Episode 30: Episode 30. Tricks, Tips, and Stories in Qualitative Interviewing

Qualitative Conversations

In this episode, Amy Stich interviews Kathy Roulston on interviewing in qualitative research. This conversation is great for both beginners and advanced researchers. The following is a transcript of the conversation.
Amy Stich 0:11
Hello, everyone. Welcome to qualitative conversations Podcast Series hosted by the qualitative research special interest group of the American Educational Research Association. I'm Amy Stich and associate professor at the McBee institute of higher education at the University of Georgia and affiliated faculty with the qualitative research program here at UGA as well. I also currently serve as the CO-editor of the six newsletter with one of our students here at the Institute Erin Leach as a guest host today I'll be interviewing Dr. Kathy Roulston on interviewing. Dr. Roulston is a professor in the qualitative research program at the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia. Her research interests include qualitative research methods, specifically qualitative interviewing and analysis of talk in interaction. Her most recent books include interviewing a guide to theory and practice. That's published with sage just coming out in 2022. And Exploring the Archives A Beginner's Guide for Qualitative Researchers co authored with Kathleen de Morais, and published by Myers education press. Outside work Kathy enjoys working with fiber and textiles, and exploring the creative pleasure of spinning hand dyeing and weaving. Dr. Roulston thanks so much for joining us to discuss a topic that all of our qualitative listeners will very likely know at least a little something about an interviewing may even be something that some of our more experienced listeners may at times take for granted as an all too familiar tool for data collection, rather than a method that provokes very meaningful, often critical methodological questions that I know you're going to talk about today. So why don't we just start by you telling us a little bit about your scholarly interests and interviewing and how you got started?
Kathy Roulston 1:57
Thank you, Amy, for that lovely introduction. So I first became interested in the methodological aspects of interviewing when I was doing my doctoral studies at the University of Queensland in the 1990s. I had conducted quite a few qualitative interviews prior to that as part of my master's degree in the early 90s. But when I did those interviews, I really saw them as a transparent means for gaining information about the world. So when I was doing my doctoral studies, I was learning about ethno methodological approaches to analysis from Dr. Carolyn Baker. And I took a very puzzling excerpt from an interview that I had conducted in my earlier study, and I reanalyzed it. And then this analysis helped me to get a better understanding of the performance of work that goes into the construction of interview data, in the ways that interviewers and interviewees produce interview data together, and then also how, as a researcher, it's possible to cut and categorize the interview transcripts in a way that can generate findings that can actually distort the ways in which the talk was produced. So I think there's quite a lot of writing about that now. But Dorothy Smith wrote an article back in the early 70s, called theorizing as etiology. And I used that to think about how coding based approaches to data analysis can hide how researchers contribute to the generation of interview accounts. And, of course, I've done methodological work on research interviews since that time, and I still am very intrigued by how research interviews get done.
Amy Stich 3:54
It's so interesting. And that's a really lovely transition into some of those deeper methodological or substantive questions surrounding interviewing. Can you talk to us about some of the recent developments in interviewing?
Kathy Roulston 4:08
Yeah, thanks. Thank you, Amy. So, over the last couple of years, I've been trying to keep up with new developments in interviewing. And I have to say there's an incredible range of innovations that qualitative researchers can use to inform their work. If you look at the methodological literature, interviewing history of any interviewing historically, you'll find that some of the strategies that are now being frequently used by researchers are not actually new. But I think what really surprised me when I started to look at the methodology, methodological literature is that in the last 10 years, there's just been an enormous amount of publishing in this area. So I kind of think about this in several different ways. So there's methodological work that is looks at particular approaches to conducting interviews, there's writing that talks about working with particular populations. And then there's work in which scholars are using new theories, to re theorize what it means to do into an interview and what interview data are. And then researchers are also taking out all of the new modalities that we use in everyday life to conduct interviews that differ from, I guess, early ideas of a research interview as a formal place based and in person interview. If you'd like I could talk a little bit in more detail about those four different strands.
Amy Stich 5:44
That would be great. If you don't mind. Yes, please.
Kathy Roulston 5:47
Sure. Well, in terms of how researchers approach interviewing, I think you'll see a lot more writing on how researchers who use interviews can account for sensory awareness. Now, the most familiar approach would be the use of visual methods. But people are also using sound, smell, taste, touch, and so forth. And then there's also a range of writing that examines materiality as it emerges in interviews. People bring objects to interviews that are used as prompts to talk about research topics. Sometimes the researchers bring those sometimes the participants bring those. And then researchers have looked at how technologies such as recording devices show up within interview talk, how people orient to those and what that means in an interview. And then, of course, we're quite familiar, I think now with the use of images in work, whether that's moving images, use of videos that people orient to, or still images, and then sometimes the researchers can bring those images to the interview, or they might engage participants in generating or bringing their own images. Now, there's also writing on various forms of graphic elicitation. Researchers can ask participants to draw diagrams or timelines, and then they talk about those within the interviews. And you'll see work where researchers attending to place in space in interviews. And then they might do this through go-alongs, in which interviews go along with their participants in cars or public transport. And then, of course, in walking interviews. Now, as I mentioned earlier, ethnographers have used these kinds of interviews for very long time, things like walking interviews, but I think what is different now is researchers do not necessarily find their work as ethnography. And then you'll see researchers using new technologies, such as global positioning systems, in conjunction with those mobile methods, and also creating maps in relation to walking interviews and mobile methods. And that they you'll see these in articles. Now, as a second strand of writing, you'll see a lot more attention now to culturally relevant approaches to research. And obviously, that's probably long overdue. Researchers will find lots of guidance about how to work with specific populations. And I'll just mention a couple here. So how to interview children around play based approaches. So you can see work where researchers using toys or puppets, you'll see research interviews used in inclusive ways with people with disabilities, and the various solicitation advice, or elicitation devices people use. There's work on use of American Sign Language with the deaf community. And then of course, there's much work on how to work with people from other cultures. And I think some of this work does use participatory approaches, where the participants participants themselves are key stakeholders in the development of the research topics, they might serve as co researchers or even peer interviewers. So the peer, the participants are co participants with the researchers and they might act as interviewers with other people. And then, of course, because researchers are increasingly conducting research in countries other than where they might present their work, you'll see a lot of research that's methodological to do with interviews on translation, interpretation, and what that means for issues of data analysis, the ethics and representation. And then, of course, there's more writing on how to conduct interviews with elite populations or how to recruit those for interviews and so forth. But I think if you look at the methodological literature that's been published probably over the last 75 years, I think probably almost any population can emerge a special in some way. So if what ever group you are choosing to conduct interviews with, it's just well worth looking at what methodological literature you might locate that can support your work. And I encourage listeners to think about that. And now moving on to theorizations of interviewing, there's a good deal of writing that draws on concepts from post structural and new materialist writing, and it reconceptualize as what interviews are and how we might think about them, and some of this critical of interview research as well. Although there's loads of critiques you could find that have gone on for decades about interviewing. So researchers have used concepts from Deleuze and Guattari book 1000 plateaus, such as the assemblage the fall the rhizome to rethink interviews and interview data. And then you also see ideas such as diffraction and interaction from scholars such as Karen Berard and cartographies, from Rosie Bradotti, applied to thinking about interviews. And then I guess, just to finish off, talking about some of the strands of literature on qualitative interviewing, there's a host of work which looks at the modalities in which interviews are conducted. And of course, because we've all been living through the COVID pandemic that started in 2020, I think probably all of us have turned to online interviews as a way to continue our research during the pandemic. But I think we also need to recognize that researchers have always made use of new technologies to conduct interviews. So when recording devices first became popular in the 1930s, audio cassette recorders for those of us who were interviewing a couple of decades ago, and telephones, and mobile telephones. And then of course, moving into the 2000s, we have digital recording devices. And then, of course, what we're doing right now, which is an audio recorded interview over the internet. And I actually I've seen some researchers from folklore studies, use podcasting software to record internet interviews. So if you're not interested, there's actually some pretty cool tools out there. But I think we'll see now use of synchronous online meeting rooms such as zoom, which we all know about, to interview people across physical distance. But you'll also see researchers making use of asynchronous tools. And of course, we've had email for a very long time. But these taxpayer base tools such as WhatsApp, and I used for both individual and group interviews. And then just to wrap up some of the methodological issues. I think what I've really noticed in the last year or two is the rapid replacement of manual transcription of interviews. So for example, you might be familiar with Express Scribe or ink scribe, which were tools to help us with manual transcription. But now these are really been taken over by voice to text software. Now, voice to text software has also been around for a few decades. But it's never been entirely taken up because it wasn't that accurate. But now that artificial intelligence has been applied to the voice to text software, the accuracy is probably over 90%. And so I think you'll see people using tools such as Otter.AI or [...]. But I think it's always advisable to double check any kind of transcription. So that whether you use a transcriber, whether you transcribe these manually, or you use a voice to text program, I think it's just good practice to listen to the audio recordings, check the transcriptions and just ensure that what you've put in your transcript is accurate.
Amy Stich 14:32
Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, despite having a vast array of these technological advancements that assist us throughout the research process. I don't know that anything will ever really replace the need for us to deeply engage with our data and meaningful sustained ways that of course result in more meaningful interpretation. You know, in other words, I don't know that technology were will ever necessarily replace the qualitative researcher, but that's probably a topic for another podcast. So now despite having all sorts of advancements in the field, can you talk about some of the persistent challenges that qualitative researchers face and learning to interview?
Kathy Roulston 15:13
So I think teaching qualitative research, interviewing for about 20 years now, and I've also done some research on that. And I've got a project going on right now to do with that. And I also recognize that some scholars argue that you don't need to teach interviewing. And that's because as interviewers, and speakers, we use our ordinary language skills to conduct interviews. And I agree that that's what we do. We use our ordinary language skills when we ask questions about our participants. But I think one of the challenges for novice researchers is not that they don't know how to ask questions and conduct interviews, we are surrounded by interviews every day, we listen to them all the time, we see them on television, and so forth. I think the challenge is learning to become a really good listener, and thinking about what to say next. And so when I look at transcripts, I find that novice interviewers are challenged to listen well. And that's because sometimes they're thinking about the next question to ask. And I know this, because I asked them to reflect and that's what they say in reflections that was really hard for me to listen, because I was I didn't know what I was going to say next. So what happens is a couple of different issues, things can happen. So the interviewer can fail to unpack what an interviewee has said, by not asking any follow up questions. So rather than asking a follow up question on what's just been said, they move directly to the next question, without regard to whether an interviewee has fully explained the topic. And what happens then if you just move to the next question on the interview guide is your interview ends up being really short? Right? So we know from narrative inquiry and narrative research that people very frequently give the abstracts of the story first. So they tell you the short story. And then as an interviewer, it's up to you to ask thoughtful follow up questions to get more detail about an interview is meaning making now. And a related problem for novice interviewers is when they do try to ask follow up questions, they can come out as long convoluted and MultiPad questions, they might ask five or six questions, because thinking on the spot of what to say next. So what's interesting, when I've looked at how people answer those kinds of questions, is they do a pretty good job of handling these enormously complicated questions. So I think, though, that sometimes interviewees interviewers rather, they don't need to do that much work. There's ways to ask their follow up questions, just one at a time. And then that actually, I think might help when it comes to data analysis. Because if an answer has been in response to a multi part question, the analyst has to go through a good deal of analysis to think through, in what ways their question has been answered. Right. So I think, another issue, and I think this, potentially is related to the fact that we all are very familiar with interviews as a genre. But sometimes I find that novice interviewers are really challenged to recognize the implications of their own actions as interviewers. And I think it's important for every one of us weather where we've done a lot of interviews or a few interviews, we just need to be really aware of what we say, and then what happens next as a result. So I think some new researchers come to qualitative researcher thinking that they can be neutral and not impact what gets said. But it's been well known for decades that it's not really possible to not impact what gets said. So even researchers who use standardized survey interviews, find it very difficult to avoid engaging with interviewees because interviewees ask questions of them as they go along. So I guess my point is, even if you follow In a script, it's just very difficult to follow that when it comes to actual real life interaction. So when qualitative researchers are asking questions in open ended or semi structured interviews, whatever they do is going to enact what gets said next. And that even includes whether you say nothing. So even if there's a silence, so for example, if you were to ask a question, you open a slot for the interviewee to say something. And if you pause long enough, the interviewee will do something. And the next turn actually might be asking a question as to what it is that you want to know. But yes, so whatever interviewers do does impact what goes on. And I think each of us needs to recognize whatever it is that we do, and how that impacts what gets done. And think about our own, I guess, natural language skills and how we speak to one another and listen to one another.
Amy Stich 21:13
Right, excellent points. And again, a really nice transition into my next question about the interviewer or the person and some of the qualities that might make for a quote unquote, good interviewer. So Dr. Roulston, can you talk about what constitutes a good interviewer?
Kathy Roulston 21:31
Sure. Thanks for that question, Amy. So I have talked to other researchers about this. And that was one of the questions I asked them. And then I've also looked at accounts from professional interviewers who have talked about that topic. And I think there's a good deal of agreement on what a good interviewer does. So firstly, they prepare well for interviews, interviews, they're good listeners, they treat the interviewee with respect. They understand that to conduct a good interview, you have to be flexible. So what what works in one situation is not necessarily going to work in another. And I've seen several places, good interviewing practices likened to the improvisatory qualities of jazz. So sometimes you just have to make stuff up. And then, my good friend and colleague, Judith Price Lee, she reminded me quite a few years ago now that you just need to be skeptical of advice, including the advice I've just given. Sometimes I think advice is appropriate, and sometimes it's not. And perhaps interviewers just need to attune themselves to the specific context in which they're working, and also the people they're talking to, to figure out what's going to be a good interview in this situation.
Amy Stich 23:04
That's great. I love that advice. And think it's appropriate in this context. So to be a good interviewer, really to be good at anything, it would also seem one would benefit from a great deal of experience and learning from what we might deem to be failures in the field or what we might at the time call, you know, a quote, unquote, failed interview. Can you tell us about any of your own experiences with you know, quote-unquote, failed interviews, or any interviewing disasters that you've had? ...
Kathy Roulston 23:45
So I think because I'm a methodologist, I tend not to write off interviews as failures. Because I think if something is goes really terribly wrong, and interview, then that gives that will give me something interesting to unpack now, unpacking that failure might actually be quite painful. But I'll share some of my disasters. And as I think about these, I think all of them were because of my own lack of preparation, which I guess is the for the first rule of good interview. Be prepared. So I have conducted a couple of interviews that I think they were great interviews. But when I went to download them or transcribe them, I didn't have a recording. So that is every researchers worst nightmare.
Amy Stich 24:46
I can relate to that. I've had that nightmare.
Kathy Roulston 24:50
So the first happened when I did my master's degree so I was using one of those digital Walkman switch antiques now but it files and records. But in that case, I was able to reschedule the interview, I had a very kind participant who agreed to be interviewed for a second time. But I think what happened there was the spontaneity that occurred in the very first interview was lacking in a second. And of course, that's foreseeable. But more recently, this is probably maybe a little over 10 years ago, I think. I failed to generate a complete recording on a digital recorder. And what had happened, I'd been conducting back to back interviews all day, before an evaluation study. And the space on my digital recording device, it had a little desk in it filled up in half the interview, and I couldn't reschedule this, that there was no possibility. So what I did, as soon as I could, I wrote down as much information as I could for memory. And since I've read more on the history of interviewing, I think what's interesting about that is, this is how anthropologist used to record the interviews via hand, during the interview and all after. So there's one account by anthropologists who [...} Patternmaker. In 1966, she was looking back on her career. And she wrote about going back to her car after her interviews and writing as many notes of what the interviewees had told her as she could. And it so happens, because I'm interested in archival work, too. I've had a look at some other handwritten notebooks from a field worker who lived in Athens where I live. She conducted interviews as part of the Federal Writers Project. And she her handwritten notebooks. It's all in pencil. They're just incredibly detailed notes about interviews. And I have to think that before people had, I guess, ubiquitous access to audio recording devices, they probably had better strength of recall than perhaps we do, because we just typically rely on our audio recordings. But I guess back to your question around it. I think both of these disasters could have been avoided, if I did a backup recording device. That's what I do. I take them on an iPad or an iPhone or something and record it as well. I don't know when I have others to talk about it. I nobody want to know.
Amy Stich 27:51
I think we will all love to know more.
Kathy Roulston 27:55
Okay, so this is one of my embarrassments. So in another case, I, the interview, we selected the place where we were going to conduct an interview it interview and I had not met her prior to the interview. So we met for the first time. And we arranged to meet at a cafe in another county, and that I was not familiar with. So I showed up early. And I was just horrified to find that this cafe had closed. The person I was interviewing had obviously not been there for a while either. And so she was very surprised. So he we were in a strip mall in an County I wasn't familiar with trying to locate another place to conduct an interview. And I ended up recording this conversation in an open area in a grocery store, which had like a little eating area with tables and chairs. So as you can imagine, this was not a great setting, and it was not a great start to the interview. That's what I recall. I don't remember much about it. I do have a worst one.
Amy Stich 29:11
Oh, yes. Thank you for your honesty.
Kathy Roulston 29:16
Yes. So. Yes. So this one I, I guess was at a very busy point in the semester. And I had arranged to interview someone. And when I went to conduct the interview, I went to their office, which was on my campus, and they came to my office and our offices and two different buildings a couple of miles apart. So obviously that interview didn't get done. And that was incredibly embarrassing, because it was clear that I hadn't done enough preparation to double check the location that we're both on the same page. And I think that just goes to show that no matter how busy you are, you just need to really be systematic about checking the equipment, and then ensuring that both you and the interviewee know where you're going, that there is a place a space to meet, where you plan to meet, and just double check everything along the way. So I tried to do that now. But I've made errors along the way.
Amy Stich 30:25
That's great. And as much as we may learn from our failures, it is of course wise to try to avoid them. Yeah, so. So Dr. Roulston, who were some of your favorite interviewers? Sure,
Kathy Roulston 30:38
I would have to say that Terry Gross, who broadcast the program, fresh air, which is on National Public Radio in the United States, she's one of my favorite interviewers. If you listen to her, she, these interviews just seem to be so smooth. About I think she has published a couple of books on interviewing and in her introduction to those books, you'll learn more about how she does those. And you just need to be aware that she has a team that produces those interviews, and they're also not aired live, right. So the editorial team smoothes out the talk. And they also might even resequenced, the questions and answers. And then just as another note, and I think this is encouraging to all of us. She also has had some pretty challenging interview, and you can look around for those. So I guess as someone who has, she's literally conducted 1000s of interviews. It's just useful to know that she runs into problem interviews as well. And then I think what we can all learn from this is that to do a good interview entails collaboration on the part of both interviewer and interviewee. So interviewees can be uncooperative, for all kinds of reasons. And sometimes we might never really know what those reasons are. But I think in other cases, we might also consider why an interviewer might be reluctant to talk to us. And then, as a good researcher looking into the reasons that might be occurring, and why it is that people might might not be answering our questions. So that's something to think about. Right, right. And then we asked me about favorite interviews. I'm not sure he's one of my favorite interviews. I think I really like looking at his interviews to see what he does. So that's Sacha Baron Cohen. And of course, he's not a broadcast interviewer. And he's not a research interviewer. And he's also not necessarily generating information as researchers do. Because as, like, as a comedian and a satirist, he's doing something else altogether. So you probably have seen him in his various television shows and films. So he disguises himself to interview both ordinary and very famous people, is pranked quite a few policy, very famous politicians so far to say, I, I've seen Maureen Dowd of The New York Times has interviewed him and about what his work and what he's trying to do there. And he describes his aim as to expose hatred, bigotry and racism through those kinds of interviews. So I think what I enjoy about listening to comedians and satirists when they interview is how they upset out expectations of what an interview is, and also, quite often what's appropriate to ask. And then, of course, interviewees wide awake to what's going off on quite often. And so sometimes they'll just walk out of the interview, and just refused to participate. Rather than to avoid these embarrassing interactions, which some of these interviews are designed to elicit, and I'm not suggesting that researchers design interviews to do this kind of work. But I think what I find interesting about them, is it how it really helps us to think about the purpose of asking questions of one another.
Amy Stich 34:39
Absolutely. Yeah, those are such interesting choices. Have you heard Terry Gross interview Sacha Baron Cohen on fresh air?
Kathy Roulston 34:48
No I haven't.
Amy Stich 34:49
You know that's a two for one for you.
Kathy Roulston 34:52
Have they actually interviewed him?
Amy Stich 34:56
Yes, she has. She has You guys, I've learned, I believe, just early this year. Yeah. So you might want to check that out.
Kathy Roulston 35:04
Thank you very much. I appreciate that.
Amy Stich 35:08
Absolutely. So before we end today, I think many of our listeners will also appreciate hearing some of your top tips for conducting interviews. So what advice would you give to those just starting out?
Kathy Roulston 35:18
Well, I may repeat myself, so forgive me Sure, of course. But I think first, I think it's really helpful to for every one of us as interviewers to recognize and natural language skills. So if any listeners are those people who like to sit and listen, and he might be very introverted, it is actually going to be easier for you to listen to participants, and you are very unlikely to interrupt them, because you'll be listening. And because that's the natural way you engage in interaction. Now, if you like talking, and you like telling stories, it might actually be very challenging for you not to contribute to the talk. Now, I don't want to be understood as saying that there's not a time and place for telling your own stories as part of an interview. And if anyone wants to take conversation approach to interviewing, that's probably going to happen. But I think what I am trying to say here is that it's useful to recognize that what your talk does for the generation of interview data. And so for example, if you tell your stories, in response to what your participant is saying, these are actually there's a name for these kinds of stories, have the sociologists have called them second stories, which match a story that's just been told. Then when it comes to analyze your data, you as a researcher really have to be fair to your participant by counting for your own talk in the analysis and interpretation. And thinking about what your part in the generation of that talk was. So that's one, one thing, I think, is helpful for all of us. And then of course, this goes without saying, we just need to be listened to our participants respectfully. And I clearly if we're using interviews, we're seeking to learn from others. And it's our responsibility to just really be respectful. Now, I think that doesn't necessarily mean we need to agree with them. So sometimes participants say very disagreeable things that we might really disagree with. Sure. But I think the in that case, then we need to think about how we can be fair in how we represent them, when we write up our findings. And, of course, representing our findings is an probably a topic of another podcast, too. But there's actually methodological work out there now, which, like really thinks about what happens when we interview people with whom we might disagree. I guess the other thing to think about in interview is to really recognize that interviewing is performative. So people want to represent themselves to one another particular ways, for specific purposes. So even though research interviews are information generation, typically we are wanting information about some research topic. It's you can also ask what kinds of actions are being done in an interview. So for example, your interview is justifying or excusing the actions or they could be complaining about something or praising something or complimenting something. So that's just another order of data analysis, which the sociologists, Holstein and Gabrielle have written about, for quite some time, since the mid 1990s. They talk about analyzing both how interviews get done in as well as what gets said in those interviews. And then I think maybe, just to finish up here, there's more methodological work, which really calls on researchers to examine the search methods and how they might consider the participants needs very deeply in how they examine their topics. I've got one good example here, from Castro Dale. This is an article published in 2018 in qualitative inquiry, so he intended to use mobile methods in a study but the When he talked to his participants, they preferred formal sit down interviews. So even though we might have preferences for how we're going to conduct interviews, I think more and more researchers are writing and talking about how they design their interviews, research with their participants preferences in mind. So I guess a good interview can look really easy. But I, we can't ever really predict what's going to happen past the second term. So I advise all of us to be open to be flexible, and relaxing. Just enjoy yourself
Amy Stich 40:39
full again. That's wonderful advice. Thank you again for sharing your expertise with us today. And thank you, listeners for joining us for this edition of qualitative conversation.
Kathy Roulston 40:51
Thank you very much me. I've really enjoyed talking to you.
Amy Stich 40:55
Thanks so much, Kathy.