Workshop: Interview technique (course content)

Alright, there have been a whole lot of tips in this module already. Because your projects are so varied, the best I can do now is give you a loose guide. This is interview technique.

As a series of steps, your research should look more or less like the following:

1 Choose 1–3 people you would like to interview. Choose people whose answers to your questions can be useful to you in your research this semester, and reach out to them to set up a live or email-based interview

2 Ask for permission to interview your potential intrerviewees. And if you get permission set up interview times (or agree to interview via email).

3 Write questions. I generally draft 20 questions and try to hold my interviews to 75 minutes maximum. But do what is most comfortable for you and your interlocutors. Also: your questions are meant to be a rough guide only. Don’t be afraid to skip or change them or to add in new questions when interviewing.

4 Conduct your interview. Again, in this course, you can choose to do this live or via email.

5 Take notes if you are doing this live.

6 Highlight content (in your notes, or in your respondents’ emailed answers) that you think will be most useful to you in your research project).

7Create bibliographic entries for your 1–3 interviews. *Citing interviews style guide here. (Each interview you cite in your final research paper will count as an individual source and should be included in your bibliography.)

Very important, often forgotten:

It is okay to try out a method and fail to find usable data via that method. If you aren’t finding anything useful, try changing the questions you are asking. Or change who you are asking. If you still cannot find anything useful, in your post to the Canvas discussion this week: describe what happened. I will reach out to you with additional ideas as they occur to me.

Good luck,

DP
May 2019