Interviewing in Educational Research

Janet Powney, Mike Watts

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780429994814
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Interviewing is one of the most frequently used research tools in the social sciences, yet its importance as a technique is usually underestimated. As Janet Powney and Mike Watts point out, the practical difficulties of interviewing are often understated, and the theoretical assumptions and implications of conducting interviews can prejudice a researcher's conclusions.

Originally published in 1987, this introductory, practical guide widens the debate about interviewing with discussion and advice on interviewing in different kinds of educational inquiry, ranging from large-scale surveys to research carried out in individual schools. The authors give guidelines for preparing, conducting, reporting and analysing interviews, and discuss the practical and theoretical problems arising from each of these aspects. Examples are taken from six case studies contributed by researchers who have conducted interviews for different purposes and in different ways.

Interviewing in Educational Research will be valuable to students and researchers in many fields, not only in educational research, but generally in the social sciences, in medical research, economics, business, social planning and administration.

Chapter 1
Setting the scene

Introduction

This book is about interviewing as a recognised method of gathering information in the social sciences – within which we include the study of education and educational research. We shall not be referring to other uses of interviews, for example for selection or diagnosis, although many of the skills used in that kind of interviewing often have general application.

Within the book we try to present a mixture of discussion and practical advice. Much of the discussion concerns ways of categorising interviews, issues of ethics and morals, and theoretical implications of various approaches. The practical advice stems from our own numerous efforts to conduct interviews, and the good advice we have received from colleagues as they have done the same. We highlight some of these in a series of case studies.

Throughout, we try to promote interviewing as a cyclic and interactive process although, for the sake of clarity, we have dealt with the various aspects in separate chapters. We have a strong sense of not wanting the book to be too linear, so that the reader might start with our case study examples, the theoretical discussions or the more practical chapters. Some of these chapters are intended to be reasonably free standing. Even within chapters we move between the discursive and pragmatic, between practice and theory, in our attempts to emphasise their interdependence. We discuss the interviewing process in some fine detail and examine a wide variety of approaches since each feature – from defining the research project to the evaluation of the interview reports – has pros and cons. We have tried, where possible, to present each approach with some advantages and disadvantages so that readers can 'shop' for appropriate methods for their own research tasks.

However, the other aspect of the book is to illustrate the common features of interviewing. The most important is that of establishing the research framework. Sometimes this follows a traditional format of setting out hypotheses and testing these by collecting data. Conversely, it might be a more flexible framework where broad questions are defined and tentative hypotheses grow from data. In our view, all interviews must be considered and conducted against some theoretical framework, whether this is a traditional or more loosely framed exercise. Other parts of the interviewing process should then follow consistently. Identifying and approaching interviewees, and obtaining, analysing and reporting their comments and answers, should be congruent with the underlying principles of the research.

The changing use of interviewing in educational research

Interviewing in educational research merits further study, partly because of the considerable growth in educational research during the past few years and partly because of the general lack of attention given to interviewing as a method. Although the development of interviewing owes much to large-scale survey research, with its quantitative emphasis, changes in educational research have made interviewing a widely used research tool. Two of the most important of these changes have been in the use of more varied methods and in the tremendous increase in small-scale educational research.

Research has no status unless the methods and findings are open to public scrutiny and debate. If interviewing is to be treated as a serious research method, it must be conducted and reported as rigorously as any other method. This is not to say that all interviews have to follow an exact and predetermined format designed to glean respondents' knowledge, attitudes or beliefs. We will demonstrate very different, but quite valid interpretations of what it means to interview. Interviewing is a particularly useful way to gather people's views as one formulates research hypotheses. Piaget says that the interviewer is normally setting up hypotheses during the interview: before, during, and after, these are equally legitimate provided all relevant circumstances are made explicit and available for scrutiny by fellow professionals and others – like the interviewees, for example.

Regrettably, many established educational research studies have paid little attention to the preparation, conduct and reporting of interviews and might even be called into question for this cavalier approach. Our aim is to encourage a more rigorous approach to interviewing in educational research.

Definition of educational research

The systematic, empirical and critical inquiry into matters which directly or indirectly concern the learning and teaching of children and adults.

This is the definition of educational research we are using in this book. It is empirical in the sense of being observed reality, whether that reality is an experimentally contrived or controlled one, or whether it is careful observation of some aspect of people's everyday experience. The inquiry is not random, but systematically related to hypotheses or propositions being held and developed by the researcher or derived from the empirical data assembled. In natural science and in normative methods in the social sciences, observations confirm or reject previously stated hypotheses. Inductive reasoning used in interpretive approaches in the social sciences allows propositions or hypotheses to emerge from careful observations. These hypotheses can be subsequently considered in the light of further observation or even re-examination of the research data.

Changing perceptions of what is ‘research’

Interpretive approaches have been important with the growth in the number of small-scale educational research studies. The newer element in small-scale studies is practitioners having the 'temerity' to investigate their own actions. Disenchanted with the lack of applicability of most formal educational research to the day-today problems of the classroom (Bassey 1981), teachers are making systematic inquiries into their own practice with a view to improving it. This movement owes much to the pioneering work of Lawrence Stenhouse and colleagues at the Centre of Applied Research in Education, work that has been gradually developed by teacher training institutions especially in the public sector. School-focused inservice courses such as the B.Ed, and M.Ed., established as long ago as 1973 and 1975 respectively at North East London Polytechnic, and in many other institutions since, require teachers to examine their own practices. When these early courses were validated by the Council for National Academic Awards, the validation panels discouraged the use of the word 'research' for such inquiries. Nowadays, teachers as researchers are commonplace and can provide a reasonably sized readership for up-to-date research handbooks for teachers doing research (see Walker 1985; Nixon 1981). Moreover, the movement has stimulated such diverse activities that Wilf Carr (1985) has sufficient material to attempt distinctions between different kinds of school-based, action research, most of it carried out by teachers. Correspondingly, there has been an increase in the use of qualitative methods in which interviewing is a major component. Needless to say, interviewing as part of an action research programme has its problems. These are explored in the chapter on theoretical issues – especially in relation to working with a peer group and also in a situation where the interviewer is well known to the interviewee(s) and relationships continue after the interview.

Critiques of interviewing

Increased use of interviewing should have led to more critical appraisal of, and improvements in, methodology. In the UK, since the 1950s, survey research has been regarded as increasingly useful in assisting social policy, such as describing and explaining social conditions. Interviewing has been a key tool in this development. Hoinville, however, (1983) suggests that the way projects have been funded has generally discouraged methodological investigation into the survey process. Financial support has concentrated instead on the instruments of measurement. The areas that have been investigated are those likely to appeal to statistical analyses, such as interviewer bias, interviewer error, interviewer variability. The trend has been towards improving standardisation.

Similarly, methodological critiques of interviewing are difficult to find in the educational literature, whereas abstracts on quantitative approaches such as sampling and statistical analyses are common in the British Education Index. For example, of all the critiques of 15,000 Hours (Rutter et al. 1979) published by the University of Exeter (Wragg 1979) and the University of London (Tizard et al. 1980), only the one in the latter by Michael Young comments on interviewing. Rutter and his team collected complementary data from their own observations and from questionnaires, but interviewing provided a useful and sometimes necessary contribution to the study, especially to the section on school processes. Unfortunately, the information about the interviews is very limited. There is no interview schedule or list of topics for any group being interviewed, although it is usually possible to glean the gist of the interview from working carefully through the presentation of results. (In contrast the full questionnaire is included as an appendix.) Nor is there any indication of the techniques used by the interviewers or how the data was recorded and subsequently analysed. Three researchers conducted the interviews, but the book ignores details of their previous interviewing experience, how they collaborated on the project, and what each of them told the interviewees about the research. It was apparent that the research team did not see interviewing as problematic, although there were questions on decision making, joint planning and professionalism – for example, questions about a teacher's punctuality could be regarded as a sensitive issue. The Rutter study is only one of the many important educational research projects we could have chosen to illustrate gaps characteristic of reports of research using interviews. We suggest that a less casual approach to reporting interviewing is necessary.

Some general approaches to interviewing

Interviewing has many styles. Many factors influence the style to be used, or indeed, whether interviewing is the most appropriate source of data collection. In Chapter 2 we attempt a simple typology based on the interviewer–interviewee relationship. We also consider definitions of interviews as special kinds of conversations.

Individual interviews, using closely structured questionnaires, persist as a means of collecting information about people's knowledge, beliefs and attitudes. Questionnaires are not the only practical framework. Sufficient interesting alternatives now exist to encourage the educational researcher to choose the most appropriate form of interviewing. Each method has its own assumptions. Consider an interview where the respondent is limited to answering questions posed by the interviewer. Contrast the assumptions behind this with an ethnographic situation, which blurs the roles of researcher and participant, interviewer and respondent. 'Interviewees' inform the observer about things they think are important, rather than allow the interviewer to determine everything that should be discussed. We make a basic and possibly simplistic distinction in Chapter 2 between 'informant' and 'respondent' styles of interviewing.

Brown and Sime (1981), for example, believe that individuals should be given the opportunity to relate their personal record of an event and its context. This they term an 'account interview'. Other examples introduced in Chapter 2 include group interviews using one or two group leaders, or moderators, 'double' interviews taking place consecutively with two related interviewees. (See Case Study 1 in Chapter 4.) Telephone interviews have been developed by some researchers, although these have not been used extensively in education as yet. Some educational researchers have been more creative in collaborative interviewing and in using such things as photographs (see Di Bentley's study in Chapter 4, Case Study 4, for instance) or shared events as the basis for an interview. Adelman and Walker (1975), for example, used synchronised audio tape and photography as a basis for subsequent 'triangulation'. Similarly, other researchers such as Dave Ebbutt (see Case Study 5 in Chapter 4), and Logan (1984) have gone far beyond a simple interrogative approach. In both projects, the interviewers have discussed their perceptions of the group interviews with the participating teenagers, giving them the opportunity to clarify, contradict, disclaim etc. The interview data was not just collected by the researchers. It was negotiated with the participants. There are many other such examples of negotiated data in the literature.

In Chapter 2 we consider how interviews might profitably be classified or whether indeed it is more useful to look at interviewing as a process, with interviews as special kinds of conversations. The tremendous increase of small-scale research – especially as part of the teacher-researcher movement – has had a corresponding increase in the number of interviews carried out under the banner of educational research.

To the uninitiated, interviewing is only as difficult as having a conversation. Indeed, in many examples quoted in this book the conversational element is foremost. Burgess (1983), for example, uses series of 'conversations' in his ethnographic study of Bishop McGregor school and emphasises (1985b) the sterility of interviews conducted and reported as though in a vacuum. He also notes the problems of distinguishing conversations from some kinds of interviews. One distinction, we try to bring out in our discussion of various kinds of interviews in Chapter 2, is the extent to which the 'conversation' is directed, led or followed by the interviewer. At what point does the conversation become an interview? We suggest it is when the conversation is

initiated by the interviewer for the specific purpose of obtaining research relevant information and focused by him on content specified by research objectives of systematic descriptions, prediction or explanation.

This definition of an interview, ascribed to Cannel and Kahn, by Cohen and Manion (1981) allows for the most, or least, structured examples. It is the explicit intentions and actions of the researcher, or interviewer, which converts 'a chat' between two or more people into a 'study' of phenomena. Often the conversion is subtly presented by an interviewer, who is personally unobtrusive but still elicits the information relevant to the research. In his case study in Chapter 4, Norman Evans describes how he listened to 160 teachers and their 60 tutors in conversations which we would consider were really interviews. In other examples quoted in Chapter 2, there is a fixed stimulus such as slides or photographs. The different processes involved in interviewing are elaborated subsequently by the implications for the role of interviewers and interviewees in Chapter 3, with more examples in the case studies in the following chapter.

Chapter 4 is the centrepiece of the book. We have six very useful accounts of interviewing in various contexts, and by various methods. Throughout the chapters we draw very heavily on what our contributors say – theirs are the examples of practice that enliven the points we want to make.

Interviewers—interviewees

It should already be apparent that we think interviewing can be a daunting task. In Chapter 3, we consider in some detail who the interviewers and interviewees are in educational research and some of the effects of their relative status.

Clearly, the essential ingredient of all interviews is talk. Data is gathered through direct oral interaction. As with all such interaction, it makes a difference who says what, who is asking the questions, how they ask them and what they make of the answers. For example, a teacher carrying out an inquiry into an aspect of his or her own school will have separate but related roles as colleague, researcher and interviewer, roles which might impinge on and interact with each other.

A major difficulty for educational researchers on small or nonexistent budgets (and that's most of us) is that our interviewers tend to be untrained: and many have limited interviewing, educational or other relevant experience. Often they are researchers or research students undertaking their own interviews. They may be research assistants taken on just for the project. Furthermore, even with fairly large-scale projects, the interviewer is in many cases, intimately involved with the development of the research, possibly contributing to the hypotheses and research design as well as carrying out interviews. In this sense, interviewers are closer to ethnographers than to survey researchers, who employ professional interviewers with roles normally limited to conducting, and possibly writing up, the interview. Usually, they are not concerned with planning or analysis. Occasionally, organisations will use an experienced interviewer as a consultant at the preliminary phase of an exploratory project, as in Jill Keegan's case study in Chapter 4.

There has always been small-scale research inquiry, especially by post-graduate students. Regrettably, they often have little opportunity to practise interviewing. Their training is often 'on the job' while d...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Half Title
• Original Title
• Original Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• 1 Setting the scene
• 2 Different ways of collecting talk
• 3 Interviewers and interviewees
• 4 Examples of interviews in use
• 5 Guidelines for practice
• 6 The transcription, logging and analysis of data
• 7 Reporting interviews
• 8 Some theoretical issues
• Bibliography
• Author index
• Subject index