Methods Practice 2: Interviewing

For my seconds method practice, I got to conduct an interview which will (hopefully) be somewhat similar to the interviews that I will conduct while I'm in Italy. To prepare for this interview, I read a article called Interviewing an Informant by Spradley. I thought this article was very interesting and extremely informative. Spradley mentions that the three most important elements of ethnographic interviewing are explicit purpose, ethnographic explanations, and ethnographic questions.

Explicit Purpose: meaning that both the interviewer and the interviewee know that there is a purpose to the conversation and that the interviewer is looking for somewhat specific information. Having a purpose makes an interview more formal than a friendly conversation and it is expected that the interviewer will guide and direct the conversation.

Ethnographic Explanations:

• Project Explanations: general statements about what the project is about; making sure the interviewee knows what you are looking to learn about
• Recording explanations: Letting the interviewee know that you're taking notes or asking them if you can interview them
• Native Language Explanations: The purpose of ethonography is to describe a culture in its own terms; so it is important to encourage the interviewee to speak in their native language and speak in the way that they normally would in their culture
• Interview Explanation: If you are repeatedly interviewing, it's important to let the interviewee know what will be the purpose of each interview.
• Question Explanations: Make sure to explain the purpose of the question and what kind of information you want from the question

Ethnographic Questions

1. Descriptive Questions: enables a person to collect an ongoing sample of an informant's language. Easiest to ask in interviews (i.e. Could you tell me what you do on a regular basis? Could you describe the conference you attended?)
2. Structural Questions: enable the ethnographer to discover information about domains-the basic unit of the interviewee's cultural knowledge. Answer how informants organize their life (i.e. what are the stages of being transferred in this company). These types of questions may be repeated so that interviewee identifies several different activities/examples.
3. Contrast Questions: Interviewer wants to find out what the interviewee means by the various terms they use in their native language

So, now that you have a pretty detailed background of what I was trying to accomplish for my interview, I will share a little bit about my experience with you. For my part-time job, I work mentoring Freshman and am constantly meeting new students who I interview. I find myself using descriptive most often, structural questions at times, and some variation of a contrast question--I'm usually not trying to decipher what a term means in a different language, but I definitely still have to figure out what certain students mean by various comments, and even specific words, that they say.

This interview practice was similar in many ways to the ways I conduct my interviews with students, with the main difference being the purpose of my interview, which was learning more about their ideas about gender roles. At the time of my interview, my project wasn't nearly as developed as it is now, and I didn't have the  background knowledge that I now realize will be SO INCREDIBLY useful as I decide upon, and ask, my  questions. I tried to ask some structural questions, but feel like I didn't truly understand how to ask those questions. The descriptive, and (semi-)contrast questions, however, went very well.

Before conducting the interview, I gave my participant a good idea of what the purpose of the interview would be--to gain a deeper understanding of her views on gender roles. I think this helped establish the formality level of the interview and I asked her if she would mind if I took notes while I interviewed her so that I would be able to remember what she was saying--I feel like that set up a good platform for the interview. I think I did a fairly good job at directing the conversation, but definitely went off on some side tangents; while I think there are definitely benefits to staying 'on topic' I feel that sometimes tangents may lead to richer information, so I don't totally regret that decision. At one point, my participant felt that she had adequately answered the question, and looked at me as if saying 'okay...are we done or are you going to ask me more.' Whereas I felt like I wanted more information on that question. I did end up asking some prodding questions which were helpful and, for the most part, was able to keep the conversation flowing smoothly. I tried to make sure that she was speaking about 80% of the time, and tried to limit what I had to say to about 20% of the time.

In retrospect, I think that the hardest part of the interview was the conclusion; I wasn't quite sure how to end it or where to end it. I kept it within the time limit that I was planning, which was good, but I think in the field, I will need to have a better set up for this. I am only planning on interviewing each participant once, but I think it would be a good idea to ask them if it would be okay if I contacted them at a later point in case I had any questions. So, my 2nd methods practice was definitely more of a learning experience than anything; I think I did well, but I do think that there is much room for improvement.