semi-structured interviews: purpose
- to ascertain participant perspectives regarding an experience pertaining to the research topic
- employs a relatively detailed interview guide or schedule
- available objective knowledge on the topic is used as a guide for developing interview questions
- some flexibility in how the participants respond and how the researcher probes for more information
SSI types
descriptive/confirmative, descriptive/corrective, descriptive/interpretative, and descriptive/divergent
descriptive/confirmative
- obtain subjective responses to the objective knowledge, to test the hypothetical assumptions (confirming knowledge in the frame)
- priveledges the known
descriptive/corrective
- evaluate the dominant discursive representation of an experience by comparing it with participants actual experiences (confirm, refute or elaborate knowledge in the frame)
- juxtaposes what is known about an experience with the perspective of those whose views are absent or who have material knowledge about this experience
- priveledges knower and known
descriptive/interpretive
- used with the aim of discovering the experiential world of the respondent within topical dimensions (limited frame may be expanded or refuted)
- frame is acknowledged to be limited and subjective knowledge is critical to expansion
- priveledges knower
descriptive/divergent
- discerns differences and similarities in perspectives among different groups with respect to the dominant discourse that underpins the interview guide
- enables deeper insight into various ways that people negotiate the personal and social contexts that shape human choices and experiences
- priveledges groups of knowers
lazarsfeld’s principles
a) specification: focus of each question
b) tacit assumption: process of making explicit what is implicit in the participants responses
C) division: ensures stems are appropriately worded and sequenced
how many participants are required for an SSI?
minimum 30 for meaningful statistical analysis
data analysis for SSI
- content analysis: used to sort and summarize the informational content of the data by item and by common characteristics within the data
- frequency of categorical responses is what transforms the data from text to numerical
sampling techniques for an SSI
- must be purposive (participants need to have experienced the phenomena of interest)
- convenient, snowball, homogeneous, and variable sampling are all acceptable
structured interview
- infrequently used
- involves preplanned questions asked in the same order to every participant
unstructured in-depth interviews
- aims to elicit information from the perspective of a person on a aricular phenomena (lived experience)
- offers maximal freedom to articulate their worldviews
- allows researchers to acquire insider knowledge on a topic without the preconceived biases inherent in SSIs
empathetic interviewing
- takes a stance (usually one in favour of the participant)
- empathy can be exploitive
- used for social justice and oppressive conditions
oral history
- emphasizes a particular part of an individual’s life
- focus is on the community or a particular historical event
- used to study how individuals experience social, political and economic changes
- acquired in two sessions of 3-4h
life history
- individual’s entire life is the focus
- used to study how individuals experience social, political and economic changes
- acquired over 50-60h of interviewm, over a five month span
focus groups
- allow group dynamic and shared lived experiences
- crucial for elliciting information from the disinfranchised or disadvantaged
- researchers work from power-sensitive theoretical perspectives
- generates data from multiple voices
conjoint interviews
useful where a socially defined relationship or situation is to be explored (ie. caregiving, infertility)
