers. Taking oneself seriously enough as a researcher is a first step
toward establishing equity in the interviewing relationship.
ACCESS THROUGH FORMAL GATEKEEPERS
When interviewers try to contact potential participants whom they
do not know, they often face gatekeepers who control access to those
people. Gatekeeperscan range from absolutelylegitimate (tobe respected)
to self-declared (to be avoided). If a researcher's study involves partici-
pants below the age of 18, for example, access to them must involve the
absolutely legitimate gatekeepers, their parents or guardians. Although it
may be appropriate to seek access to students through the schools, very
soon in the process that access must be affirmed by the parents of the
children. Within the schoolsthemselves, teachers, principals, and superin-
tendents serve as gatekeeperswho must be respected.
Some participants are accessible only through the institutions in
which they reside or work. For example, if a researcher wanted to inter-
view prisoners about prison education programs, it is not likely that there
would be any route of access other than through the warden. A researcher
studying the experience of people at a particular site, whether it be fac-
tory, school, church, human service organization, or business, must gain

. Such a researcher
if we had been using asmall, pocket-sizedtaperecorder, wewould not have
hidden our research from others. When asked in the halls what we were
doing at the college, we answered explicitlyabout ourproject.
On only one occasion was a faculty member uncomfortable with our
approaching him directly and not through his administration. We told
him that he should inform the administration of our project and our wish
to interview him; we made it clear that we were not doing research about
the site. We said that if an administrator wanted to meet with us, we
would be happy to do so in order to explain our project, but we were
not eager to seek permission from administrators to interview individual
faculty. The participant did inform his administration, but no one wanted
to meet us.
INFORMALGATEKEEPERS
Sometimesalthough there is no formal gatekeeper, there is an informal
one (Richardsonet al., 1965).Most faculties, for example, usually include a
few members who are widely respected and looked to for guidance when
decisions about whether or not to support an effort are made. In small
groups, there is usually at least one person who, without havingformal au-
ACCESSING, CONTACTING, AND SELECTING PARTICIPANTS 39
thority, nevertheless holds moral suasion. If that person participates in a
project, then it must be okay; if he or she doesn't, then the group feels there
must be a good reason for not doing so. To the extent that interviewers can
identifyinformal gatekeepers, not to use them formally for seekingaccessto
othersbut to gain their participation in theproject as asign of respect for the
effort, accessto others in the group may be facilitated.
On the other hand, groups often have self-appointed gatekeepers,
who feel they must be informed and must try to control everything that
goes on, even if they have no formal authority. Their self-importance is
not respected by others in the group; avoiding their involvement in the
study may be the best way to facilitate access to others in such a group.
ACCESS AND HIERARCHY
One of the differences between research and evaluation or policy
studies is that the latter are often sponsored by an agency close to the
people who participate in the interviews. In such studies, authority for
access to participants often is formally granted by administrators in
charge. There is a sense of official sponsorship of the project (Lincoln &
Cuba, 1985), which affects the equity of the relationship between inter-
viewer and participant. It is almost as if the interviewer were someone
higher in the hierarchy instead of outside it.
Whenever possible, it is important to establish access to participants
through their peers rather than through people"above" or "below" them in
their hierarchy. For interviewing children, peer access may not be feasible.
But in other situations, the demand of equity in the interviewing relation-
shipcallsfor peer accesswhen possible. If your participants areteachers, for
example, try to establish access to them through other teachers; if they are
counselors,reach them if at all possible through other counselors.
MAKINGCONTACT
Do it yourself. Try not to rely on third parties to make contact with
your potential participants. No matter how expedient it seems to have
someone else who knows potential participants explain your project to
them, try to avoid doing so. Building the interviewing relationship begins
the moment the potential participant hears of the study. Third parties
may be very familiar with potential participants, but they can seldom do
justice to the nature of someone else's project. They have not internalized
it the way the researcher has; they do not have the investment in it that

40 INTERVIEWING AS QUALITATIVE RESEARCH
the researcher does. Once having introduced the subject, they can seldom
respond to questions that naturally might arise. Third parties may be
necessary for gaining access to potential participants but should be used as
little as possibleto make actual contact with them.
A contact visit before the actual interview aids in selecting partici-
pants and helps build a foundation for the interview relationship. A con-
tact visit can also convince an interviewer that a good interviewing rela-
tionship with a particular potential participant is not likely to develop.
The more care and thoroughness interviewers put into making contact,
the better foundation they establish for the interviewing relationship.
MAKE A CONTACT VISIT I N PERSON
Telephoning is often a necessary first step in making contact, but if
possible it should consist of only a brief introduction, an explanation of
how the interviewer gained access to the person's name, and a decision on
when to meet. Avoid asking the potential participant for a yes or no
answer about participating. An easy "yes" from someone who has not met
the interviewer or heard enough about the interviews can backfirelater. A
"no" that is a defense against too much initial pressure gets the interviewer
nowhere (see Richardson et al., 1965, p. 97). The major purpose of the
telephone contact is to set up a time when the interviewer and the poten-
tial participant can meet in person to discussthe study.
It takes time, money, and effort to arrange a separate contact visit
with individual potential participants or even a group, but they are almost
always well spent. The purpose of the contact visit is at least threefold.
The most important is to lay the groundwork for the mutual respect neces-
sary to the interview process. By taking the time to make a separate con-
tact visit to introduce him- or herself and the study, an interviewer is
saying implicitly to the potential participants, "You are important. I take
you seriously. I respect my work and you enough to want to make a
separate trip to meet with you to explain the project."
Although individual contact visits tend to be more effective, it is
possible alsoto meet with a group of potential participants. Group contact
visits save time and wear on the interviewer by allowing one explanation
of the study to several people at once. On the downside, one potential
participant's skepticism about participating can affect the attitude of oth-
ers in the group.
Clearly, interviewers will not always be able to make in-person con-
tact and will have to rely on the telephone. It will be interesting to see as
time progresses how electronic mail can be used to make initial contact
ACCESSING, CONTACTING, AND SELECTING PARTICIPANTS 41
and follow-up arrangements with some participants. Something about
the informality and directness of electronic mail and the ability of the
participant to deal with it when he or shewants seems to offer promise for
initiating and maintaining a connection with participants in an equitable
way. E-mail may seem less aggressive than the telephone and be more
timely than conventional mail.
Whether in person, on the telephone, or in an e-mail message, it is
important at this point to present the nature of the study in as broad a
context as possible and to be explicit about what will be expected of the
participant. Seriousness but friendliness of tone, purposefulness but flexi-
bility in approach, and opennessbut concisenessin presentation are char-
acteristicsthat can enhance a contact visit whether conducted in person or
on the phone. (For discussions of the importance of the first contact, see
Dexter, 1970, p. 34; Hyman et al., 1954, p. 201; Marshall & Rossman,
1989,p. 65.)
The contact visit allows the interviewer to become familiar with the
setting in which potential participants live or work before the interview
starts. It also allows interviewers to find their way to potential participants
so that they are better able to keep their interviewing appointments. In
addition to building mutual respect and explainingthe nature of the inter-
view study, a second important purpose of the contact visit is to determine
whether the potential participant is interested. In-depth interviewing asks
a great deal of both participant and interviewer. It is no trivial matter to
arrange three 90-minute interviews spaced as much as a week apart. It is
important that the potential participant understand the nature of the
study, how he or she fits into it, and the purpose of the three-interview
sequence.
The contact visit also initiates the process of informed consent, which
is necessary in some and desirable in almost all interviewing research. (See
Chapter 5.) Although I seldom show the informed consent form in the
contact visit, I go over orally all aspects of the study that the consent form
usually covers, so that when I do present it and ask the participant to sign
it, he or she will not be surprised by anything included on the form.
$
e BUILDING THE PARTICIPANT POOL
i
Another primary purpose of the contact visit is to assess the appropri-
ateness of a participant for the study. The major criterion for appropriate-
ness is whether the subject of the researcher's study is central to the partici-
pant's experience. For example, a doctoral candidate wanting to study the
way process writing affects an English teacher's experience in teaching

INTERVIEWINGAS QUALITATIVE RESEARCH
writing must select English teachers for whom process writing plays a
central role in their teaching.
As the interviewer speaks with potential participants, he or she can
keep a record of those who seem most suitable, noting their key character-
istics that are related to the subject of the study. Whether the interviewer
asks participants to join the study at somepoint in the contact visit or gets
back to them at a later date, he or she must remain aware of the character
of the growing participant pool in order to be purposeful in the sampling.
(Seesection on selectingparticipants later in this chapter.)
SOME LOGISTICALCONSIDERATIONS
The experience of scheduling a contact visit often reflects what trying
to schedulethe actual interview with the participant will be like. If one is
a reasonable process, the other is likely to be so too. If scheduling one
contact visit is unduly frustrating, the interviewer may do well to take
that into account in proceeding to build the participant pool.
Because of the time and energy required of both participants and
interviewers, every step the interviewer takes to ease the logistics of the
process is a step toward allowing the available energy to be focused on the
interview itself. To facilitate communication, confirmation of appoint-
ments, and follow-up after the interviews, it is important for interviewers
to develop a data base of their participants. They can use the contact visit
to begin to collect data.
A simple participant information form can be of considerable use
throughout the study. The form usually has two purposes: to facilitate
communication between the interviewer and the participants; and to re-
cord basic data about the participant that will inform the final choice of
participants and the reporting on the data later in the study. At minimum,
the form should include the participants' home and work addresses and
telephone numbers, the best time to be in touch with them, and the time
to avoid calling them. Paying attention to the details of communications
with participants from the beginning of the interview relationship can
help in avoiding the mishaps of missed or confused appointments that can
later plague an interview study.
The contact visit can also be used to determine the best times, places,
and dates to interview potential participants. These are crucial. The place
of the interview should be convenient to the participant, private, yet if at
all possible familiar to him or her. It should be one in which the partici-
pant feels comfortable and secure. A public place such as a cafeteria or a
coffee shop may seem convenient, but the noise, the lack of privacy, and
ACCESSING, CONTACTING, AND SELECTING PARTICIPANTS 43
the likelihood of the interview's becoming an event for others to comment
upon undermine the effectiveness of such places for interviews.
If it can be determined at the time of the contact visit that a person
would be an appropriate participant in the study, the interviewer can
schedule time and dates right then. The interviewer should try to let the
participant choose the hour, scheduling interviews within a time period
consistent with the purpose of the three-interview structure as described in
Chapter 2. As pointed out previously, because each interview is meant to
build on the preceding one, they are optimally spaced no more than a
week and no less than a day apart.
In considering the time, dates, and place of interviews the prevailing
principle must be equity. The participants are giving the interviewers
something they want. The interviewers must be flexible enough to accom-
modate the participants' choice of location, time, and date. On the other
hand, the interviewer also has constraints. Although equity necessitates
flexibility, interviewers must also learn to set up interviews in such a
way that they themselves are comfortable with the resulting schedule.
Resentment on the part of either participant or interviewer will not bode
well ultimately for the interviews.
After the contact visit, interviewers should write follow-up letters to
the participants they select and to those they do not. The letters are used
to thank the potential participants for meeting with the interviewers and,
in the case of those who are selected for the study and who agree to
participate, to confirm in writing the schedule of interview appointments.
Such detailed follow-up work in writing may seem onerous to the
prospective interviewer; however, equity requires such consideration. In
addition, this kind of step-by-step attention can have enormous practical
benefits to the interviewer. Few things are more frustrating in an inter-
view study than to drive a few hours to an appointment only to have the
participant not show up. Sometimes the no-show is the result of poor
communication. Sometimes it reflects a participant's lack of enthusiasm
for the process because he or she feels asked to give a great deal while
being offered very little consideration in return. In interviewing research,
paying attention to the details of access and contact before the interview-
ing begins is the best investment interviewers can make as they select their
participants and prepare to begin the interviews.
SELECTING PARTICIPANTS
Either during the contact process or shortly thereafter the researcher
takes the crucial step of selecting the people he or she will interview. The

44 INTERVIEWINGAS QUALITATIVE RESEARCH
purpose of an in-depth interview study is to understand the experience of
those who are interviewed, not to predict or to control that experience.
Because hypotheses are not being tested, the issue is not whether the re-
searcher can generalize the finding of an interview study to a broader
population. Instead the researcher's task is to present the experienceof the
people he or she interviews in compelling enough detail and in sufficient
depth that those who read the study can connect to that experience, learn
how it is constituted, and deepen their understanding of the issues it re-
flects. Because the basic assumptions underlying an interview study are
different from those of an experimental study, selecting participants is
approached differently.
"Only Connect"
The United States has more than 200,000 community college faculty.
In our study of the work of community college faculty (Seidman, 1985),
we could interview only 76 of them. The problem we faced was how to
select those 76 participants so that what we learned about their experience
would not be easily dismissed as idiosyncratic to them and irrelevant to a
larger population. In their influential essay on experimental and quasi-
experimental design, Campbell and Stanley (1963)call this the problem of
external validity.
A conventional way of defining the issue is to ask whether what is
learned from the interview sample can be generalized to the larger popula-
tion. One step toward assuring generalizability is to select a sample that is
representative of the larger population. The dominant approach to repre-
sentativenessin experimental and quasi-experimental studies has been the
random selection of participants. Theoretically, if a large enough sample
is selected randomly or through a stratified, randomized approach, the
resulting participant pool is not likely to be idiosyncratic.
In interview studies, however, it is not possible to employ random
sampling or even a stratified random-sampling approach. Randomness is
a statistical concept that depends on a very large number of participants.
True randomness would be prohibitive in an in-depth interview study.
Furthermore, interview participants must consent to be interviewed, so
there is always an element of self-selection in an interview study. Self-
selection and randomness are not compatible.
The job of an in-depth interviewer is to go to such depth in the
interviews that surface considerations of representativenessand generaliz-
ability are replaced by a compelling evocation of an individual's experi-
ence. When this experience can be captured in depth, then two possibili-
ties for making connections develop. They are the interview researcher's
ACCESSING, CONTACTING, AND SELECTING PARTICIPANTS 45
alternative to generalizability. (See Lincoln & Guba, 1985, for an exten-
sive discussion of the concept of generalization.) First, the researcher may
find connections among the experiences of the indiJriduals he or she inter-
views. Such links among people whose individual lives are quite different
but who are affected by common structural and social forces can help the
reader see patterns in that experience. Those connections the researcher
calls to the readers' attention for inspection and exploration.
Second, by presenting the stories of participants' experience, inter-
viewers open up for readers the possibility of connecting their own stories
to those presented in the study. In connecting, readers may not learn how
to control or predict the experience being studied or their own, but they
will understand better their complexities. They will appreciate more the
intricate ways in which individual lives interact with social and structural
forces and, perhaps, be more understanding and even humble in the face
of those intricacies. Understanding and humility are not bad stances from
which to try to effect improvement in education.
PurposefulSampling
How best to select participants who will facilitate the ability of others
to connect if random selection is not an option? The most commonly
agreed upon answer is purposeful sampling. (See Patton, 1989.) Patton's
discussion of purposeful-sampling techniques is very thoughtful. He sug-
gests several approaches, including "typical case," "extreme or deviant
case," "critical case," "sensitive case," "convenience" sampling, and "maxi-
mum variation" sampling (pp. 100-107).
Maximum variation sampling can refer to both sites and people
(Tagg, 1985). The range of people and sites from which the people are
selected should be fair to the larger population. This sampling technique
should allow the widest possibility for readers of the study to connect to
what they are reading. In my experience maximum variation ?ampling
provides the most effective basic strategy for selecting participants for
interview studies.
Consider, for example, a study in which the interviewer wants to
explore the experience of minority teachers in local teachers' unions in
urban school districts in Massachusetts (Galvan, 1990). Using the maxi-
mum variation approach, the researcher would analyze the potential pop-
ulation to assess the maximum range of sites and people that constitute the
population.
First she would have to define what she meant by the term urban.
Then she would have to determine the range of school systems in Massa-
chusettsthat fall within her definition. Within the systemsshe would have

INTERVIEWINGAS QUALITATIVE RESEARCH
to decide whether she was interested in the experience of all minority
teachers, those in grades K-12, or just those in some particular gradelevel.
In Massachusetts, local teachers' unions are usually affiliatedwith either
the National Education Association or the American Federationof Teachers.
Shewould have to decide whether she was interested in studying the experi-
ence of minority teachers affiliated with both unions or with just one.
After considering the range of sites, she would then have to consider
the range of peoplewho are minority teachers and belong to local teachers'
unions. She would have to determine the relative number of male and
female minority teachers, the range of ethnic groups represented, the
range of subject matter they teach, their levels of teaching, and the age
and experienceof teachers represented in the larger population.
The above characteristics are illustrative but not exhaustive of the
range of variations present in the population whose experience this re-
searcher might want to try to understand. If the range became unmanage-
able, the researcher would want to limit the study, looking at, for exam-
ple. the experience of one minority group in a number of locals or the
experienceof the full range of minority members in one or two locals. The
goal would remain to sample purposely the widest variation of sites and
people within the limits of the study.
In addition to selectingparticipants who reflect the wide range in the
larger population under study, another useful approach is to select some
participants who are outside that range and may in some sense be consid-
ered negative cases (Lincoln & Guba, 1985). In the study discussed above
about what it is like for a minority teacher to be a member of a teachers'
union, it would also be useful to include some nonminority teachers who
are also members of the local. If the researcher discovers through inter-
views that nonminority and minority teachers are having similar experi-
ences, then the researcher will know that some issues may not be a matter
of ethnicity or majority-minority status.
As another example, Schatzkamer (1986) was interested in studying
the experience of older women returning to community colleges. She also
decided to interview some older men who were returning to college to see
in what ways their experience connected to that of the women in her
sample. Selecting participants to interview who are outside the range of
those at the center of the study is an effectiveway for interviewersto check
themselves against drawing easy conclusions from their research.
SNARES TO AVOID I N THE SELECTION PROCESS
ACCESSING, CONTACTING, AND SELECTING PARTICIPANTS 47
person to participate in an interview she or he would rather not do. In the
face of initial reluctance, interviewers may go to great lengths to exercise
persuasion only to find later the interview itself to be an ongoing struggle
(Richardson et al., 1965). The interviewer must strike a balance between
too easily accepting a quick expression of disinterest from a potential par-
ticipant and too ardently trying to persuade a reluctant one that she or he
really is not disinclined to participate.
Another snare is the potential participant who is too eager to be
interviewed. During the contact visit an interviewer can ascertain whether
the person has some ax to grind. In a contact visit Sullivan and I made to
one community college, we learned that the college had just dismissed its
president. The school was divided into factions: those who had worked for
the president's dismissal and those who had not. Some of the faculty we
contacted were very reluctant to get involved in an interview. Others
were too eager. The purpose of our study was understanding the work of
community college faculty. Although it is true that academicpolitics are a
part of that work, in this particular casethe partisan politics of the campus
threatened to load our study with interview participants inclined to be
more like informers (Dean & Whyte, 1958; Lincoln & Guba, 1985; Rich-
ardson et al., 1965).
On occasion during a contact visit, someone would tell us we must
interview a colleague who won an award and would be wonderful to talk
to. Our instinct was always to avoid such "stars." The method of in-depth
interviewing elicits people's stories in a way that shows each person to be
interesting no matter how anonymous.
HOW MANY PARTICIPANTSARE ENOUGH?
New interviewers frequently ask how many participants they must
have in their study. Some researchers argue for an emerging research
design in which the number of participants in a study is not established
ahead of time. New participants are added as new dimensions of the
issuesbecome apparent through earlier interviews (Lincoln & Guba, 1985;
Rubin & Rubin, 1995). Other researchers discuss a "snowballing" ap-
proach to selectingparticipants, in which one participant leads to another
(Bertaux, 1981). But even if researchers use a purposeful sampling tech-
nique designed to gain maximum variation and then add to their sample
through a snowballing process, they must know when they have inter-
viewed enough participants.
two criteria for enough. The first is sufficiency. Are there
range of participants and sites that make
outside the sample might have a chance

INTERVIEWINGAS QUALITATIVE RESEARCH
to connect to the experiences of those in it? In Our community college
study, we had to have enough participants to reflect vocational and liberal
a& faculty, men, women, and minorities, and age and experience ranges.
We alsoconsidered faculty with advanced degrees and without degrees. In
addition, we were reluctant to interview only one person in any particular
category.
The other criterion is saturation of information. A number of writers
(Douglas, 1976; Glaser & Strauss, 1967; Lincoln & Guba, 1985; Rubin &
Rubin, 1995) discuss a point in a study at which the interviewer begins to
hear the same information reported. He or she is no longer learning any-
thing new. Douglas (1985) is even bold enough to attempt to assess when
that began to happen in his studies. If he had to pick a number, he said, it
would be 25 participants.
I would be reluctant to establish such a number. "Enough is an
interactive reflection of every step of the interview process and different
for each study and each researcher. The criteria of sufficiency and satura-
tion are useful, but practical exigencies of time, money, and other re-
sources alsoplay a role, especiallyin doctoral research. On the other hand,
if I were to err, I would err on the side of more rather than less. I have
seen some graduate students struggle to make sense of data that are just
too thin because they did not interview enough participants. Interviewing
fewer participants may savetime earlier in the study, but may add compli-
cations and frustration at the point of working with, analyzing, and inter-
preting the interview data.
The method of in-depth, phenomenological interviewing applied to a
sample of participants who all experience similar structural and social
conditions gives enormous power to the stories of a relatively few partici-
pants. Researchers can figure out ahead of time the range of sites and
people that they would like to sample and set a goal for a certain number
of participants in the study. At some point, however, the interviewer may
recognize that he or she is not learning anything decidedly new and that
the process of interviewing itself is becoming laborious rather than plea-
surable (Bertaux, 1981).That is a time to say "enough."
First-time interviewers tend to be hesitant about securing their partici-
pants' informed, written consent to be interviewed. Some interviewers
worry that telling people what they are studying will skew the results of
their study. They also tend to minimize participants' sense of risk at being
involved in an interview. The interviewers have no doubt about their own
good intentions, but they do not anticipate the type of material that can
be generated in an in-depth interview.
In-depth interviews, however, ask participants to reconstruct their
life history as it relates to the subject of inquiry. In the process, a measure
of intimacy can develop between interviewers and participants that leads
the participants to share aspects of their lives that, if misused, could leave
them extremely vulnerable. Participants have the right to be protected
against such vulnerability (Kelman, 1977). Furthermore, interviewers can
protect themselves against misunderstanding through the process of seek-
ing informed consent, which requires them to be explicit about the range
and purpose of their study in a way that makes them be clear about what
they are doing. Finally, given the extensiveness of the interview process
and the method of following up on what the participants have to say (see
Chapter 6), providing people ahead of time with as much information as
possible about each aspect of the study is not likely to skew the results of
4?hhours of interviewing.
The relatively recent impetus toward protecting rights of research
participants stems from the reaction to the disregard for human dignity
perpetrated during World War I1 by researchers in concentration camps
controlled by Nazi Germany. The Nuremburg trials resulted in the Nurem-
berg Code adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1946,
which stated that "the voluntary consent of the human subject is abso-
lutely essential" (Reynolds, 1979, p. 436).