Many students, when doing an interview study, would come up to me and ask, well, what type of interview am I using? In this lecture I will say a few words about typologies of interviews, how to use them, and how, probably, not to use them. I think that there are too many qualitative interview types. Not in the sense that there are too many differences in qualitative interviews. I think that's perfectly fine. I think it's very good that people use different types of interviews. But I think there are too many terms and people adhering too much to a certain term. For instance, look at this. It's terrible, it's so depressing when you, as a student of interviewing, start, and you think okay, what type of interview do I need? And you think you need to pick either phenomenological, or naturalistic, or feminist, or a walk in interview, or an exit interview, or an evaluation, or a platonic interview. Whatever that may be. I think that's the wrong question. I think you should pose the question, what am I doing? Rather than what type do I meet? So, how do I need to interview, and what sort of interview do I need to do? Rather than looking, okay, what fabulous word can I use? Agonistic interview. So, what typologies are useful, or maybe a little bit useful? I think this typology is useful however, not the terms and the labels of the typologist. You probably know it. The difference between conversations, unstructured interviews, structured interviews and semi-structured interviews. It is an important typology, many people use it. But, it's only important for me because it deals with the amount of control by the interviewer. And it's the question behind the typology that's important rather than the type itself. So how does this typology work? Well, consider the topic of the interview or how the questions are formulated. Whether they are pre-interview formulated or formulated within the interview. Whether the question sequence is fixed before the interview or during the interview, thought about. And whether the interviewer behavior is fixed. Well for a conversation, this is all free. The topic is free because the conversation, especially in ethnography, is what you do while deep hanging out. You walk around, you talk with people, you chat a bit. You eat a little, you drink a little, and you chat a bit. You're on the operation table and while someone is operating you on your knee you chat a bit about your research topic and maybe get us some important information but everything is free. How you formulate your question, the topic of your chat but your chat can be data. So that's the first slide. It's not really an interview, because the topic is not fixed, there's not an appointment made. We are going to do an interview. I'm going to interview you. Second, type of interview is the unstructured interview. In an unstructured interview, the structure is lacking. So there is a topic, it is prepared, and that's in opposition to the conversation. People, students they would come up to me and say well I'm going to do an unstructured interview so I don't need to prepare. It's nonsense, absolute nonsense! You need to prepare really well. But maybe not the exact formulation of your question. But, you have to know what do I want to know. You can try it out without preparation to do an interview, it will fail, 100%. So, these are free. It doesn't mean totally unprepared. You have to think before hand about how to behave as an interviewer, how you organize your questions, or organize, at least, your topics. This is what most people do, or they say they do, and I'm leaving this for a second because I want to tell you something about this one first. A structured interview is an interview in which everything is fixed. The topic is fixed, the question formulation is fixed, the question sequence is fixed, and the interviewer behavior is fixed. Not many qualitative researches say they do something like this. That's because everything is fixed and there is no place for flexibility, serendipity, and all the good practices, iterative work and so on. So most researchers, most students say, I'm doing semi-structured interview. Which means the type itself becomes an empty container. Because for some the question formulation is fixed, and therefore it's a semi-structured interview. For others it's free and therefore it's semi-structured interview. So again, it's not about the label. It is about the amount of control. So rather than telling me, or anyone else, any reader, that you did a semi-structured interview, like 99% of the interviewers, you have to tell what was fixed beforehand and what was not. Whether the question formulation, the sequence or something else was fixed beforehand and other things were not. So it is about thinking about okay, do I use a questionnaire or do I use a topic guide. And you have to think about how much structure you use and how much freedom you use. You have to think about sequence and frames. So you have to think about okay, do I prepare a certain sequence in order to have very comparable research, or do I consider the frames that interviewee come up with and then use these frames in order to guide someone through my topics. They have to think about that, rather than saying, oh I did semi-structured interview. You have to think about prepared topic bridges. Bridges from one topic to another topic. Or you have to think about do I take a more natural flow depending on the interviewee. You have to think about your questions. Pre-formulate the questions always, I would say. Prepare them, ask questions. Maybe you can deviate from them during the interview. But as long as you've never thought about the formulation, it's hard because then you have to think about it on the spot. Improvisation only works with preparation. Think about why you're doing this. Are you doing this semi-structured interview because you want to compare interviews? Then you need to structure a lot. If it is about the uniqueness, then you need less structure probably and more improvisation, natural flow, and freedom. So you have to think about what you are doing. Another typology is by Rubin and Rubin, and again, I think this is a useful typology, and not because of the different types they talk about, but because they think about the dimensions behind it. For instance, you can look at meanings and frameworks, they call it focus. So you focus could be on meanings and frameworks. And then you could have a narrow focus, for instance, on concepts. What does friendship mean to you? It's not a huge, broad topic. It depends a bit but it's, it's about the concept, what is a friend? And what is not? What is an acquaintance or something? So that's a concept clarification interview. Or something in-between a narrow scope and a broad scope might be a theory elaboration interview as they call it. Or a broad scope would be an ethnographic interview. If you have a focus on meanings and frameworks, you can also have a focus on events and processes. Such as a narrow focus, a narrow scope, but the focus on events and processes, an investigative interview. Or somewhere in the middle, an action research evaluation research. Or an elaborate case study. You see, very broad ethnographic interview, elaborate case study. Life history interview. It's in between means and frameworks, and events and processes, but very broad. Now this helps. Thinking about your research in this way. Not about, okay what type is my type, but what dimensions can I see behind the typologies. So oral histories have a smaller scope than a life history interview. Obviously, we all know that. But it's again, it's not about the type. It's not about, are you my type? It's not about the type, it's about what you do in the interview.
