1. Interview as a method By Jeanette Rindahl Kathmandu May 2010

2. How many subject for different designs Case studies (1-5) Group interviews (5-15) Qualitative interviews (5-30) Small surveys (500-1000) Large, complexe surveys (2000-5000) Peoples voice (the whole population)

3. Interview A structured conversation designed to get new knowledge Interview = Inter view = Interchange of views When the intention of the conversation is kept hidden, it is easier to get honest answers

4. Problems with the interview situation Political accurasy, people tend to answer what is expected of them, not what they actually mean Memory mistake/ selective memory Tendensy to not want to appear knowledgeless, they answer something they have no opinion about Leading questions Vage questions Disturbing noises from the interviewer, the person being interviewed, from the room, from outside Language and culture differences

5. Different types of interviews Unformal qualitative interviews: interview without systematic presentation of stimuli where the intention is to be able to ask questions about a topic that wasnt planned, or to go back to an earlier topic or ask deeper questions about a certain aspect of the interview Unstructured interview: set questions, but not set answer options Structured interview: set questions and set answers options

6. Unformal qualitative interviews The aim is to dig deeper into the interview object, to find attitude, intentions and reasons for saying and meaning something It is more of a conversation with the person you are interviewing, to guide the person in the correct direction, but let the person talk freely Normally it is audio recorded and written down afterwards The text needs to be analysed using correct analytic methods and can be difficult

7. Unformal qualitative interviews Advantages: Possibilty to detect the persons experiences, intentions and basic values Possible to ask to explain his/her answer if you think it can mean different things Gives more details about the topic Possible to change the direction of the interview if you want to Is espesially good if you are interviewing in something you have less knowledge about

8. Unformal qualitative interviews Disadvantages: Demands more of the person who is interviewing Gives a lot of information which can be difficult to analyse Difficult to be objective if you take a big part in the interview Difficult for some other researcher to do the same interview Can be difficult to generalise because it takes so much time to interview one person, so in most cases the number of interviewed people will be few

9. Different structured interviews Personal interview: meet the person face to face and ask the questions and writes down the answers Telephone interview: same, but over the phone Postal interview: the questions are sent by mail and the person of interest answers them without help from the interviewer Web/E-mail interviews: the person gets a link to the page where the interview is and answers them directly trough the web reader Pop-up survey: questionnaire that pops up when you are visiting an internet page

10. Advantages and disadvantages for different forms of interviews

11. Question formulation Use a simple language (dont over estimate the vocabulary of the person you are interviewing Avoid leading questions were the interviewing object will go towards a certain answer Think about the context the question is written in so that there is no confusion

12. Direct vs. Indirect questions Some information is of such caracter that you can ask directly: Facts (age, gender) Knowledge questions Questions about behaviour (have you...during the last week?) But some information is of such caracter that you would rather not ask directly: Attitude Values and faith Prejudice Personal caracter

13. Different types of questions One choise question with set answers One choise questions with an open category Questions with range Multiple choise questions Open questions (needs to be analysed/coded) Use of I dont know alternative A mix of negativly and positivly formulated questions/claims

14. Questions?