interviewing 

      m e t h o d o l o g y 
    IN RESEARCH 

Submitted By 
Osama Masood Khan 
40 
 Contents

Page 1

Introduction, what is Interview, Interview Defined

Page 2-4

Typology, Ways to conduct interviews

Page 5-6

Significance, Arguments

Page 7

Conclusion

Page 8

Bibliography and Webliography

Introduction
Researches are different from their nature having something in common. One of the most
common features in research is data collection. Data can be collected through different
methods which include surveys, questionnaires, sampling and interviews. As we are
assign to work on a specific research method. Research methods are of several types
which can be used according to situational and conditional purposes. The method which I
have selected for my assignment is Interviewing Method which comes under the
qualitative research.

In simple words interview is a conversation between two people or more in which one is
the interviewer - seeking answers for specific purpose from the other person – the
interviewee. Interviews are the personal form of research rather than questionnaires
because interviewer directly works with the respondent. They are conducted on different
basis like job interviews are conducted to hire a new employee, student often conduct
interviews in organizations to get information what they are required and similarly
researchers also conduct interviews in order to analyze and evaluate their research work.

What is Interview….
Interview is the way of talking and listening to people and date is collected through this
conversation. In this questions are asked by the researcher who is interviewer and data is
collected from the person who is interviewee means respondent. The interviewer must
memorize the opinions and answers responded about the topic and the extracted data is
primary for the study. Interview is the most common method of obtaining information
about the behavior, attitudes, and other characteristics of people.

The form and pattern of interview can be determined by its purpose, we can see this
difference clearly in interviews like for job selection, market research, medical or
research interview.

Interview Defined

“An interchange of views between two or more people on a topic of mutual interest, sees
the centrality of human interaction for knowledge production, and emphasizes the social
situatedness of research data.” (Kvale, 1996)

Through interviews we get direct and authentic answer from the respondent which is
readily available in their minds and are not predefined. Real things come to knowledge
because respondents are mostly acknowledging with their experiences and current
situation.

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Typology
Interviews are a systematic way to collect information from individuals. It is an exchange
of views between two or more people on a topic of mutual interest. There are many types
of interviews which can be used to conduct any research:

• Informal, conversational interview

• General interview guide approach
• Standardized, open-ended interview
• Closed, fixed-response interview
• Non-directive interviews

Informal conversational interview:

This type of interview is just like a chat between two or more people sharing their
experiences with each other, during this interview informants may sometimes forget that
they are being interviewed. No fixed questions are asked.

For example:
I am a student of Public Administration working on a project, and one of my friend works
for any public service department, I get engage with him in a conversation regarding his
job so whatever he would be discussing will help to extract information what I have
needed.

General interview guide approach:

In this type of interview, a basic checklist is prepared to make sure that all relevant topics
are covered. The interviewer is free to explore, investigate and ask questions deemed
interesting to the researcher, this type of approach is used when you need to ask similar
kind of questions from each interviewee.

For example:
I am working on a marketing research project in which I have to explore same products
by different manufacturers, so interviewing with different companies and asking them
same questions like about product’s quality, price, consumer feedbacks etc.

Standardized open-ended interview:

Open-ended interview is based on the questions which have no fixed options; these
questions are carefully worded and arranged for the purpose of minimizing variation in
the questions posed to the interviewees. Such questions are useful for obtaining in-depth
information on facts with which the researcher is not very familiar, opinions, attitudes
and suggestions of informants and sensitive issues.

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For example:

What is your opinion on the services provided in your organization? (Explain why.)
What do you think are the reasons of high crimes?

The answers to these questions will be replied in the words of the respondents.

Open-ended questions allow you to get more deeply into issues of interest being raised.
Information provided in the respondents’ own words might be useful as examples or
illustrations, which add interest to the final report. Open-ended questions take time when
their answers are analyzed so interviewer must experience enough to manage and analyze
efficiently.

Closed, fixed response interview:

In this type of interview questions are asked with the given alternatives and interviewees
have to pick answers from same sets of multiple choice answers. This design is functional
for those not experienced in interviewing.

Closed questions are most commonly used for background variables such as age, marital
status or education; although in the case of age and education you may also take the exact
values and categorize them during data analysis.

Closed questions may be used to get the respondents to express their opinions or attitudes
by choosing rating points on a scale.

For example:

What is your opinion on the following statement?

‘Pakistani cricketers should be punished after the match fixing scandal’

Closed questions may also be used if one is only interested in certain aspects of an issue
and does not want to waste time obtaining more information than one needs.

For example, a researcher who is only interested in the sources of protein in a family diet
may ask:

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 ‘Did you eat any of the following foods yesterday?’ (Circle yes if at least one item in
each set of items is eaten.)

They save time in comparing responses of different groups, or of the same group over
time, become easier. But sometimes respondent’s desired answer is not among the given
alternatives so they give wrong or unreal answers.

Non-directive interviews:

In this type of interview no proper questions are listed, and no pattern of interview is
defined, the interviewer follows what interviewee has to say. Interviewer does not take
the lead. This type of interview becomes more like an informal talk, even the interviewee
is free to ask any kind of question from the person who is taking interview but the
interviewer has to keep in mind the purpose of investigation.

There are some ways to conduct interviews:

1. Face-to-face interviews

2. Telephonic interviews

3. Computer assisted interviews

Face-to-face interviews:

Most of the unstructured interviews are conducted face-to-face, in this type of interview
the interviewer and interviewee are sitting together and talking on the defined topic
which is under observation. In this type of interview the interviewer easily catches the
expressions of the individual giving answers, either he is relaxed or nervous, he can
easily read his mind through his body language and face expressions. This type of
interviews are considered time consuming in sense of getting appointments for meeting
and expensive in sense of traveling, but beside all this is the most information oriented
way to get authentic information.

Telephonic interviews:

This type of interview is done through the telephone. This is usually a structured type of
interview. Telephonic interviews are best suited when information from a large number
of respondents spread over a wide geographical area is to be obtained quickly. The main

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drawback of this is that exact and in detail information is not achievable which you can
get in a face to face interview.

Computer assisted interviews:

With computer assisted interviews, questions are flashed onto the computer screen and
interviewers can enter the answers of respondents directly into the computer. In this type
of interviews in some cases answers may not be favorable to the respondent which leads
to have false information.

Significance
There has been a major change in methods when we talk about research. New
methods are introduced through the computer technology and latest equipments. But
regardless of all interviews possess their value still. The quality of research depends upon
the quality of data collections tools though interviewing tool and questioning is one of the
most used research methods and has its own quality and gravity. After it is decided to use
this technique a self study is needed to know that what exactly we want to know, what
type of questions should be asked, whom we are going to ask questions, what techniques
and methods should be followed to conduct interviews.

Interviews gives you face to face real inside and true response form the
respondent, not only the response but interviewer can also judge many minor things
through the expressions of interviewee. It is the best of exchange of information for both
interviewer and the respondent. You can get to know in detail which a respondent can not
sum up into words in written, he can easily communicate those things verbally.

The design of interview is to extract exclusive information based on facts and

experiences which serves as the asset in research and helps the researcher to have better
and quality information regarding their objectives.

Arguments

Interview permits participants to talk about their experiences in their own words,
and allow them to elaborate on any areas of interest or importance. Interview can be more
insightful than other methods. A face-to-face interview allows you to assess the
participant’s body language, facial expressions, tone of voice, etc.

As well as the undoubted strengths of interview there are many potential flaws
that need to be considered. Interview requires more resources than other techniques like
questionnaire, they may be expensive both in terms of time and travelling, if your funds
are restricted to a small amount than you have to consider a little sample which may be
not adequate to give accurate results or cannot represent the whole population. What I
believe interview may conduct a biased result by unconscious or conscious verbal
reactions. For example if a participant nodding throughout the interview, the interviewer

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may interpret this action in a negative way and he fails the participant’s efforts. The
results of the interview may not be so clear because the calculation process is not that
straight like questionnaire. As with the self-report measures, the quality of data is
dependent upon the responses of interviewee, if the interviewee has incorrect knowledge
it can create a big problem in the whole research process.

But here a question comes in people’s mind is it better to have questionnaires?

The answer to this is ‘yes’ in some cases but questionnaire data is limited and one cannot
explore the answers. The positive feature of interview is its richness and brilliance of
material collected through it. In a research using different kinds of data collection
techniques but the interview material is always interesting and enables you to understand
more deeply like rather than other kinds of data like statistical analysis or questionnaires
even. It is a fact that any general statement written in report will attract the reader less
than a direct statement quote by the interviewee.

The most discussed factors about interviews are time and cost but the data
collected balanced the bounty of these factors. It is quite true that in research how easier
the data you collected less it is valuable.

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Conclusion
Hence we can conclude that in today’s time research has spread all over from a
single person to the large highly equipped and qualified researchers under one roof. What
basically is the purpose of research is to have more and betterment of the people for this
asking themselves what their queries and what their perceptions are that plays a great part
and for that interviewing method meets the requirement. Because we all know that
different people different minds and different opinions so asking people and then analyze
that what we have learnt and what we got to know about our objective(s).

Though we can say that after considering other methodologies and interview
apart, it possess its own brilliance in accordance to have an authentic and full of
experience information which serves as an best instrument while research. Because
research means latest and updated material and interview is the only source to that.

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Bibliography

Research methods for business-A skill building approach-4th edition by Uma Sekaran
The Research Interview by Bill Gillham

Webliography

http://dictionary.reference.com/
http://www.idrc.ca/en/ev-56614-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html
http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/kb/intrview.php

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