The Science and Art of Interviewing

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathleen Gerson ◽  
Sarah Damaske
Keyword(s):  
Social Research ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Research Process ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Science And Art ◽  
The Social ◽  
Interview Guide ◽  
Hidden Patterns ◽  
User Friendly ◽  
Depth Interviews

Qualitative interviewing is one of the most widely used methods in social research, but it is arguably the least well understood. To address that gap, this book offers a theoretically rigorous, empirically rich, and user-friendly set of strategies for conceiving and conducting interview-based research. Much more than a how-to manual, the book shows why depth interviewing is an indispensable method for discovering and explaining the social world—shedding light on the hidden patterns and dynamics that take place within institutions, social contexts, relationships, and individual experiences. It offers a step-by-step guide through every stage in the research process, from initially formulating a question to developing arguments and presenting the results. To do this, the book shows how to develop a research question, decide on and find an appropriate sample, construct an interview guide, conduct probing and theoretically focused interviews, and systematically analyze the complex material that depth interviews provide—all in the service of finding and presenting important new empirical discoveries and theoretical insights. The book also lays out the ever-present but rarely discussed challenges that interviewers routinely encounter and then presents grounded, thoughtful ways to respond to them. By addressing the most heated debates about the scientific status of qualitative methods, the book demonstrates how depth interviewing makes unique and essential contributions to the research enterprise. With an emphasis on the integral relationship between carefully crafted research and theory building, the book offers a compelling vision for what the “interviewing imagination” can and should be.

Depth Interviewing as Science and Art

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-29
Author(s):  
Kathleen Gerson
Keyword(s):  
Social Contexts ◽  
Systematic Analysis ◽  
Life Trajectories ◽  
Science And Art ◽  
The Social ◽  
Other Information ◽  
Original Question ◽  
Depth Interviews

Chapter 1 outlines the key principles that guide interview-based research and highlights the unique contributions this can yield. Conducting depth interviews places each participant’s voice at the heart of the study, giving participants an opportunity to tell their stories in their own words and to think more deeply about their experiences than is usually possible with other methods. Through careful questioning, concentrated listening, and focused follow-up probing, interviewers invite further exploration that encourages people to share their life experiences, describe the social contexts surrounding these experiences, and consider their personal reactions to them, including the meaning they attribute to life events and the accounts, motivations, and actions these events engender. Then, through systematic analysis of how each piece of information stands in relationship to the other information offered by that participant and all the others, it becomes possible to chart the dynamic processes that shape life trajectories and link individual actions to larger social structures. This enables interviewers to address their original question(s) and any new ones that emerge to discover empirical patterns and develop theoretical insights.

scholarly journals [Application of Integrative Approaches in Current Islamic Law Studies: Gender Issue Analysis] Aplikasi Pendekatan Integratif dalam Kajian Hukum Islam Semasa: Analisis Isu Gender

2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-86
Author(s):  
Mohd Anuar Ramli ◽  
Ahmad Badri Abdullah ◽  
Muhammad Ikhlas Rosele
Keyword(s):  
Research Methods ◽  
Islamic Law ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Research Process ◽  
Integrative Approach ◽  
Gender Analysis ◽  
Analysis Method ◽  
Analysis Model ◽  
The Social ◽  
Islamic Jurisprudence

Islamic jurisprudence is a dynamic system. It is facilitated by some flexible methodologies. Nowadays, there are varieties of issues in Muslims’ societies that are results or implications of developments in science and technology, and also results of changes that happen in the structures of the societies. In order to face these realities, a contemporary integrative approach has to be applied in Islamic Law's research process. In accordance to this, this paper will elaborate the integrative approaches that try to unify and integrate theories in Islamic jurisprudence with social research methods. Basically, there are models that have been introduced by several Islamic thinkers that related to this integrative approach. For example the Islamization of sociology based on maslahah model, the Islamic Jurisprudence sociology model, the unified approach to textual and contextual analysis model. All of these models contain their own strength and weakness in their integrative approaches. This paper is trying to introduce an approach that integrates Islamic jurisprudence theories with the gender analysis method that is among social critics methods. This introduced method is to be used to analyze an issue in fiqh pertaining to polygamy that is always been debated nowadays and also to analyze the applicability of the practice in the social and contemporary conditions of our country. According to this research, social research methods are able to support Islamic jurisprudence in order to improve its research process and its results. Keywords: integrative approach, Islamic jurisprudence, social science, gender analysis, polygamy   Hukum Islam merupakan satu sistem dinamik yang dibangunkan berasaskan metodologi yang bersifat anjal. Pada hari ini, wujudnya pelbagai isu yang melanda masyarakat umat Islam kesan daripada perkembangan sains dan teknologi serta perubahan sosial yang berlaku dalam struktur masyarakat. Dalam usaha untuk berdepan dengan realiti ini, pendekatan integratif yang bersifat kontemporari perlu digunakan dalam proses penyelidikan hukum Islam. Justeru, artikel ini akan menjelaskan pendekatan integratif yang cuba menyatukan dan mengintegrasikan teori hukum Islam dengan kaedah penyelidikan sosial. Pada asasnya, terdapat model yang telah diperkenalkan oleh beberapa pemikir Islam berkaitan dengan pendekatan integratif ini. Sebagai contoh Islamisasi ilmu sosiologi berdasarkan model maslahah, model model sosiologi hukum Islam, model pendekatan bersepadu dalam analisis tekstual dan kontekstual. Semua model ini mengandungi kekuatan dan kelemahan dalam pendekatan integratif yang tersendiri. Lantaran itu, kajian ini cuba memperkenalkan satu pendekatan yang mengintegrasikan teori hukum Islam dengan kaedah analisis gender yang merupakan salah satu metodologi kritik sosial. Kaedah ini diperkenalkan untuk digunakan dalam menganalisis isu fiqh berkaitan poligami yang sentiasa menjadi perbahasan pada masa kini serta melihat kesesuaiannya dalam konteks sosial dan kemodenan negara ini. Kajian mendapati, kaedah penyelidikan sosial dapat menyokong kajian hukum Islam dalam usaha meningkatkan kualiti proses penyelidikan dan hasil dapatannya.   Kata kunci: Pendekatan integratif; hukum Islam; sains sosial; analisis gender; poligami

Missionary Zeal and the Scholarly Stance: Policy and Commitment in Research on Old Age

1989 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 105-121 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gilbert Smith
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Model ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Old Age ◽  
Policy Process ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Research Process ◽  
Potential Contribution ◽  
Missionary Zeal ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Relationship

ABSTRACTThere is a danger that the ‘missionary zeal’ exhibited by some social gerontologists in the interests of those members of society who are older than others, may endanger the subject's ‘scholarly stance’ and the potential contribution to social policy of research on old age. This paper discusses four facets of the matter: (1) the anticipated values underpinning policies of state welfare (2) personal feelings and values in the business of research (3) values and the kind of data we value and (4) the question of whose side we are on. The paper concludes with a theoretical model of the relationship between the social policy process and the social research process as framework for understanding exactly how values about ageing impact both research about ageing and the relationship between that research and relevant social policies.

scholarly journals Data Collection Challenges and Recommendations for Early Career Researchers

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marylen Rimando ◽  
Andrea Brace ◽  
Apophia Namageyo-Funa ◽  
Tiffany Parr ◽  
Diadrey-Anne Sealy ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Data Collection ◽  
Doctoral Students ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Research Process ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Early Career ◽  
Early Career Researchers ◽  
Research Mentoring ◽  
Data Collection Process ◽  
The Social

Data collection is critical to the social research process. When implemented correctly, data collection enhances the quality of a social research study. However, doctoral students and early career researchers may encounter challenges with data collection. This article reports on the data collection challenges in dissertation research encountered by doctoral students enrolled in a public health program at a southeastern United States urban university. Each doctoral student shared at least one challenge and how it affected the data collection process. Additionally, the doctoral students shared how the identified challenges were addressed or suggested recommendations. Understanding these experiences of doctoral students is helpful for doctoral students and early career researchers conducting social research. The lessons learned may guide faculty in research mentoring and structuring research seminars for doctoral students.

Hypermedia and Ethnography: Reflections on the Construction of a Research Approach

1998 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bella Dicks ◽  
Bruce Mason
Keyword(s):  
Social Research ◽  
Research Process ◽  
Research Approach ◽  
Sequential Data ◽  
Ongoing Research ◽  
The Social ◽  
Data Organisation ◽  
Hypermedia Authoring ◽  
Object Of Study ◽  
Recent Attention

Current interest in ethnography within social research has focused on its potential to offer insights into the complexity of the social world. There have increasingly been calls for ethnography to reflect this complexity more adequately. Two aspects of ethnographic enquiry have been particularly singled out as areas in need of redefinition: the delineation of ethnography's object of study and its mode of presentation. Both of these areas are implicated in the recent attention to the possibilities of hypermedia authoring for ethnography. The paper offers a discussion of this potential in the light of an ongoing research project with which the authors are engaged. The project is designed to enable this potential to be assessed, and to provide for the construction of what the authors call an ethnographic hypermedia environment (EHE). We believe that the promise of hypermedia lies not only in its facility for non-sequential data organisation, but also in its ability to integrate data in different media. The synthesis of the visual, aural, verbal and pictorial planes of meaning holds considerable promise for the expansion and deepening of ethnographic knowledge. Consequently, we suggest that hypermedia has implications for all stages of the research process, and argue against the current tendency to see it as merely a tool either for analysis or for presentation. These arguments are illustrated by means of a commentary on some work in progress.

scholarly journals Researcher-Led Development of E-Research in the Social Sciences: The Case of an E-Social Science Pilot Demonstrator Project

2010 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 42-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bridgette Wessels ◽  
Max Craglia
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Social Exclusion ◽  
Information And Communication Technologies ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Research Process ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Research Management ◽  
Geographical Variations ◽  
The Social

The introduction and use of information and communication technologies (ICT) in the process of research is extending beyond research management into research practice itself. This extension of the use of ICT in research is being termed as e-research. The characteristics of e-research are seen as the combination of three interrelated strands, which are: the increased computerization of the research process; research organized more predominantly in the form of distributed networks of researchers, and a strong emphasis on visualization. E-research has become established in the natural sciences but the development of e-research in relation to social sciences is variable and less pervasive. The richness of the social sciences and their variety of practices and engagement in diverse fields of study mean that e-research as utilized in the natural sciences cannot be easily migrated into the social sciences. This paper explores the development of e-research for the social sciences. The paper is based on an ESRC funded e-social science demonstrator project in which social scientists sought to shape the use of Grid ICT technologies in the research process. The project is called: ‘Collaborative Analysis of Offenders’ Personal and Area-based Social Exclusion’: it addresses social exclusion in relation to how individual and neighbourhood effects account for geographical variations of crime patterns and explores the opportunities and challenges offered by e-research to address the research problem. The paper suggests that if e-research is driven from the needs of social research then it can enhance the practice of social science.

scholarly journals Stir: Poetic field works from the Distant Voices project

2020 ◽  
pp. 174165902097099
Author(s):  
Phil Crockett Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Social Research ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Research Process ◽  
Research Associate ◽  
The Social ◽  
Poetic Practice ◽  
Field Works ◽  
Found Poetry ◽  
The University ◽  
Authorial Voice

In this brief research note I discuss and share from, Stir (2020): a collection of poems that were written while I was the research associate on the Distant Voices project based at the University of Glasgow (2017–2021). These poems reflect on my experience of doing ethnographic research in carceral spaces, and are written from the perspective of an outsider with a pass that allowed access for a limited time only. The collection is open access and available to read online. The note situates my project within the context of poetic practice in the social sciences. Inspired primarily by feminist scholarship, I also draw on actor-network theory to describe my research process as one of ‘translation’. The note also touches on historical anxieties about the legitimacy of the approach and the sociological preference for ‘found poetry’. I reflect on some ethical and creative questions that arose for me in writing poetry as social research, including representing research participants, use of pronouns and authorial voice, and emotions and research. I also discuss the affordances of working creatively with ethnographic materials, and the role of poetry in pursuing social change.

“Role Theory,” Political Science, and African Studies

1980 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 311-330 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alvin Magid
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Role Conflict ◽  
Role Theory ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Unified Theory ◽  
Process Of Change ◽  
The Social ◽  
Wide Range

Numerous studies of role, employing diverse methodologies in a wide range of social contexts, have accumulated in the social sciences over many decades. The concept of role retains considerable appeal for some who still pursue the goal of a unified theory of behavior for the social sciences, and for many others who discern in the role perspective a major source of concepts and insights on which they may draw eclectically for all manner of social research. Since the 1950s, and especially during the current decade, political scientists have produced studies of role and of role conflict focusing on political and administrative actors caught up in the process of change in various independent African states. Because die number and diversity of these studies are likely to increase in the future, they merit description and evaluation as a group. Both objectives are pursued in this article, with particular reference to three works on politics and administration in Ghana, Sierra Leone, and Tanzania.

Qualitative Research in the Field of Popular Education

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alfonso Torres Carrillo
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Qualitative Methodology ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Popular Education ◽  
Research Process ◽  
Critical Distance ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Research Strategies

Popular Education (PE) is an educational movement and pedagogical current that emerged in Latin America in the seventies. It was a result of Paulo Freire’s pedagogical proposals in a context of radicalization of popular struggle and cultural and intellectual movements. During the past five decades, hundreds of groups, practices and projects have identified themselves as part of the PE movement. As a pedagogical current, PE is understood as an educational perspective and practice, which is critical of institutionalized education and identifies with emancipatory political perspectives. Its purpose is to help populations that experience oppression or discrimination to strengthen their capacity to change their conditions, relationships, practices and ways of thinking and feeling by means of cultural, educational, dialogical, participatory, interactive and expressive practices. With respect to the history of PE in Latin America, its social contexts and educational practices, four stages can be identified: 1. The liberating pedagogy of Paulo Freire at the end of the sixties. 2. The foundational stage PE in the seventies. 3. The re-foundation and expansion of the PE in the eighties and nineties. 4. The reactivation of the EP in the current context. During these periods, a constant interest in PE has been producing knowledge from and about its contexts, themes and practices. From its origins, it has created and incorporated qualitative research strategies in coherence with its political and epistemological options. As evidenced in each historical phase of the PE, the use of a qualitative methodology predominated: thematic research in Freire’s pedagogical proposal; participatory action research (PAR) in its foundational stage; collective reconstruction of the history and critical ethnography in its expansion phase; systematization of practices since the 1990s; and the emergence of innovative and aesthetic strategies at the present century. A set of methodological principles derive from this historical path of qualitative research in PE: 1. Maintaining a critical distance from institutionalized research modes in the scientific world, acknowledging their subordination to hegemonic powers. 2. Assuming PE to be both critical and emancipatory. This option is identified with values, willpower, and projects that involve new meanings of the organization of collective life. 3. Recognizing the place of the cultural and the intersubjective, both in social phenomena and in social research processes. 4. Linking it to emancipatory organizational processes and collective actions. 5. Not subordinating it to the institutional logic of disciplinary research. 6. Promoting group and organization participation in research process decisions. 7. Ensuring that it promotes formation of knowledge collectives. 8. Maintaining a critical and creative use of the theory. 9. Recognizing the plurality of subjects and promoting a “dialogue of knowledge.” 10. Incorporating diverse cultural practices within communities in order to produce and communicate their knowledge. 11. Assuming methodology to be a flexible practice. 12. Assuming research within PE is a permanent practice of critical reflection.

Narratives of the Night: The Use of Audio Diaries in Researching Sleep

2005 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 13-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jenny Hislop ◽  
Sara Arber ◽  
Rob Meadows ◽  
Sue Venn
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Narrative Structure ◽  
Social Aspects ◽  
Gender Inequalities ◽  
The Social ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Private Domain ◽  
Depth Interviews

This article draws on data from two major empirical studies of sleep to examine the use of audio diaries as an approach to researching sleep. Sleep has only recently emerged as a topic of interest to the sociologist, providing a valuable resource through which to examine the roles and relationships and gender inequalities which underpin everyday life. Yet accessing individual experiences of sleep is problematic. Considered a non-conscious activity, sleep takes place in most cases at night within the private domain of the home and is thus generally inaccessible to the social researcher and outside the conscious reality of the sleeper. In exploring the social aspects of sleep, we rely primarily on respondents’ interpretations of the sleep period given retrospectively in focus groups and in-depth interviews, distanced from the temporal, spatial and relational dimensions of the sleep event. This article also focuses on the use of audio diaries as a method designed to help bridge the gap between events in real time and retrospective accounts. We examine the narrative structure of audio diaries, discuss the principles and practice of using audio diaries in sleep research, illustrate the contribution of audio diary narratives to an understanding of the social context of sleep, and assess the use of audio diaries in social research. We conclude that, used in conjunction with other methods, audio diaries are an effective method of data collection, particularly for understanding experiences of intimate aspects of everyday life.

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