qualitative research methods conversational interviewing

Chapter 11. Interviewing

Introduction.

Interviewing people is at the heart of qualitative research. It is not merely a way to collect data but an intrinsically rewarding activity—an interaction between two people that holds the potential for greater understanding and interpersonal development. Unlike many of our daily interactions with others that are fairly shallow and mundane, sitting down with a person for an hour or two and really listening to what they have to say is a profound and deep enterprise, one that can provide not only “data” for you, the interviewer, but also self-understanding and a feeling of being heard for the interviewee. I always approach interviewing with a deep appreciation for the opportunity it gives me to understand how other people experience the world. That said, there is not one kind of interview but many, and some of these are shallower than others. This chapter will provide you with an overview of interview techniques but with a special focus on the in-depth semistructured interview guide approach, which is the approach most widely used in social science research.

An interview can be variously defined as “a conversation with a purpose” ( Lune and Berg 2018 ) and an attempt to understand the world from the point of view of the person being interviewed: “to unfold the meaning of peoples’ experiences, to uncover their lived world prior to scientific explanations” ( Kvale 2007 ). It is a form of active listening in which the interviewer steers the conversation to subjects and topics of interest to their research but also manages to leave enough space for those interviewed to say surprising things. Achieving that balance is a tricky thing, which is why most practitioners believe interviewing is both an art and a science. In my experience as a teacher, there are some students who are “natural” interviewers (often they are introverts), but anyone can learn to conduct interviews, and everyone, even those of us who have been doing this for years, can improve their interviewing skills. This might be a good time to highlight the fact that the interview is a product between interviewer and interviewee and that this product is only as good as the rapport established between the two participants. Active listening is the key to establishing this necessary rapport.

Patton ( 2002 ) makes the argument that we use interviews because there are certain things that are not observable. In particular, “we cannot observe feelings, thoughts, and intentions. We cannot observe behaviors that took place at some previous point in time. We cannot observe situations that preclude the presence of an observer. We cannot observe how people have organized the world and the meanings they attach to what goes on in the world. We have to ask people questions about those things” ( 341 ).

Types of Interviews

There are several distinct types of interviews. Imagine a continuum (figure 11.1). On one side are unstructured conversations—the kind you have with your friends. No one is in control of those conversations, and what you talk about is often random—whatever pops into your head. There is no secret, underlying purpose to your talking—if anything, the purpose is to talk to and engage with each other, and the words you use and the things you talk about are a little beside the point. An unstructured interview is a little like this informal conversation, except that one of the parties to the conversation (you, the researcher) does have an underlying purpose, and that is to understand the other person. You are not friends speaking for no purpose, but it might feel just as unstructured to the “interviewee” in this scenario. That is one side of the continuum. On the other side are fully structured and standardized survey-type questions asked face-to-face. Here it is very clear who is asking the questions and who is answering them. This doesn’t feel like a conversation at all! A lot of people new to interviewing have this ( erroneously !) in mind when they think about interviews as data collection. Somewhere in the middle of these two extreme cases is the “ semistructured” interview , in which the researcher uses an “interview guide” to gently move the conversation to certain topics and issues. This is the primary form of interviewing for qualitative social scientists and will be what I refer to as interviewing for the rest of this chapter, unless otherwise specified.

Informal (unstructured conversations). This is the most “open-ended” approach to interviewing. It is particularly useful in conjunction with observational methods (see chapters 13 and 14). There are no predetermined questions. Each interview will be different. Imagine you are researching the Oregon Country Fair, an annual event in Veneta, Oregon, that includes live music, artisan craft booths, face painting, and a lot of people walking through forest paths. It’s unlikely that you will be able to get a person to sit down with you and talk intensely about a set of questions for an hour and a half. But you might be able to sidle up to several people and engage with them about their experiences at the fair. You might have a general interest in what attracts people to these events, so you could start a conversation by asking strangers why they are here or why they come back every year. That’s it. Then you have a conversation that may lead you anywhere. Maybe one person tells a long story about how their parents brought them here when they were a kid. A second person talks about how this is better than Burning Man. A third person shares their favorite traveling band. And yet another enthuses about the public library in the woods. During your conversations, you also talk about a lot of other things—the weather, the utilikilts for sale, the fact that a favorite food booth has disappeared. It’s all good. You may not be able to record these conversations. Instead, you might jot down notes on the spot and then, when you have the time, write down as much as you can remember about the conversations in long fieldnotes. Later, you will have to sit down with these fieldnotes and try to make sense of all the information (see chapters 18 and 19).

Interview guide ( semistructured interview ). This is the primary type employed by social science qualitative researchers. The researcher creates an “interview guide” in advance, which she uses in every interview. In theory, every person interviewed is asked the same questions. In practice, every person interviewed is asked mostly the same topics but not always the same questions, as the whole point of a “guide” is that it guides the direction of the conversation but does not command it. The guide is typically between five and ten questions or question areas, sometimes with suggested follow-ups or prompts . For example, one question might be “What was it like growing up in Eastern Oregon?” with prompts such as “Did you live in a rural area? What kind of high school did you attend?” to help the conversation develop. These interviews generally take place in a quiet place (not a busy walkway during a festival) and are recorded. The recordings are transcribed, and those transcriptions then become the “data” that is analyzed (see chapters 18 and 19). The conventional length of one of these types of interviews is between one hour and two hours, optimally ninety minutes. Less than one hour doesn’t allow for much development of questions and thoughts, and two hours (or more) is a lot of time to ask someone to sit still and answer questions. If you have a lot of ground to cover, and the person is willing, I highly recommend two separate interview sessions, with the second session being slightly shorter than the first (e.g., ninety minutes the first day, sixty minutes the second). There are lots of good reasons for this, but the most compelling one is that this allows you to listen to the first day’s recording and catch anything interesting you might have missed in the moment and so develop follow-up questions that can probe further. This also allows the person being interviewed to have some time to think about the issues raised in the interview and go a little deeper with their answers.

Standardized questionnaire with open responses ( structured interview ). This is the type of interview a lot of people have in mind when they hear “interview”: a researcher comes to your door with a clipboard and proceeds to ask you a series of questions. These questions are all the same whoever answers the door; they are “standardized.” Both the wording and the exact order are important, as people’s responses may vary depending on how and when a question is asked. These are qualitative only in that the questions allow for “open-ended responses”: people can say whatever they want rather than select from a predetermined menu of responses. For example, a survey I collaborated on included this open-ended response question: “How does class affect one’s career success in sociology?” Some of the answers were simply one word long (e.g., “debt”), and others were long statements with stories and personal anecdotes. It is possible to be surprised by the responses. Although it’s a stretch to call this kind of questioning a conversation, it does allow the person answering the question some degree of freedom in how they answer.

Survey questionnaire with closed responses (not an interview!). Standardized survey questions with specific answer options (e.g., closed responses) are not really interviews at all, and they do not generate qualitative data. For example, if we included five options for the question “How does class affect one’s career success in sociology?”—(1) debt, (2) social networks, (3) alienation, (4) family doesn’t understand, (5) type of grad program—we leave no room for surprises at all. Instead, we would most likely look at patterns around these responses, thinking quantitatively rather than qualitatively (e.g., using regression analysis techniques, we might find that working-class sociologists were twice as likely to bring up alienation). It can sometimes be confusing for new students because the very same survey can include both closed-ended and open-ended questions. The key is to think about how these will be analyzed and to what level surprises are possible. If your plan is to turn all responses into a number and make predictions about correlations and relationships, you are no longer conducting qualitative research. This is true even if you are conducting this survey face-to-face with a real live human. Closed-response questions are not conversations of any kind, purposeful or not.

In summary, the semistructured interview guide approach is the predominant form of interviewing for social science qualitative researchers because it allows a high degree of freedom of responses from those interviewed (thus allowing for novel discoveries) while still maintaining some connection to a research question area or topic of interest. The rest of the chapter assumes the employment of this form.

Creating an Interview Guide

Your interview guide is the instrument used to bridge your research question(s) and what the people you are interviewing want to tell you. Unlike a standardized questionnaire, the questions actually asked do not need to be exactly what you have written down in your guide. The guide is meant to create space for those you are interviewing to talk about the phenomenon of interest, but sometimes you are not even sure what that phenomenon is until you start asking questions. A priority in creating an interview guide is to ensure it offers space. One of the worst mistakes is to create questions that are so specific that the person answering them will not stray. Relatedly, questions that sound “academic” will shut down a lot of respondents. A good interview guide invites respondents to talk about what is important to them, not feel like they are performing or being evaluated by you.

Good interview questions should not sound like your “research question” at all. For example, let’s say your research question is “How do patriarchal assumptions influence men’s understanding of climate change and responses to climate change?” It would be worse than unhelpful to ask a respondent, “How do your assumptions about the role of men affect your understanding of climate change?” You need to unpack this into manageable nuggets that pull your respondent into the area of interest without leading him anywhere. You could start by asking him what he thinks about climate change in general. Or, even better, whether he has any concerns about heatwaves or increased tornadoes or polar icecaps melting. Once he starts talking about that, you can ask follow-up questions that bring in issues around gendered roles, perhaps asking if he is married (to a woman) and whether his wife shares his thoughts and, if not, how they negotiate that difference. The fact is, you won’t really know the right questions to ask until he starts talking.

There are several distinct types of questions that can be used in your interview guide, either as main questions or as follow-up probes. If you remember that the point is to leave space for the respondent, you will craft a much more effective interview guide! You will also want to think about the place of time in both the questions themselves (past, present, future orientations) and the sequencing of the questions.

Researcher Note

Suggestion : As you read the next three sections (types of questions, temporality, question sequence), have in mind a particular research question, and try to draft questions and sequence them in a way that opens space for a discussion that helps you answer your research question.

Type of Questions

Experience and behavior questions ask about what a respondent does regularly (their behavior) or has done (their experience). These are relatively easy questions for people to answer because they appear more “factual” and less subjective. This makes them good opening questions. For the study on climate change above, you might ask, “Have you ever experienced an unusual weather event? What happened?” Or “You said you work outside? What is a typical summer workday like for you? How do you protect yourself from the heat?”

Opinion and values questions , in contrast, ask questions that get inside the minds of those you are interviewing. “Do you think climate change is real? Who or what is responsible for it?” are two such questions. Note that you don’t have to literally ask, “What is your opinion of X?” but you can find a way to ask the specific question relevant to the conversation you are having. These questions are a bit trickier to ask because the answers you get may depend in part on how your respondent perceives you and whether they want to please you or not. We’ve talked a fair amount about being reflective. Here is another place where this comes into play. You need to be aware of the effect your presence might have on the answers you are receiving and adjust accordingly. If you are a woman who is perceived as liberal asking a man who identifies as conservative about climate change, there is a lot of subtext that can be going on in the interview. There is no one right way to resolve this, but you must at least be aware of it.

Feeling questions are questions that ask respondents to draw on their emotional responses. It’s pretty common for academic researchers to forget that we have bodies and emotions, but people’s understandings of the world often operate at this affective level, sometimes unconsciously or barely consciously. It is a good idea to include questions that leave space for respondents to remember, imagine, or relive emotional responses to particular phenomena. “What was it like when you heard your cousin’s house burned down in that wildfire?” doesn’t explicitly use any emotion words, but it allows your respondent to remember what was probably a pretty emotional day. And if they respond emotionally neutral, that is pretty interesting data too. Note that asking someone “How do you feel about X” is not always going to evoke an emotional response, as they might simply turn around and respond with “I think that…” It is better to craft a question that actually pushes the respondent into the affective category. This might be a specific follow-up to an experience and behavior question —for example, “You just told me about your daily routine during the summer heat. Do you worry it is going to get worse?” or “Have you ever been afraid it will be too hot to get your work accomplished?”

Knowledge questions ask respondents what they actually know about something factual. We have to be careful when we ask these types of questions so that respondents do not feel like we are evaluating them (which would shut them down), but, for example, it is helpful to know when you are having a conversation about climate change that your respondent does in fact know that unusual weather events have increased and that these have been attributed to climate change! Asking these questions can set the stage for deeper questions and can ensure that the conversation makes the same kind of sense to both participants. For example, a conversation about political polarization can be put back on track once you realize that the respondent doesn’t really have a clear understanding that there are two parties in the US. Instead of asking a series of questions about Republicans and Democrats, you might shift your questions to talk more generally about political disagreements (e.g., “people against abortion”). And sometimes what you do want to know is the level of knowledge about a particular program or event (e.g., “Are you aware you can discharge your student loans through the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program?”).

Sensory questions call on all senses of the respondent to capture deeper responses. These are particularly helpful in sparking memory. “Think back to your childhood in Eastern Oregon. Describe the smells, the sounds…” Or you could use these questions to help a person access the full experience of a setting they customarily inhabit: “When you walk through the doors to your office building, what do you see? Hear? Smell?” As with feeling questions , these questions often supplement experience and behavior questions . They are another way of allowing your respondent to report fully and deeply rather than remain on the surface.

Creative questions employ illustrative examples, suggested scenarios, or simulations to get respondents to think more deeply about an issue, topic, or experience. There are many options here. In The Trouble with Passion , Erin Cech ( 2021 ) provides a scenario in which “Joe” is trying to decide whether to stay at his decent but boring computer job or follow his passion by opening a restaurant. She asks respondents, “What should Joe do?” Their answers illuminate the attraction of “passion” in job selection. In my own work, I have used a news story about an upwardly mobile young man who no longer has time to see his mother and sisters to probe respondents’ feelings about the costs of social mobility. Jessi Streib and Betsy Leondar-Wright have used single-page cartoon “scenes” to elicit evaluations of potential racial discrimination, sexual harassment, and classism. Barbara Sutton ( 2010 ) has employed lists of words (“strong,” “mother,” “victim”) on notecards she fans out and asks her female respondents to select and discuss.

Background/Demographic Questions

You most definitely will want to know more about the person you are interviewing in terms of conventional demographic information, such as age, race, gender identity, occupation, and educational attainment. These are not questions that normally open up inquiry. [1] For this reason, my practice has been to include a separate “demographic questionnaire” sheet that I ask each respondent to fill out at the conclusion of the interview. Only include those aspects that are relevant to your study. For example, if you are not exploring religion or religious affiliation, do not include questions about a person’s religion on the demographic sheet. See the example provided at the end of this chapter.

Temporality

Any type of question can have a past, present, or future orientation. For example, if you are asking a behavior question about workplace routine, you might ask the respondent to talk about past work, present work, and ideal (future) work. Similarly, if you want to understand how people cope with natural disasters, you might ask your respondent how they felt then during the wildfire and now in retrospect and whether and to what extent they have concerns for future wildfire disasters. It’s a relatively simple suggestion—don’t forget to ask about past, present, and future—but it can have a big impact on the quality of the responses you receive.

Question Sequence

Having a list of good questions or good question areas is not enough to make a good interview guide. You will want to pay attention to the order in which you ask your questions. Even though any one respondent can derail this order (perhaps by jumping to answer a question you haven’t yet asked), a good advance plan is always helpful. When thinking about sequence, remember that your goal is to get your respondent to open up to you and to say things that might surprise you. To establish rapport, it is best to start with nonthreatening questions. Asking about the present is often the safest place to begin, followed by the past (they have to know you a little bit to get there), and lastly, the future (talking about hopes and fears requires the most rapport). To allow for surprises, it is best to move from very general questions to more particular questions only later in the interview. This ensures that respondents have the freedom to bring up the topics that are relevant to them rather than feel like they are constrained to answer you narrowly. For example, refrain from asking about particular emotions until these have come up previously—don’t lead with them. Often, your more particular questions will emerge only during the course of the interview, tailored to what is emerging in conversation.

Once you have a set of questions, read through them aloud and imagine you are being asked the same questions. Does the set of questions have a natural flow? Would you be willing to answer the very first question to a total stranger? Does your sequence establish facts and experiences before moving on to opinions and values? Did you include prefatory statements, where necessary; transitions; and other announcements? These can be as simple as “Hey, we talked a lot about your experiences as a barista while in college.… Now I am turning to something completely different: how you managed friendships in college.” That is an abrupt transition, but it has been softened by your acknowledgment of that.

Probes and Flexibility

Once you have the interview guide, you will also want to leave room for probes and follow-up questions. As in the sample probe included here, you can write out the obvious probes and follow-up questions in advance. You might not need them, as your respondent might anticipate them and include full responses to the original question. Or you might need to tailor them to how your respondent answered the question. Some common probes and follow-up questions include asking for more details (When did that happen? Who else was there?), asking for elaboration (Could you say more about that?), asking for clarification (Does that mean what I think it means or something else? I understand what you mean, but someone else reading the transcript might not), and asking for contrast or comparison (How did this experience compare with last year’s event?). “Probing is a skill that comes from knowing what to look for in the interview, listening carefully to what is being said and what is not said, and being sensitive to the feedback needs of the person being interviewed” ( Patton 2002:374 ). It takes work! And energy. I and many other interviewers I know report feeling emotionally and even physically drained after conducting an interview. You are tasked with active listening and rearranging your interview guide as needed on the fly. If you only ask the questions written down in your interview guide with no deviations, you are doing it wrong. [2]

The Final Question

Every interview guide should include a very open-ended final question that allows for the respondent to say whatever it is they have been dying to tell you but you’ve forgotten to ask. About half the time they are tired too and will tell you they have nothing else to say. But incredibly, some of the most honest and complete responses take place here, at the end of a long interview. You have to realize that the person being interviewed is often discovering things about themselves as they talk to you and that this process of discovery can lead to new insights for them. Making space at the end is therefore crucial. Be sure you convey that you actually do want them to tell you more, that the offer of “anything else?” is not read as an empty convention where the polite response is no. Here is where you can pull from that active listening and tailor the final question to the particular person. For example, “I’ve asked you a lot of questions about what it was like to live through that wildfire. I’m wondering if there is anything I’ve forgotten to ask, especially because I haven’t had that experience myself” is a much more inviting final question than “Great. Anything you want to add?” It’s also helpful to convey to the person that you have the time to listen to their full answer, even if the allotted time is at the end. After all, there are no more questions to ask, so the respondent knows exactly how much time is left. Do them the courtesy of listening to them!

Conducting the Interview

Once you have your interview guide, you are on your way to conducting your first interview. I always practice my interview guide with a friend or family member. I do this even when the questions don’t make perfect sense for them, as it still helps me realize which questions make no sense, are poorly worded (too academic), or don’t follow sequentially. I also practice the routine I will use for interviewing, which goes something like this:

• Introduce myself and reintroduce the study
• Provide consent form and ask them to sign and retain/return copy
• Ask if they have any questions about the study before we begin
• Ask if I can begin recording
• Ask questions (from interview guide)
• Turn off the recording device
• Ask if they are willing to fill out my demographic questionnaire
• Collect questionnaire and, without looking at the answers, place in same folder as signed consent form
• Thank them and depart

A note on remote interviewing: Interviews have traditionally been conducted face-to-face in a private or quiet public setting. You don’t want a lot of background noise, as this will make transcriptions difficult. During the recent global pandemic, many interviewers, myself included, learned the benefits of interviewing remotely. Although face-to-face is still preferable for many reasons, Zoom interviewing is not a bad alternative, and it does allow more interviews across great distances. Zoom also includes automatic transcription, which significantly cuts down on the time it normally takes to convert our conversations into “data” to be analyzed. These automatic transcriptions are not perfect, however, and you will still need to listen to the recording and clarify and clean up the transcription. Nor do automatic transcriptions include notations of body language or change of tone, which you may want to include. When interviewing remotely, you will want to collect the consent form before you meet: ask them to read, sign, and return it as an email attachment. I think it is better to ask for the demographic questionnaire after the interview, but because some respondents may never return it then, it is probably best to ask for this at the same time as the consent form, in advance of the interview.

What should you bring to the interview? I would recommend bringing two copies of the consent form (one for you and one for the respondent), a demographic questionnaire, a manila folder in which to place the signed consent form and filled-out demographic questionnaire, a printed copy of your interview guide (I print with three-inch right margins so I can jot down notes on the page next to relevant questions), a pen, a recording device, and water.

After the interview, you will want to secure the signed consent form in a locked filing cabinet (if in print) or a password-protected folder on your computer. Using Excel or a similar program that allows tables/spreadsheets, create an identifying number for your interview that links to the consent form without using the name of your respondent. For example, let’s say that I conduct interviews with US politicians, and the first person I meet with is George W. Bush. I will assign the transcription the number “INT#001” and add it to the signed consent form. [3] The signed consent form goes into a locked filing cabinet, and I never use the name “George W. Bush” again. I take the information from the demographic sheet, open my Excel spreadsheet, and add the relevant information in separate columns for the row INT#001: White, male, Republican. When I interview Bill Clinton as my second interview, I include a second row: INT#002: White, male, Democrat. And so on. The only link to the actual name of the respondent and this information is the fact that the consent form (unavailable to anyone but me) has stamped on it the interview number.

Many students get very nervous before their first interview. Actually, many of us are always nervous before the interview! But do not worry—this is normal, and it does pass. Chances are, you will be pleasantly surprised at how comfortable it begins to feel. These “purposeful conversations” are often a delight for both participants. This is not to say that sometimes things go wrong. I often have my students practice several “bad scenarios” (e.g., a respondent that you cannot get to open up; a respondent who is too talkative and dominates the conversation, steering it away from the topics you are interested in; emotions that completely take over; or shocking disclosures you are ill-prepared to handle), but most of the time, things go quite well. Be prepared for the unexpected, but know that the reason interviews are so popular as a technique of data collection is that they are usually richly rewarding for both participants.

One thing that I stress to my methods students and remind myself about is that interviews are still conversations between people. If there’s something you might feel uncomfortable asking someone about in a “normal” conversation, you will likely also feel a bit of discomfort asking it in an interview. Maybe more importantly, your respondent may feel uncomfortable. Social research—especially about inequality—can be uncomfortable. And it’s easy to slip into an abstract, intellectualized, or removed perspective as an interviewer. This is one reason trying out interview questions is important. Another is that sometimes the question sounds good in your head but doesn’t work as well out loud in practice. I learned this the hard way when a respondent asked me how I would answer the question I had just posed, and I realized that not only did I not really know how I would answer it, but I also wasn’t quite as sure I knew what I was asking as I had thought.

—Elizabeth M. Lee, Associate Professor of Sociology at Saint Joseph’s University, author of Class and Campus Life , and co-author of Geographies of Campus Inequality

How Many Interviews?

Your research design has included a targeted number of interviews and a recruitment plan (see chapter 5). Follow your plan, but remember that “ saturation ” is your goal. You interview as many people as you can until you reach a point at which you are no longer surprised by what they tell you. This means not that no one after your first twenty interviews will have surprising, interesting stories to tell you but rather that the picture you are forming about the phenomenon of interest to you from a research perspective has come into focus, and none of the interviews are substantially refocusing that picture. That is when you should stop collecting interviews. Note that to know when you have reached this, you will need to read your transcripts as you go. More about this in chapters 18 and 19.

Your Final Product: The Ideal Interview Transcript

A good interview transcript will demonstrate a subtly controlled conversation by the skillful interviewer. In general, you want to see replies that are about one paragraph long, not short sentences and not running on for several pages. Although it is sometimes necessary to follow respondents down tangents, it is also often necessary to pull them back to the questions that form the basis of your research study. This is not really a free conversation, although it may feel like that to the person you are interviewing.

Final Tips from an Interview Master

Annette Lareau is arguably one of the masters of the trade. In Listening to People , she provides several guidelines for good interviews and then offers a detailed example of an interview gone wrong and how it could be addressed (please see the “Further Readings” at the end of this chapter). Here is an abbreviated version of her set of guidelines: (1) interview respondents who are experts on the subjects of most interest to you (as a corollary, don’t ask people about things they don’t know); (2) listen carefully and talk as little as possible; (3) keep in mind what you want to know and why you want to know it; (4) be a proactive interviewer (subtly guide the conversation); (5) assure respondents that there aren’t any right or wrong answers; (6) use the respondent’s own words to probe further (this both allows you to accurately identify what you heard and pushes the respondent to explain further); (7) reuse effective probes (don’t reinvent the wheel as you go—if repeating the words back works, do it again and again); (8) focus on learning the subjective meanings that events or experiences have for a respondent; (9) don’t be afraid to ask a question that draws on your own knowledge (unlike trial lawyers who are trained never to ask a question for which they don’t already know the answer, sometimes it’s worth it to ask risky questions based on your hypotheses or just plain hunches); (10) keep thinking while you are listening (so difficult…and important); (11) return to a theme raised by a respondent if you want further information; (12) be mindful of power inequalities (and never ever coerce a respondent to continue the interview if they want out); (13) take control with overly talkative respondents; (14) expect overly succinct responses, and develop strategies for probing further; (15) balance digging deep and moving on; (16) develop a plan to deflect questions (e.g., let them know you are happy to answer any questions at the end of the interview, but you don’t want to take time away from them now); and at the end, (17) check to see whether you have asked all your questions. You don’t always have to ask everyone the same set of questions, but if there is a big area you have forgotten to cover, now is the time to recover ( Lareau 2021:93–103 ).

Sample: Demographic Questionnaire

ASA Taskforce on First-Generation and Working-Class Persons in Sociology – Class Effects on Career Success

Supplementary Demographic Questionnaire

Thank you for your participation in this interview project. We would like to collect a few pieces of key demographic information from you to supplement our analyses. Your answers to these questions will be kept confidential and stored by ID number. All of your responses here are entirely voluntary!

What best captures your race/ethnicity? (please check any/all that apply)

• White (Non Hispanic/Latina/o/x)
• Black or African American
• Hispanic, Latino/a/x of Spanish
• Asian or Asian American
• American Indian or Alaska Native
• Middle Eastern or North African
• Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander
• Other : (Please write in: ________________)

What is your current position?

• Grad Student
• Full Professor

Please check any and all of the following that apply to you:

• I identify as a working-class academic
• I was the first in my family to graduate from college
• I grew up poor

What best reflects your gender?

• Transgender female/Transgender woman
• Transgender male/Transgender man
• Gender queer/ Gender nonconforming

Anything else you would like us to know about you?

Example: Interview Guide

In this example, follow-up prompts are italicized.  Note the sequence of questions.  That second question often elicits an entire life history , answering several later questions in advance.

Introduction Script/Question

Thank you for participating in our survey of ASA members who identify as first-generation or working-class.  As you may have heard, ASA has sponsored a taskforce on first-generation and working-class persons in sociology and we are interested in hearing from those who so identify.  Your participation in this interview will help advance our knowledge in this area.

• The first thing we would like to as you is why you have volunteered to be part of this study? What does it mean to you be first-gen or working class?  Why were you willing to be interviewed?
• How did you decide to become a sociologist?
• Can you tell me a little bit about where you grew up? ( prompts: what did your parent(s) do for a living?  What kind of high school did you attend?)
• Has this identity been salient to your experience? (how? How much?)
• How welcoming was your grad program? Your first academic employer?
• Why did you decide to pursue sociology at the graduate level?
• Did you experience culture shock in college? In graduate school?
• Has your FGWC status shaped how you’ve thought about where you went to school? debt? etc?
• Were you mentored? How did this work (not work)?  How might it?
• What did you consider when deciding where to go to grad school? Where to apply for your first position?
• What, to you, is a mark of career success? Have you achieved that success?  What has helped or hindered your pursuit of success?
• Do you think sociology, as a field, cares about prestige?
• Let’s talk a little bit about intersectionality. How does being first-gen/working class work alongside other identities that are important to you?
• What do your friends and family think about your career? Have you had any difficulty relating to family members or past friends since becoming highly educated?
• Do you have any debt from college/grad school? Are you concerned about this?  Could you explain more about how you paid for college/grad school?  (here, include assistance from family, fellowships, scholarships, etc.)
• (You’ve mentioned issues or obstacles you had because of your background.) What could have helped?  Or, who or what did? Can you think of fortuitous moments in your career?
• Do you have any regrets about the path you took?
• Is there anything else you would like to add? Anything that the Taskforce should take note of, that we did not ask you about here?

Interviewing in Qualitative Research

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• Svetlana Gudkova 4  

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The interview is one of the basic methods of data collection employed in the social sciences. It is worth noting that this method is not restricted solely to the qualitative research. Interviews have been actively taken advantage of by representatives of various scientific traditions. Both the supporters of the positivist paradigm and the interpretivist one use the technique of the interview to collect data even though the expectations and assumptions of researchers as well as the process of preparing the interview and the conclusion sphere differ fundamentally. The chapter presents different types of interviews employed by the researchers to collect the data in a qualitative research and discusses the process of preparation and conducting the interviews.

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Gudkova, S. (2018). Interviewing in Qualitative Research. In: Ciesielska, M., Jemielniak, D. (eds) Qualitative Methodologies in Organization Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65442-3_4

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• Published: 05 October 2018

Interviews and focus groups in qualitative research: an update for the digital age

• P. Gill 1 &
• J. Baillie 2  

British Dental Journal volume  225 ,  pages 668–672 ( 2018 ) Cite this article

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Highlights that qualitative research is used increasingly in dentistry. Interviews and focus groups remain the most common qualitative methods of data collection.

Suggests the advent of digital technologies has transformed how qualitative research can now be undertaken.

Suggests interviews and focus groups can offer significant, meaningful insight into participants' experiences, beliefs and perspectives, which can help to inform developments in dental practice.

Qualitative research is used increasingly in dentistry, due to its potential to provide meaningful, in-depth insights into participants' experiences, perspectives, beliefs and behaviours. These insights can subsequently help to inform developments in dental practice and further related research. The most common methods of data collection used in qualitative research are interviews and focus groups. While these are primarily conducted face-to-face, the ongoing evolution of digital technologies, such as video chat and online forums, has further transformed these methods of data collection. This paper therefore discusses interviews and focus groups in detail, outlines how they can be used in practice, how digital technologies can further inform the data collection process, and what these methods can offer dentistry.

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Interviews in the social sciences

Professionalism in dentistry: deconstructing common terminology

A review of technical and quality assessment considerations of audio-visual and web-conferencing focus groups in qualitative health research, introduction.

Traditionally, research in dentistry has primarily been quantitative in nature. 1 However, in recent years, there has been a growing interest in qualitative research within the profession, due to its potential to further inform developments in practice, policy, education and training. Consequently, in 2008, the British Dental Journal (BDJ) published a four paper qualitative research series, 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 to help increase awareness and understanding of this particular methodological approach.

Since the papers were originally published, two scoping reviews have demonstrated the ongoing proliferation in the use of qualitative research within the field of oral healthcare. 1 , 6 To date, the original four paper series continue to be well cited and two of the main papers remain widely accessed among the BDJ readership. 2 , 3 The potential value of well-conducted qualitative research to evidence-based practice is now also widely recognised by service providers, policy makers, funding bodies and those who commission, support and use healthcare research.

Besides increasing standalone use, qualitative methods are now also routinely incorporated into larger mixed method study designs, such as clinical trials, as they can offer additional, meaningful insights into complex problems that simply could not be provided by quantitative methods alone. Qualitative methods can also be used to further facilitate in-depth understanding of important aspects of clinical trial processes, such as recruitment. For example, Ellis et al . investigated why edentulous older patients, dissatisfied with conventional dentures, decline implant treatment, despite its established efficacy, and frequently refuse to participate in related randomised clinical trials, even when financial constraints are removed. 7 Through the use of focus groups in Canada and the UK, the authors found that fears of pain and potential complications, along with perceived embarrassment, exacerbated by age, are common reasons why older patients typically refuse dental implants. 7

The last decade has also seen further developments in qualitative research, due to the ongoing evolution of digital technologies. These developments have transformed how researchers can access and share information, communicate and collaborate, recruit and engage participants, collect and analyse data and disseminate and translate research findings. 8 Where appropriate, such technologies are therefore capable of extending and enhancing how qualitative research is undertaken. 9 For example, it is now possible to collect qualitative data via instant messaging, email or online/video chat, using appropriate online platforms.

These innovative approaches to research are therefore cost-effective, convenient, reduce geographical constraints and are often useful for accessing 'hard to reach' participants (for example, those who are immobile or socially isolated). 8 , 9 However, digital technologies are still relatively new and constantly evolving and therefore present a variety of pragmatic and methodological challenges. Furthermore, given their very nature, their use in many qualitative studies and/or with certain participant groups may be inappropriate and should therefore always be carefully considered. While it is beyond the scope of this paper to provide a detailed explication regarding the use of digital technologies in qualitative research, insight is provided into how such technologies can be used to facilitate the data collection process in interviews and focus groups.

In light of such developments, it is perhaps therefore timely to update the main paper 3 of the original BDJ series. As with the previous publications, this paper has been purposely written in an accessible style, to enhance readability, particularly for those who are new to qualitative research. While the focus remains on the most common qualitative methods of data collection – interviews and focus groups – appropriate revisions have been made to provide a novel perspective, and should therefore be helpful to those who would like to know more about qualitative research. This paper specifically focuses on undertaking qualitative research with adult participants only.

Overview of qualitative research

Qualitative research is an approach that focuses on people and their experiences, behaviours and opinions. 10 , 11 The qualitative researcher seeks to answer questions of 'how' and 'why', providing detailed insight and understanding, 11 which quantitative methods cannot reach. 12 Within qualitative research, there are distinct methodologies influencing how the researcher approaches the research question, data collection and data analysis. 13 For example, phenomenological studies focus on the lived experience of individuals, explored through their description of the phenomenon. Ethnographic studies explore the culture of a group and typically involve the use of multiple methods to uncover the issues. 14

While methodology is the 'thinking tool', the methods are the 'doing tools'; 13 the ways in which data are collected and analysed. There are multiple qualitative data collection methods, including interviews, focus groups, observations, documentary analysis, participant diaries, photography and videography. Two of the most commonly used qualitative methods are interviews and focus groups, which are explored in this article. The data generated through these methods can be analysed in one of many ways, according to the methodological approach chosen. A common approach is thematic data analysis, involving the identification of themes and subthemes across the data set. Further information on approaches to qualitative data analysis has been discussed elsewhere. 1

Qualitative research is an evolving and adaptable approach, used by different disciplines for different purposes. Traditionally, qualitative data, specifically interviews, focus groups and observations, have been collected face-to-face with participants. In more recent years, digital technologies have contributed to the ongoing evolution of qualitative research. Digital technologies offer researchers different ways of recruiting participants and collecting data, and offer participants opportunities to be involved in research that is not necessarily face-to-face.

Research interviews are a fundamental qualitative research method 15 and are utilised across methodological approaches. Interviews enable the researcher to learn in depth about the perspectives, experiences, beliefs and motivations of the participant. 3 , 16 Examples include, exploring patients' perspectives of fear/anxiety triggers in dental treatment, 17 patients' experiences of oral health and diabetes, 18 and dental students' motivations for their choice of career. 19

Interviews may be structured, semi-structured or unstructured, 3 according to the purpose of the study, with less structured interviews facilitating a more in depth and flexible interviewing approach. 20 Structured interviews are similar to verbal questionnaires and are used if the researcher requires clarification on a topic; however they produce less in-depth data about a participant's experience. 3 Unstructured interviews may be used when little is known about a topic and involves the researcher asking an opening question; 3 the participant then leads the discussion. 20 Semi-structured interviews are commonly used in healthcare research, enabling the researcher to ask predetermined questions, 20 while ensuring the participant discusses issues they feel are important.

Interviews can be undertaken face-to-face or using digital methods when the researcher and participant are in different locations. Audio-recording the interview, with the consent of the participant, is essential for all interviews regardless of the medium as it enables accurate transcription; the process of turning the audio file into a word-for-word transcript. This transcript is the data, which the researcher then analyses according to the chosen approach.

Types of interview

Qualitative studies often utilise one-to-one, face-to-face interviews with research participants. This involves arranging a mutually convenient time and place to meet the participant, signing a consent form and audio-recording the interview. However, digital technologies have expanded the potential for interviews in research, enabling individuals to participate in qualitative research regardless of location.

Telephone interviews can be a useful alternative to face-to-face interviews and are commonly used in qualitative research. They enable participants from different geographical areas to participate and may be less onerous for participants than meeting a researcher in person. 15 A qualitative study explored patients' perspectives of dental implants and utilised telephone interviews due to the quality of the data that could be yielded. 21 The researcher needs to consider how they will audio record the interview, which can be facilitated by purchasing a recorder that connects directly to the telephone. One potential disadvantage of telephone interviews is the inability of the interviewer and researcher to see each other. This is resolved using software for audio and video calls online – such as Skype – to conduct interviews with participants in qualitative studies. Advantages of this approach include being able to see the participant if video calls are used, enabling observation of non-verbal communication, and the software can be free to use. However, participants are required to have a device and internet connection, as well as being computer literate, potentially limiting who can participate in the study. One qualitative study explored the role of dental hygienists in reducing oral health disparities in Canada. 22 The researcher conducted interviews using Skype, which enabled dental hygienists from across Canada to be interviewed within the research budget, accommodating the participants' schedules. 22

A less commonly used approach to qualitative interviews is the use of social virtual worlds. A qualitative study accessed a social virtual world – Second Life – to explore the health literacy skills of individuals who use social virtual worlds to access health information. 23 The researcher created an avatar and interview room, and undertook interviews with participants using voice and text methods. 23 This approach to recruitment and data collection enables individuals from diverse geographical locations to participate, while remaining anonymous if they wish. Furthermore, for interviews conducted using text methods, transcription of the interview is not required as the researcher can save the written conversation with the participant, with the participant's consent. However, the researcher and participant need to be familiar with how the social virtual world works to engage in an interview this way.

Conducting an interview

Ensuring informed consent before any interview is a fundamental aspect of the research process. Participants in research must be afforded autonomy and respect; consent should be informed and voluntary. 24 Individuals should have the opportunity to read an information sheet about the study, ask questions, understand how their data will be stored and used, and know that they are free to withdraw at any point without reprisal. The qualitative researcher should take written consent before undertaking the interview. In a face-to-face interview, this is straightforward: the researcher and participant both sign copies of the consent form, keeping one each. However, this approach is less straightforward when the researcher and participant do not meet in person. A recent protocol paper outlined an approach for taking consent for telephone interviews, which involved: audio recording the participant agreeing to each point on the consent form; the researcher signing the consent form and keeping a copy; and posting a copy to the participant. 25 This process could be replicated in other interview studies using digital methods.

There are advantages and disadvantages of using face-to-face and digital methods for research interviews. Ultimately, for both approaches, the quality of the interview is determined by the researcher. 16 Appropriate training and preparation are thus required. Healthcare professionals can use their interpersonal communication skills when undertaking a research interview, particularly questioning, listening and conversing. 3 However, the purpose of an interview is to gain information about the study topic, 26 rather than offering help and advice. 3 The researcher therefore needs to listen attentively to participants, enabling them to describe their experience without interruption. 3 The use of active listening skills also help to facilitate the interview. 14 Spradley outlined elements and strategies for research interviews, 27 which are a useful guide for qualitative researchers:

Greeting and explaining the project/interview

Asking descriptive (broad), structural (explore response to descriptive) and contrast (difference between) questions

Asymmetry between the researcher and participant talking

Expressing interest and cultural ignorance

Repeating, restating and incorporating the participant's words when asking questions

Creating hypothetical situations

Asking friendly questions

Knowing when to leave.

For semi-structured interviews, a topic guide (also called an interview schedule) is used to guide the content of the interview – an example of a topic guide is outlined in Box 1 . The topic guide, usually based on the research questions, existing literature and, for healthcare professionals, their clinical experience, is developed by the research team. The topic guide should include open ended questions that elicit in-depth information, and offer participants the opportunity to talk about issues important to them. This is vital in qualitative research where the researcher is interested in exploring the experiences and perspectives of participants. It can be useful for qualitative researchers to pilot the topic guide with the first participants, 10 to ensure the questions are relevant and understandable, and amending the questions if required.

Regardless of the medium of interview, the researcher must consider the setting of the interview. For face-to-face interviews, this could be in the participant's home, in an office or another mutually convenient location. A quiet location is preferable to promote confidentiality, enable the researcher and participant to concentrate on the conversation, and to facilitate accurate audio-recording of the interview. For interviews using digital methods the same principles apply: a quiet, private space where the researcher and participant feel comfortable and confident to participate in an interview.

Box 1: Example of a topic guide

Study focus: Parents' experiences of brushing their child's (aged 0–5) teeth

1. Can you tell me about your experience of cleaning your child's teeth?

How old was your child when you started cleaning their teeth?

Why did you start cleaning their teeth at that point?

How often do you brush their teeth?

What do you use to brush their teeth and why?

2. Could you explain how you find cleaning your child's teeth?

Do you find anything difficult?

What makes cleaning their teeth easier for you?

3. How has your experience of cleaning your child's teeth changed over time?

Has it become easier or harder?

Have you changed how often and how you clean their teeth? If so, why?

4. Could you describe how your child finds having their teeth cleaned?

What do they enjoy about having their teeth cleaned?

Is there anything they find upsetting about having their teeth cleaned?

5. Where do you look for information/advice about cleaning your child's teeth?

What did your health visitor tell you about cleaning your child's teeth? (If anything)

What has the dentist told you about caring for your child's teeth? (If visited)

Have any family members given you advice about how to clean your child's teeth? If so, what did they tell you? Did you follow their advice?

6. Is there anything else you would like to discuss about this?

Focus groups

A focus group is a moderated group discussion on a pre-defined topic, for research purposes. 28 , 29 While not aligned to a particular qualitative methodology (for example, grounded theory or phenomenology) as such, focus groups are used increasingly in healthcare research, as they are useful for exploring collective perspectives, attitudes, behaviours and experiences. Consequently, they can yield rich, in-depth data and illuminate agreement and inconsistencies 28 within and, where appropriate, between groups. Examples include public perceptions of dental implants and subsequent impact on help-seeking and decision making, 30 and general dental practitioners' views on patient safety in dentistry. 31

Focus groups can be used alone or in conjunction with other methods, such as interviews or observations, and can therefore help to confirm, extend or enrich understanding and provide alternative insights. 28 The social interaction between participants often results in lively discussion and can therefore facilitate the collection of rich, meaningful data. However, they are complex to organise and manage, due to the number of participants, and may also be inappropriate for exploring particularly sensitive issues that many participants may feel uncomfortable about discussing in a group environment.

Focus groups are primarily undertaken face-to-face but can now also be undertaken online, using appropriate technologies such as email, bulletin boards, online research communities, chat rooms, discussion forums, social media and video conferencing. 32 Using such technologies, data collection can also be synchronous (for example, online discussions in 'real time') or, unlike traditional face-to-face focus groups, asynchronous (for example, online/email discussions in 'non-real time'). While many of the fundamental principles of focus group research are the same, regardless of how they are conducted, a number of subtle nuances are associated with the online medium. 32 Some of which are discussed further in the following sections.

Focus group considerations

Some key considerations associated with face-to-face focus groups are: how many participants are required; should participants within each group know each other (or not) and how many focus groups are needed within a single study? These issues are much debated and there is no definitive answer. However, the number of focus groups required will largely depend on the topic area, the depth and breadth of data needed, the desired level of participation required 29 and the necessity (or not) for data saturation.

The optimum group size is around six to eight participants (excluding researchers) but can work effectively with between three and 14 participants. 3 If the group is too small, it may limit discussion, but if it is too large, it may become disorganised and difficult to manage. It is, however, prudent to over-recruit for a focus group by approximately two to three participants, to allow for potential non-attenders. For many researchers, particularly novice researchers, group size may also be informed by pragmatic considerations, such as the type of study, resources available and moderator experience. 28 Similar size and mix considerations exist for online focus groups. Typically, synchronous online focus groups will have around three to eight participants but, as the discussion does not happen simultaneously, asynchronous groups may have as many as 10–30 participants. 33

The topic area and potential group interaction should guide group composition considerations. Pre-existing groups, where participants know each other (for example, work colleagues) may be easier to recruit, have shared experiences and may enjoy a familiarity, which facilitates discussion and/or the ability to challenge each other courteously. 3 However, if there is a potential power imbalance within the group or if existing group norms and hierarchies may adversely affect the ability of participants to speak freely, then 'stranger groups' (that is, where participants do not already know each other) may be more appropriate. 34 , 35

Focus group management

Face-to-face focus groups should normally be conducted by two researchers; a moderator and an observer. 28 The moderator facilitates group discussion, while the observer typically monitors group dynamics, behaviours, non-verbal cues, seating arrangements and speaking order, which is essential for transcription and analysis. The same principles of informed consent, as discussed in the interview section, also apply to focus groups, regardless of medium. However, the consent process for online discussions will probably be managed somewhat differently. For example, while an appropriate participant information leaflet (and consent form) would still be required, the process is likely to be managed electronically (for example, via email) and would need to specifically address issues relating to technology (for example, anonymity and use, storage and access to online data). 32

The venue in which a face to face focus group is conducted should be of a suitable size, private, quiet, free from distractions and in a collectively convenient location. It should also be conducted at a time appropriate for participants, 28 as this is likely to promote attendance. As with interviews, the same ethical considerations apply (as discussed earlier). However, online focus groups may present additional ethical challenges associated with issues such as informed consent, appropriate access and secure data storage. Further guidance can be found elsewhere. 8 , 32

Before the focus group commences, the researchers should establish rapport with participants, as this will help to put them at ease and result in a more meaningful discussion. Consequently, researchers should introduce themselves, provide further clarity about the study and how the process will work in practice and outline the 'ground rules'. Ground rules are designed to assist, not hinder, group discussion and typically include: 3 , 28 , 29

Discussions within the group are confidential to the group

Only one person can speak at a time

All participants should have sufficient opportunity to contribute

There should be no unnecessary interruptions while someone is speaking

Everyone can be expected to be listened to and their views respected

Challenging contrary opinions is appropriate, but ridiculing is not.

Moderating a focus group requires considered management and good interpersonal skills to help guide the discussion and, where appropriate, keep it sufficiently focused. Avoid, therefore, participating, leading, expressing personal opinions or correcting participants' knowledge 3 , 28 as this may bias the process. A relaxed, interested demeanour will also help participants to feel comfortable and promote candid discourse. Moderators should also prevent the discussion being dominated by any one person, ensure differences of opinions are discussed fairly and, if required, encourage reticent participants to contribute. 3 Asking open questions, reflecting on significant issues, inviting further debate, probing responses accordingly, and seeking further clarification, as and where appropriate, will help to obtain sufficient depth and insight into the topic area.

Moderating online focus groups requires comparable skills, particularly if the discussion is synchronous, as the discussion may be dominated by those who can type proficiently. 36 It is therefore important that sufficient time and respect is accorded to those who may not be able to type as quickly. Asynchronous discussions are usually less problematic in this respect, as interactions are less instant. However, moderating an asynchronous discussion presents additional challenges, particularly if participants are geographically dispersed, as they may be online at different times. Consequently, the moderator will not always be present and the discussion may therefore need to occur over several days, which can be difficult to manage and facilitate and invariably requires considerable flexibility. 32 It is also worth recognising that establishing rapport with participants via online medium is often more challenging than via face-to-face and may therefore require additional time, skills, effort and consideration.

As with research interviews, focus groups should be guided by an appropriate interview schedule, as discussed earlier in the paper. For example, the schedule will usually be informed by the review of the literature and study aims, and will merely provide a topic guide to help inform subsequent discussions. To provide a verbatim account of the discussion, focus groups must be recorded, using an audio-recorder with a good quality multi-directional microphone. While videotaping is possible, some participants may find it obtrusive, 3 which may adversely affect group dynamics. The use (or not) of a video recorder, should therefore be carefully considered.

At the end of the focus group, a few minutes should be spent rounding up and reflecting on the discussion. 28 Depending on the topic area, it is possible that some participants may have revealed deeply personal issues and may therefore require further help and support, such as a constructive debrief or possibly even referral on to a relevant third party. It is also possible that some participants may feel that the discussion did not adequately reflect their views and, consequently, may no longer wish to be associated with the study. 28 Such occurrences are likely to be uncommon, but should they arise, it is important to further discuss any concerns and, if appropriate, offer them the opportunity to withdraw (including any data relating to them) from the study. Immediately after the discussion, researchers should compile notes regarding thoughts and ideas about the focus group, which can assist with data analysis and, if appropriate, any further data collection.

Qualitative research is increasingly being utilised within dental research to explore the experiences, perspectives, motivations and beliefs of participants. The contributions of qualitative research to evidence-based practice are increasingly being recognised, both as standalone research and as part of larger mixed-method studies, including clinical trials. Interviews and focus groups remain commonly used data collection methods in qualitative research, and with the advent of digital technologies, their utilisation continues to evolve. However, digital methods of qualitative data collection present additional methodological, ethical and practical considerations, but also potentially offer considerable flexibility to participants and researchers. Consequently, regardless of format, qualitative methods have significant potential to inform important areas of dental practice, policy and further related research.

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Gill, P., Baillie, J. Interviews and focus groups in qualitative research: an update for the digital age. Br Dent J 225 , 668–672 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.bdj.2018.815

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14 Unstructured and Semi-Structured Interviewing

Svend Brinkmann, Department of Communication & Psychology, University of Aalborg

• Published: 01 July 2014
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This chapter gives an introduction to qualitative interviewing in its unstructured and semistructured forms. Initially, the human world is depicted as a conversational reality in which interviewing takes a central position as a research method. Interviewing is presented as a social practice that has a cultural history and that today appears in a variety of different formats. A number of distinctions are introduced, which are relevant when mapping the field of qualitative interviewing between different levels of structure, numbers of participants, media of interviewing, and also interviewer styles. A more detailed exposition of semistructured life world interviewing is offered because this is arguably the standard form of qualitative interviewing today.

Qualitative interviewing has today become a key method in the human and social sciences and also in many other corners of the scientific landscape from education to the health sciences. Some have even argued that interviewing has become the central resource through which the social sciences—and society—engages with the issues that concern it ( Rapley, 2001 ). For as long as we know, human beings have used conversation as a central tool to obtain knowledge about others. People talk with others in order to learn about how they experience the world, how they think, act, feel, and develop as individuals and in groups, and, in recent decades, such knowledge-producing conversations have been refined and discussed as qualitative interviews. 1

This chapter gives an overview of the landscape of qualitative interviewing, with a focus on its unstructured and semistructured forms. But what are interviews as such? In a classic text, Maccoby and Maccoby defined the interview as “a face-to-face verbal exchange, in which one person, the interviewer, attempts to elicit information or expressions of opinion or belief from another person or persons” ( Maccoby & Maccoby, 1954 , p. 449). This definition can be used as a very general starting point, but we shall soon see that different schools of qualitative interviewing have interpreted, modified, and added to such a generic characterization in many different ways.

I begin this chapter by giving an introduction to the broader conversational world of human beings in which interviewing takes place. I then provide a brief history of qualitative interviewing before introducing a number of conceptual and analytical distinctions relevant for the central epistemological and theoretical questions in the field of qualitative interviewing. Particular attention is given to the complementary positions of experience-focused interviewing (phenomenological positions) and language-focused interviewing (discourse-oriented positions).

Qualitative Interviewing in a Conversational World

Human beings are conversational creatures who live a dialogical life. Humankind is, in the words of philosopher Stephen Mulhall, “a kind of enacted conversation” ( Mulhall, 2007 , p. 58). From the earliest days of our lives, we are able to enter into proto-conversations with caregivers in ways that involve subtle forms of turn-taking and emotional communication. The dyads in which our earliest conversations occur are known to be prior to the child’s own sense of self. We are therefore communicating, and indeed conversational, creatures before we become subjective and monological ones ( Trevarthen, 1993 ).

Of course, we do learn to talk privately to ourselves and hide our emotional lives from others, but this is possible only because there was first an intersubjective communicative process with others. Our relationships with other people—and also with ourselves—are thus conversational. To understand ourselves, we must use a language that was first acquired conversationally, and we try out our interpretations in dialogue with others and the world. The human self exists only within what philosopher Charles Taylor has called “webs of interlocution” ( Taylor, 1989 , p. 36). Our very inquiring and interpreting selves are conversational at their core; they are constituted by the numerous relationships we have and have had with other people ( Brinkmann, 2012 ).

Unsurprisingly, conversations are therefore a rich and indispensable source of knowledge about personal and social aspects of our lives. In a philosophical sense, all human research is conversational because we are linguistic creatures and language is best understood in terms of the figure of conversation ( Mulhall, 2007 ). Since the late nineteenth century (in journalism) and the early twentieth century (in the social sciences), the conversational process of knowing has been conceptualized under the name of interviewing . The term itself testifies to the dialogical and interactional nature of human life. An interview is literally an inter-view , an interchange of views between two persons (or more) conversing about a theme of mutual interest ( Kvale & Brinkmann, 2008 ). Conversation in its Latin root means “dwelling with someone” or “wandering together with.” Similarly, the root meaning of dialogue is that of talk ( logos ) that goes back and forth ( dia- ) between persons ( Mannheim & Tedlock, 1995 , p. 4).

Thus conceived, the concept of conversation in the human and social sciences should be thought of in very broad terms and not just as a specific research method. Certainly, conversations in the form of interviewing have been refined into a set of techniques—to be explicated later—but they are also a mode of knowing and a fundamental ontology of persons. As philosopher Rom Harré has put it: “The primary human reality is persons in conversation” ( Harré, 1983 , p. 58). Cultures are constantly produced, reproduced, and revised in dialogues among their members ( Mannheim & Tedlock, 1995 , p. 2). Thus conceived, our everyday lives are conversational to their core. This also goes for the cultural investigation of cultural phenomena, or what we call social science. It is fruitful to see language, culture, and human self-understanding as emergent properties of conversations rather than the other way around. Dialogues are not several monologues that are added together but the basic, primordial form of associated human life. In the words of psychologist John Shotter:

[W]e live our daily social lives within an ambience of conversation, discussion, argumentation, negotiation, criticism and justification; much of it to do with problems of intelligibility and the legitimation of claims to truth. ( Shotter, 1993 , p. 29)

The pervasiveness of the figure of conversation in human life is both a burden and a blessing for qualitative interviewers. On the one hand, it means that qualitative interviewing becomes a very significant tool with which to understand central features of our conversational world. In response to widespread critiques of qualitative research that it is too subjective, one should say—given the picture of the conversational world painted here—that qualitative interviewing is, in fact, the most objective method of inquiry when one is interested in qualitative features of human experience, talk, and interaction because qualitative interviews are uniquely capable of grasping these features and thus of being adequate to their subject matters (which is one definition of objectivity).

On the other hand, it is also a burden for qualitative interviewers that they employ conversations to study a world that is already saturated with conversation. If Mulhall is right that humankind is a kind of enacted conversation, then the process of studying humans by the use of interviewing is analogous to fish wanting to study water. Fish surely “know” what water is in a practical, embodied sense, but it can be a great challenge to see and understand the obvious, that with which we are so familiar ( Brinkmann, 2012 ). In the same way, some interview researchers might think that interviewing others for research purposes is easy and simple to do because it employs a set of techniques that everyone masters by virtue of being capable of asking questions and recording the answers. This, however, is clearly an illusory simplicity, and many qualitative interviewers, even experienced ones, will recognize the frustrating experience of having conducted a large number of interviews (which is often the fun and seemingly simple part of a research project) but ending up with a huge amount of data, in the form of perhaps hundreds or even thousand pages of transcripts, and not knowing how to transform all this material into a solid, relevant, and thought-provoking analysis. Too much time is often spent on interviewing, whereas too little time is devoted to preparing for the interviews and subsequently analyzing the empirical materials. And, to continue on this note, too little time is normally used to reflect on the role of interviewing as a knowledge-producing social practice in itself. Due to its closeness to everyday conversations, interviewing, in short, is often simply taken for granted.

A further burden for today’s qualitative interviewers concerns the fact that interviewees are often almost too familiar with their role in the conversation. As Atkinson and Silverman argued some years ago, we live in an interview society , where the self is continually produced in confessional settings ranging from talk shows to research interviews ( Atkinson & Silverman, 1997 ). Because most of us, at least in the imagined hemisphere we call the West, are acquainted with interviews and their more or less standardized choreographies, qualitative interviews sometimes become a rather easy and regular affair, with few breaks and cracks in its conventions and norms, even though such breaks and cracks are often the most interesting aspects of conversational episodes ( Roulston, 2010 ; Tanggaard, 2007 ).

On the side of interviewers, Atkinson and Silverman find that “in promoting a particular view of narratives of personal experience, researchers too often recapitulate, in an uncritical fashion, features of the contemporary interview society” in which “the interview becomes a personal confessional” ( Atkinson & Silverman, 1997 , p. 305). Although the conversation in a broad sense is a human universal, qualitative interviewers often forget that the social practice of research interviewing in a narrower sense is a historically and culturally specific mode of interacting, and they too often construe “face-to-face interaction” as “the primordial, natural setting for communication,” as anthropologist Charles Briggs has pointed out ( Briggs, 2007 , p. 554).

As a consequence, the analysis of interviews is generally limited to what takes place during the concrete interaction phase with its questions and responses. In contrast to this, there is reason to believe that excellent interview research does not simply communicate a number of answers to an interviewer’s questions (with the researcher’s interpretive interjections added on), but includes an analytic focus on what Briggs has called “the larger set of practices of knowledge production that makes up the research from beginning to end” ( Briggs, 2007 , p. 566). Just as it is crucial in quantitative and experimental research to have an adequate understanding of the technologies of experimentation, it is similarly crucial in qualitative interviewing to understand the intricacies of this quite specific knowledge-producing practice, and interviewers should be particularly careful not to naturalize the form of human relationship that is a qualitative research interview and simply gloss it over as an unproblematic, direct, and universal source of knowledge. This, at least, is a basic assumption of the present chapter.

The History of Qualitative Interviewing

This takes us directly to the history of qualitative interviewing because only by tracking the history of how the current practices came to be can we fully understand their contingent natures and reflect on their roles in how we produce conversational knowledge through interviews today.

In one obvious sense, the use of conversations for knowledge-producing purposes is likely as old as human language and communication. The fact that we can pose questions to others about things that we are unknowledgeable about is a core capability of the human species. It expands our intellectual powers enormously because it enables us to share and distribute knowledge between us. Without this fundamental capability, it would be hard to imagine what human life would be like. It is furthermore a capacity that has developed into many different forms and ramifications in human societies. Already in 1924 could Emory Bogardus, an early American sociologist and founder of one of the first US sociology departments (at the University of Southern California) declare that interviewing “is as old as the human race” ( Bogardus, 1924 , p. 456). Bogardus discussed similarities and differences between the ways that physicians, lawyers, priests, journalists, detectives, social workers, and psychiatrists conduct interviews, with a remarkable sensitivity to the details of such different conversational practices.

Ancient Roots

In a more specific sense, and more essentially related to qualitative interviewing as a scientific human enterprise, conversations were used by Thucydides in ancient Greece as he interviewed participants from the Peloponnesian Wars to write the history of the wars. At roughly the same time, Socrates famously questioned—or we might say interviewed —his fellow citizens in ancient Athens and used the dialogues to develop knowledge about perennial human questions related to justice, truth, beauty, and the virtues. In recent years, some interview scholars have sought to rehabilitate a Socratic practice of interviewing, not least as an alternative to the often long monologues of phenomenological and narrative approaches to interviewing (see Dinkins, 2005 , who unites Socrates with a hermeneutic approach to dialogical knowledge) and also in an attempt to think of interviews as practices that can create a knowledgeable citizenry and not merely chart common opinions and attitudes ( Brinkmann, 2007 a ). Such varieties of interviewing have come to be known as dialogic and confrontational ( Roulston, 2010 , p. 26), and I return to these later.

Psychoanalysis

If we jump to more recent times, interviewing notably entered the human sciences with the advent of Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis, emerging around 1900. Freud is famous for his psychoanalytic theory of the unconscious, but it is significant that he developed this revolutionary theory (which, in many ways, changed the Western conceptions of humanity) through therapeutic conversations, or what he referred to as the talking cure . Freud conducted several hundred interviews with patients that used the patients’ free associations as a conversational engine. The therapist/interviewer should display what Freud called an “even-hovering attention” and catch on to anything that emerged as important ( Freud, 1963 ).

Freud made clear that research and treatment go hand in hand in psychoanalysis, and scholars have more recently pointed to the rich potentials of psychoanalytic conversations for qualitative interviewing today (see Kvale, 2003 ). For example, Wendy Hollway and Tony Jefferson have developed a more specific notion of the interview that is based on the psychoanalytic idea of “the defended subject” ( Hollway & Jefferson, 2000 ). In their eyes, interviewees “are motivated not to know certain aspects of themselves and... they produce biographical accounts which avoid such knowledge” (p. 169). This, obviously, has implications for how interviewers should proceed with analysis and interpretation of the biographical statements of interviewees and is a quite different approach to interviewing compared to more humanistic forms, as we shall see.

Many human and social scientists from the first half of the twentieth century were well versed in psychoanalytic theory, including those who pioneered qualitative interviewing. Jean Piaget, the famous developmental researcher, had even received training as a psychoanalyst himself, but his approach to interviewing is also worth mentioning in its own right. Piaget’s (1930) theory of child development was based on his interviews with children (often his own) in natural settings, frequently in combination with different experimental tasks. He would typically let the children talk freely about the weight and size of objects, or, in relation to his research on moral development, about different moral problems ( Piaget, 1932/1975 ), and he would notice the manner in which their thoughts unfolded.

Jumping from psychology to industrial research, Raymond Lee, one of the few historians of interviewing, has charted in detail how Piaget’s so-called clinical method of interviewing became an inspiration for Elton Mayo, who was responsible for one of the largest interview studies in history at the Hawthorne plant in Chicago in the 1920s ( Lee, 2011 ). This study arose from a need to interpret the curious results of a number of practical experiments on the effects of changes in illumination on production at the plant: it seemed that work output improved when the lighting of the production rooms was increased but also when it was decreased. This instigated an interview study, with more than 21,000 workers being interviewed for more than an hour each. The study was reported by Roethlisberger and Dickson (1939) , but it was Mayo who laid out the methodological procedures in the 1930s, including careful—and surprisingly contemporary—advice to interviewers that is worth quoting at length:

Give your whole attention to the person interviewed, and make it evident that you are doing so.

Listen—don’t talk.

Never argue; never give advice.

what he wants to say

what he does not want to say

what he cannot say without help

As you listen, plot out tentatively and for subsequent correction the pattern (personal) that is being set before you. To test this, from time to time summarize what has been said and present for comment (e.g., “is this what you are telling me?”). Always do this with the greatest caution, that is, clarify in ways that do not add or distort.

Remember that everything said must be considered a personal confidence and not divulged to anyone. ( Mayo, 1933 , p. 65)

Many approaches to and textbooks on interviewing still follow such guidelines today, often forgetting, however, the specific historical circumstances under which this practice emerged.

Nondirective Interviewing

Not just Piaget, but also the humanistic psychologist Carl Rogers had influenced Mayo and others concerned with interviewing in the first half of the twentieth century. Like Freud, Rogers developed a conversational technique that was useful both in therapeutic contexts (so-called client-centered therapy), but also in research interviews, which he referred to as the “non-directive method as a technique for social research” ( Rogers, 1945 ). As he explained, the goal of this kind of research was to sample the respondent’s attitudes toward herself: “Through the non-directive interview we have an unbiased method by which we may plumb these private thoughts and perceptions of the individual.” (p. 282). In contrast to psychoanalysis, the respondent in client-centered research (and therapy) is a client rather than a patient, and the client is the expert (and hardly a “defended subject”). Although often framed in different terms, many contemporary interview researchers conceptualize the research interview in line with Rogers’s humanistic, nondirective approach, valorizing the respondents’ private experiences, narratives, opinions, beliefs, and attitudes.

As Lee recounts, the methods of interviewing developed at Hawthorne in the 1930s aroused interest among sociologists at the University of Chicago, who made it part of their methodological repertoire ( Lee, 2011 , p. 132). Rogers himself moved to Chicago in 1945 and was involved in different interdisciplinary projects. As is well known, the so-called Chicago School of sociology was highly influential in using and promoting a range of qualitative methods, not least ethnography, and it also spawned some of the most innovative theoretical developments in the social sciences, such as symbolic interactionism (e.g., Blumer, 1969 ).

As the Rogerian nondirective approach to interviewing gained in popularity, early critiques of this technique also emerged. In the 1950s, the famous sociologist David Riesman and his colleague Mark Benney criticized it for its lack of interviewer involvement (the nondirective aspects), and they warned against the tendency to use the level of “rapport” (much emphasized by interviewers inspired by therapy) in an interview to judge its qualities concerning knowledge. They thought it was a prejudice “to assume the more rapport-filled and intimate the relation, the more ‘truth’ the respondent will vouchsafe” ( Riesman & Benney, 1956 , p. 10). In their eyes, rapport-filled interviews would often spill over with “the flow of legend and cliché” (p. 11), since interviewees are likely to adapt their responses to what they assume the interviewer expects from them (see also Lee, 2008 , for an account of Riesman’s surprisingly contemporary discussion of interviewing). Issues such as these, originally raised more than fifty years ago, continue to be pertinent and largely unresolved in today’s interview research.

Classic Studies on Authoritarianism, Sexuality, and Consumerism

The mid-twentieth century witnessed a number of other large interview studies that remain classics in the field and that have also shaped public opinion about different social issues. I mention three examples here of such influential interview studies to show the variety of themes that have been studied through interviews: on authoritarianism, sexuality, and consumerism.

After World War II, there was a pressing need to understand the roots of anti-Semitism, and The Authoritarian Personality by the well-known critical theorist Adorno and co-workers controversially traced these roots to an authoritarian upbringing ( Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson, & Sanford, 1950 ). Their study was based on interviews and employed a combination of open qualitative interviews and much more structured questionnaires to produce the data. Although important knowledge of societal value may have been produced, the study has nonetheless been criticized on ethical grounds for using therapeutic techniques to get around the defenses of the interviewees in order to learn about their prejudices and authoritarian personality traits ( Kvale & Brinkmann, 2008 , p. 313).

Another famous interview study from the same period was Kinsey’s Sexual Behavior in the Human Male ( Kinsey, Pomeroy, & Martin, 1948 ). The research group interviewed about 6,000 men for an hour or more about their sexual behaviors, which generated results that were shocking to the public. In addition to the fascinating results, the book contains many interesting reflections on interviewing, and the authors discuss in great detail how to put the interviewees at ease, assure privacy, and how to frame the sequencing of sensitive topics (the contributions of Adorno and Kinsey are also described in Platt, 2002 ). As Kinsey put it in the book:

The interview has become an opportunity for him [the participant] to develop his own thinking, to express to himself his disappointments and hopes, to bring into the open things that he has previously been afraid to admit to himself, to work out solutions to his difficulties. He quickly comes to realize that a full and complete confession will serve his own interests. ( Kinsey et al., 1948 , p. 42)

The movie Kinsey , from 2004, starring Liam Neeson, is worth seeing from an interviewer’s point of view because it shows these early interviewers in action.

As a third example, it can be mentioned that qualitative interviewing quickly entered market research in the course of the twentieth century, which is hardly surprising as a consumer society developed ( Brinkmann & Kvale, 2005 ). A pioneer was Ernest Dichter, whose The Strategy of Desire (1960) communicates the results of an interview study about consumer motivation for buying a car. Interestingly, Dichter describes his interview technique as a “depth interview,” inspired both by psychoanalysis and also by the nondirective approach of Rogers. Market and consumer research continue to be among the largest areas of qualitative interviewing in contemporary consumer society, particularly in the form of focus groups, and, according to one estimate, as many as 5 percent of all adults in Great Britain have taken part in focus groups for marketing purposes, which certainly lends very concrete support to the thesis that we live in an “interview society” ( Brinkmann & Kvale, 2005 ).

Contemporary Conceptions of Qualitative Interviewing

Along with the different empirical studies, academics in the Western world have produced an enormous number of books on qualitative interviewing as a method, both in the form of “how to” books, but also in the form of more theoretical discussions. Spradley’s The Ethnographic Interview (1979) and Mishler’s Research Interviewing: Context and Narrative (1986) were two important early books, the former being full of concrete advice about how to ask questions and the latter being a thorough theoretical analysis of interviews as speech events involving a joint construction of meaning.

Also following from the postmodern philosophies of social science that emerged in the 1980s (e.g., Clifford & Marcus, 1986 ; Lyotard, 1984 ), in the past couple of decades there has been a veritable creative explosion in the kinds of interviews offered to researchers (see Fontana & Prokos, 2007 ), many of which question both the idea of psychoanalysis as being able to dig out truths from the psyche of the interviewee and that the nondirective approach to interviews can be “an unbiased method,” as Rogers had originally conceived it.

Roulston (2010) makes a comprehensive list of some of the most recent postmodern varieties of interviewing and also of more traditional ones (I have here shortened and adapted Roulston’s longer list):

Neo-positivist conceptions of the interview are still widespread and emphasize how the conversation can be used to reveal “the true self” of the interviewee (or the essence of her experiences), ideally resulting in solid, trustworthy data that are only accessible through interviews if the interviewer assumes a noninterfering role.

Romantic conceptions stress that the goal of interviewing is to obtain revelations and confessions from the interviewee facilitated by intimacy and rapport. These conceptions are somewhat close to neo-positivist ones, but put much more weight on the interviewer as an active and authentic midwife who assists in “giving birth” to revelations from the interviewee’s inner psyche.

Constructionist conceptions reject the romantic idea of authenticity and favor an idea of a subject that is locally produced within the situation. Thus, the focus is on the situational practice of interviewing and a distrust toward the discourse of data as permanent “nuggets” to be “mined” by the interviewer. Instead, the interviewer is often portrayed as a “traveler” together with the interviewee, with both involved in the co-construction of whatever happens in the conversation ( Kvale & Brinkmann, 2008 ).

Postmodern and transformative conceptions stage interviews as dialogic and performative events that aim to bring new kinds of people and new worlds into being. The interview is depicted as a chance for people to get together and create new possibilities for action. Some transformative conceptions focus on potential decolonizing aspects of interviewing, seeking to subvert the colonizing tendencies that some see in standard interviewing ( Smith, 1999 ). In addition, we can mention feminist ( Reinharz & Chase, 2002 ) and collaborative forms of interviewing ( Ellis & Berger, 2003 ) that aim to practice an engaged form of interviewing that focuses more on the researchers’ experience than in standard procedures, sometimes expressed through autoethnography, an approach that seeks to unite ethnographical and autobiographical intentions ( Ellis, Adams, & Bochner, 2011 ).

It goes without saying that the overarching line of historical development laid out here, beginning in the earliest years of recorded human history and ending with postmodern, transformative, and co-constructed interviewing, is highly selective, and it could have been presented in countless other ways. I have made no attempt to divide up the history of qualitative interviewing into historical phases because I believe this would betray the criss-crossing lines of inspiration from different knowledge-producing practices. Socrates as an active interviewer inspires some of today’s constructionist and postmodern interviewers (as we shall see), whereas Freud and Rogers—as clinical interviewers—in different ways became important to people who use interviewing for purposes related to marketing and the industry. Thus, it seems that the only general rule is that no approach is never completely left behind and that everything can be—and often is—recycled in new clothes. This should not surprise us, because the richness and historical variability of the human conversational world demand that researchers use different conversational means of knowledge production for different purposes.

An Example of Qualitative Interviewing

Before moving on, here I introduce an example of what a typical qualitative interview may look like, taken from my own research, to illustrate more concretely what we are talking about when we use the term “qualitative interviewing.”

The following excerpt is from an interview I conducted about ten years ago. It was part of a research project in which I studied ethical dilemmas and moral reasoning in psychotherapeutic practice. The project was exploratory and sought an understanding of clinical psychologists’ own experiences of ethical problems in their work. The excerpt in Box 14.1 is not meant to represent an ideal interview, but rather to illustrate a common choreography that is inherent in much qualitative interviewing across the different varieties.

These few exchanges of questions and answers follow a certain conversational flow common in qualitative interviews. This flow can be divided into (1) question , (2) negotiation of meaning concerning the question raised and the themes addressed, (3) concrete description from the interviewee, (4) the interviewer’s interpretation of the description, and (5) coda . Then the cycle can start over with a new question, or else—as in this case—further questions about the same description can be posed.

The sequence begins when I pose a question (1) that calls for a concrete description, a question that seems to make sense to the interviewee. However, she cannot immediately think of or articulate an episode, and she expresses doubt concerning the meaning of one of the central concepts of the opening question (an “ethical dilemma”). This happens very often, and it can be quite difficult for interviewees (as for all of us) to describe concretely what one has experienced; we often resort to speaking in general terms (this characterizes professionals in particular, who have many general scripts at their disposal to articulate). There is some negotiation and attunement between us (2), before she decides to talk about a specific situation, but even though this is interesting and well described by the interviewee (3), she ends by returning (in what I call the coda) to a doubt about the appropriateness of the example. Before this, I summarize and rephrase her description (4), which she validates before she herself provides a kind of evaluation (5). After this, I have a number of follow-up questions that ask the interviewee to tell me more about the situation before a new question is introduced, and a similar conversational flow begins again.

The uncertainty of the interviewee about her own example around (2) illustrates the importance of assuring the interviewee that he or she is the expert concerning personal experience. The interviewer should make clear that, in general, there are no right or wrong answers or examples in qualitative interviewing and that the interviewer is interested in anything the interviewee comes up with. It is very common to find that participants are eager to be “good interviewees,” wanting to give the researcher something valuable, and this can paradoxically block the production of interesting stories and descriptions (although it did not in the present case).

In this case, a key point of the study became the term “ethical dilemma” itself; a term that is currently a nodal point in a huge number of different discourses with many different meanings, and it was thus interesting to hear the respondents’ immediate understandings of the term. Their widespread uncertainty concerning the referents of the term (which was shared by the interviewer!) was not only understandable, but actually conducive to developing my ideas further about (professional) ethics as something occurring in a zone of doubt rather than certainty (as otherwise stressed by some of the standard procedural approaches to ethics).

At the time of the interview, the interviewee was in her early fifties and had been a practicing psychologist for about twenty-five years. The interview was conducted in Danish, and I have translated it into English myself.

After some introductory remarks and an initial briefing, I, the interviewer (SB), go straight to a question that I had prepared in advance and ask the interviewee (IE) for a description of a concrete ethical dilemma (the numbers in square brackets refer to elements of the conversation that are addressed in the text):

SB: ( 1 ) First, I’d like to ask you to think back and describe a situation from your work as a psychologist in which you experienced an ethical dilemma... or a situation that in some way demanded special ethical considerations from you. IE: ( 2 ) Actually, I believe I experience those all the time. Well... I believe that the very fact that therapeutic work with other people demands that you keep... I don’t know if it is a dilemma—that’s what you asked about, right?—well, I don’t know if it’s a dilemma, but I think I have ethical considerations all the time. Considerations about how best to treat this human being with respect are demanded all the time... with the respect that is required, and I believe that there are many ethical considerations there. Ahm... When you work therapeutically you become very personal, get very close to another human being, and I think that is something you have to bear in mind constantly: How far are you allowed to go? How much can you enter into someone else’s universe? But that is not a dilemma, is it? SB: I guess it can be. Can you think of a concrete situation in which you faced this question about how close you can go, for example? IE: ( 3 ) Yes, I can. I just had a... a woman, whose husband has a mental disorder, or he has had a severe personality disorder, so their family life is much affected by this. And she comes to me to process this situation of hers, having two small children and a husband, and a system of treatment, which sometimes helps out and sometimes doesn’t. And it is very difficult for her to accept that someone close to her has a mental disorder or is fragile, it’s actually a long process. She is a nurse and family life has more or less been idyllic before he... before the personality disorder really emerged. So it is extremely difficult for her to accept that this family, which she had imagined would be the place for her children to grow up, is not going to be like that. It is actually going to be very, very different. And she tries to fight it all the time: “It just might be... if only... I guess it will be...” And it is never going to be any different! And there lies a dilemma, I think: How much is it going to be: “This is something you have to face, it is never going to be different!” So I have to work to make her pose the question herself: “What do you think? How long time... What are your thoughts? Do you think it will be different? What do they tell you at the psychiatric hospital? What is your experience?” And right now she is getting closer to seeing... I might fear that it ends in a divorce; I am not sure that she can cope with it. But no one can know this. I think there is a dilemma here, or some considerations about how much to push and press forward. SB: ( 4 ) Yes, the dilemma is perhaps that you—with your experience and knowledge about these matters—can see that the situation is not going to change much from its current state? IE: It certainly won’t. SB: And the question is... IE: ... how much I should push, for she does actually know this intellectually. ( 5 ) We have talked about it lots of times. But emotionally she hasn’t... she doesn’t have the power to face it. One day I told her: “I don’t think you develop, I don’t think anything happens to you, before you accept emotionally that he is not going to change.” I put her on the spot and she kept evading it and so on, but it...“You don’t accept it; I can tell that you don’t accept it. You understand it intellectually, but you still hope that it passes.” I pushed her a lot then. But I don’t know if this is an ethical dilemma, I am not sure...

When I first set out to conduct this study, I had something like a neo-positivist conception of interviewing in mind, in Roulston’s sense, believing that there were certain essential features connected to the experience of ethically difficult situations. When working further with the theme, and after learning from my interviewees, I gradually grew suspicious of this idea, and I also came to appreciate a more constructionist conception of interviewing, according to which the interview situation itself—including the interviewer—plays an important role in the production of talk.

Other things to note about the example in Box 14.1 include the asymmetrical distribution of talk that can be observed between the two conversationalists: the interviewer poses rather short questions, and the interviewee gives long and elaborated answers. This is not always so (some respondents are more reluctant or simply less talkative), but this asymmetry has been highlighted as a sign of quality in the literature on qualitative interviewing (e.g., Kvale & Brinkmann, 2008 ). There is also quite a bit of dramatization in the interviewee’s talk in the excerpt; for example, when she uses reported speech to stage a dialogue between herself and her client, which signals that she is capable with words and a good storyteller. On the side of the interviewer, we see that no attempts are made to contradict or question the interviewee’s account, and the part of the interview quoted here thus looks quite a bit like that recommended by Mayo in the 1930s and by later nondirective interviewers: the interviewer listens a lot and does not talk much, he does not argue or give advice, and he plots out tentatively (in [4]) what the interviewee is saying, which is commented on and verified (cf. Mayo, 1933 , p. 65).

Different Forms of Qualitative Research Interviews

The semistructured, face-to-face interview in Box 14.1 is probably very typical, but it merely represents one form an interview may take, and there is a huge variety of other forms. Each form has certain advantages and disadvantages that researchers and recipients of research alike should be aware of. I here describe how qualitative interviews may differ in terms of structure, the number of participants in each interview, different media, and also different interviewer styles.

It is common to draw a distinction between structured, semistructured, and unstructured interviews. This distinction, however, should be thought of as a continuum ranging from relatively structured to relatively unstructured formats. I use the word “relatively” because, on the one end of the continuum, as Parker (2005) argues, there really is no such thing as a completely structured interview “because people always say things that spill beyond the structure, before the interview starts and when the recorder has been turned off” (p. 53). Utterances that “spill beyond the structure” are often important and are even sometimes the key to understanding the interviewee’s answers to the structured questions. One line of criticism against standardized survey interviewing actually concerns the fact that meanings and interpretive frames that go beyond the predetermined structure are left out, with the risk that the researcher cannot understand what actually goes on in the interaction.

We might add to Parker’s argument that there is also no such thing as a completely unstructured interview because the interviewer always has an idea about what should take place in the conversation. Even some of the least structured interviews, such as life history interviews that only have one question prepared in advance (e.g., “I would like you to tell me the story of your life. Please begin as far back as you remember and include as many details as possible”), provide structure to the conversation by framing it in accordance with certain specific conversational norms rather than others. Another way to put this is to say that there are no such things as nonleading questions. All questions lead the interviewee in certain directions, but it is generally preferably to lead participants only to talk about certain themes , rather than to specific opinions about these themes.

So, it is not possible to avoid structure entirely nor would it be desirable, but it is possible to provide a structure that it flexible enough for interviewees to be able to raise questions and concerns in their own words and from their own perspectives. Anthropologist Bruno Latour has argued that this is one definition of objectivity that human and social science can work with, in the sense of “allowing the object to object” ( Latour, 2000 ). Latour pinpoints a problem in the human and social sciences related to the fact that, for these sciences and unlike in the natural sciences “nothing is more difficult than to find a way to render objects able to object to the utterances that we make about them” (p. 115). He finds that human beings behave too easily as if they had been mastered by the researcher’s agenda, which often results in trivial and predictable research that tells us nothing new. What should be done instead is to allow research participants to be “interested, active, disobedient, fully involved in what is said about themselves by others” (p. 116). This does not imply a total elimination of structure, but it demands careful preparation and reflection on how to involve interviewees actively, how to avoid flooding the conversation with social science categories, and how to provoke interviewees in a respectful way to bring contrasting perspectives to light ( Parker, 2005 , p. 63).

In spite of this caveat—that neither completely structured nor completely unstructured interviews are possible—it may still be worthwhile to distinguish between more or less structure, with semistructured interviews somewhere in the middle as the standard approach to qualitative interviewing.

Structured Interviews

Structured interviews are employed in surveys and are typically based on the same research logic as questionnaires: standardized ways of asking questions are thought to lead to answers that can be compared across participants and possibly quantified. Interviewers are supposed to “read questions exactly as worded to every respondent and are trained never to provide information beyond what is scripted in the questionnaire” ( Conrad & Schober, 2008 , p. 173). Although structured interviews are useful for some purposes, they do not take advantage of the dialogical potentials for knowledge production inherent in human conversations. They are passive recordings of people’s opinions and attitudes and often reveal more about the cultural conventions of how one should answer specific questions than about the conversational production of social life itself. I do not address these structured forms in greater detail in this chapter.

Unstructured Interviews

At the other end of the continuum lie interviews that have little preset structure. These are, for example, the life story interview seeking to highlight “the most important influences, experiences, circumstances, issues, themes, and lessons of a lifetime” ( Atkinson, 2002 , p. 125). What these aspects are for an individual cannot be known in advance but emerge in the course of spending time with the interviewee, which means that the interviewer cannot prepare for a life story interview by devising a lot of specific questions but must instead think about how to facilitate the telling of the life story. After the opening request for a narrative, the main role of the interviewer is to remain a listener, withholding desires to interrupt and sporadically asking questions that may clarify the story. The life story interview is a variant of the more general genre of narrative interviewing about which Wengraf’s (2001)   Qualitative Research Interviewing gives a particularly thorough account, focusing on biographical-narrative depth interviews. These need not concern the life story as a whole, but may address other, more specific storied aspects of human lives, building on the narratological insight that humans experience and act in the world through narratives. Narratives, in this light, are a root metaphor for psychological processes ( Sarbin, 1986 ). With the more focused narrative interviews, we get nearer to semistructured interviews as the middle ground between structured and unstructured interviews.

Semistructured Interviews

Interviews in the semistructured format are sometimes equated with qualitative interviewing as such ( Warren, 2002 ). They are probably also the most widespread form of interviews in the human and social sciences and are sometimes the only format given attention to in textbooks on qualitative research (e.g., Flick, 2002 ). Compared to structured interviews, semistructured interviews can make better use of the knowledge-producing potentials of dialogues by allowing much more leeway for following up on whatever angles are deemed important by the interviewee; as well, the interviewer has a greater chance of becoming visible as a knowledge-producing participant in the process itself, rather than hiding behind a preset interview guide. And, compared to unstructured interviews, the interviewer has a greater say in focusing the conversation on issues that he or she deems important in relation to the research project.

One definition of the qualitative research interview (in a generic form, but tending toward the semistructured format) reads: “It is defined as an interview with the purpose of obtaining descriptions of the life world of the interviewee in order to interpret the meaning of the described phenomena” ( Kvale & Brinkmann, 2008 , p. 3). The key words here are purpose, descriptions, life world , and interpretation of meaning :

Purpose : Unlike everyday conversations with friends or family members, qualitative interviews are not conducted for their own sake; they are not a goal in themselves, but are staged and conducted to serve the researcher’s goal of producing knowledge (and there may be other, ulterior goals like obtaining a degree, furthering one’s career, positioning oneself in the field, etc.). All sorts of motives may play a role in the staging of interviews, and good interview reports often contain a reflexive account and a discussion of both individual and social aspects of such motives (does it matter, for example, if the interviewer is a woman, perhaps identifying as a feminist, interviewing other women?). Clearly, the fact that interviews are conversations conducted for a purpose, which sets the agenda, raises a number of issues having to do with power and control that are important to reflect on for epistemic as well as ethical reasons ( Brinkmann, 2007 b ).

Descriptions : In most interview studies, the goal is to obtain the interviewee’s descriptions rather than reflections or theorizations. In line with a widespread phenomenological perspective (explained more fully later), interviewers are normally seeking descriptions of how interviewees experience the world, its episodes and events, rather than speculations about why they have certain experiences. Good interview questions thus invite interviewees to give descriptions; for example, “Could you please describe a situation for me in which you became angry?,” “What happened?,” “How did you experience anger?,” “How did it feel?” (of course, only one of these questions should be posed at a time), and good interviewers tend to avoid more abstract and reflective questions such as “What does anger mean to you?,” “If I say ‘anger,’ what do you think of then?,” “Why do you think that you tend to feel angry?” Such questions may be productive in the conversation, but interviewers will normally defer them until more descriptive aspects have been covered.

Life world : The concept of the life world goes back to the founder of phenomenology, Edmund Husserl, who introduced it in 1936, in his book The Crisis of the European Sciences to refer to the intersubjectively shared and meaningful world in which humans conduct their lives and experience significant phenomena ( Husserl, 1954 ). It is a prereflective and pretheorized world in which anger, for example, is a meaningful human expression in response to having one’s rights violated (or something similar) before it is a process occurring in the neurophysiological and endocrinological systems (“before” should here be taken in a logical, rather than temporal, sense). If anger did not appear to human beings as a meaningful experienced phenomenon in their life world, there would be no reason to investigate it scientifically because there would, in a sense, be nothing to investigate (since anger is primarily identified as a life world phenomenon). In qualitative research in general, as in qualitative interviewing in particular, there is a primacy of the life world as experienced, as something prior to the scientific theories we may formulate about it. This was well expressed by Maurice Merleau-Ponty, another famous phenomenologist, who built on the work of Husserl:

All my knowledge of the world, even my scientific knowledge, is gained from my own particular point of view, or from some experience of the world without which the symbols of science would be meaningless. The whole universe of science is built upon the world as directly experienced [i.e., the life world], and if we want to subject science itself to rigorous scrutiny and arrive at a precise assessment of its meaning and scope, we must begin by re-awakening the basic experiences of the world of which science is the second order expression. ( Merleau-Ponty, 1945/2002 , p. ix)

Objectifying sciences give us second-order understandings of the world, but qualitative research is meant to provide a first-order understanding through concrete description. Whether interview researchers express themselves in the idiom of phenomenology, or use the language of some other qualitative paradigm (discourse analysis, symbolic interactionism, ethnomethodology, etc.), they most often decide to use interviews to elicit descriptions of the life world—or whatever term the given paradigm employs: the interaction order (to speak with Erving Goffman, an exponent of symbolic interactionism), the immortal ordinary society (to speak with Harold Garfinkel, the founder of ethnomethodology), or the set of interpretative repertoires that make something meaningful (to speak with Jonathan Potter and Margaret Wetherell, significant discursive psychologists). 2

Interpret the meaning : Even if interviewers are generally interested in how people experience and act in the world prior to abstract theorizations, they must nonetheless often engage in interpretations of people’s experiences and actions as described in interviews. One reason for this is that life world phenomena are rarely transparent and “monovocal” but are rather “polyvocal” and sometimes even contradictory, permitting multiple readings and interpretations. Who is to say what someone’s description of anger signifies? Obviously, the person having experienced the anger should be listened to, but if there is one lesson to learn from twentieth-century human science (ranging from psychoanalysis to poststructuralism) it is that we, as human subjects, do not have full authority concerning how to understand our lives because we do not have—and can never have—full insight into the forces that have created us ( Butler, 2005 ). We are, as Judith Butler has argued, authored by what precedes and exceeds us (p. 82), even when we are considered—as in qualitative interviews—to be authors of our own utterances. The interpretation of the meanings of the phenomena described by the interviewee can favorably be built into the conversation itself (as I tried to do at point (4) in the excerpt in Box 14.1 ) because this will at least give the interviewee a chance to object to a certain interpretation, but it is a process that goes on throughout an interview project.

In my opinion, too rarely do interview researchers allow themselves to follow the different, polyvocal, and sometimes contradictory meanings that emerge through different voices in interviewee accounts. Analysts of interviews are generally looking for the voice of the interviewee, thereby ignoring internal conflicts in narratives and descriptions. Stephen Frosh has raised this concern from a discursive and psychoanalytic perspective, and he criticizes the narrativist tendency among qualitative researchers to present human experience in ways that set up coherent themes that constitute integrated wholes ( Frosh, 2007 ). Often, it is the case that the stories people tell are ambiguous and full of gaps, especially for people “on the margins of hegemonic discourses” (p. 637). Like Butler, Frosh finds that the human subject is never a whole, “is always riven with partial drives, social discourses that frame available modes of experience, ways of being that are contradictory and reflect the shifting allegiances of power as they play across the body and the mind” (p. 638). If this is so, it is important to be open to multiple interpretations of what is said and done in an interview. Fortunately, some qualitative approaches do have an eye to this and have designed ways to comprehend complexity; for example, the so-called listening guide developed by Carol Gilligan and co-workers and designed to listen for multiple voices in interviewee accounts (for a recent version of this approach, see Sorsoli & Tolman, 2008 ).

To sum up, the “meanings” that qualitative interviewers are commonly looking for are often multiple, perspectival, and contradictory and thus demand careful interpretation. And there is much controversy in the qualitative communities concerning whether meanings are essentially “there” to be articulated by the interviewee and interpreted by the interviewer (emphasized in particular by phenomenological approaches) or whether meanings are constructed locally (i.e., arise dialogically in a process that centrally involves the interviewer as co-constructor, as stressed by discursive and constructionist approaches). Regardless of one’s epistemological standpoint, it remains important for interviewers to make clear, when they design, conduct, and communicate their research, how they approach this thorny issue because this will make it much easier for readers of interview reports to understand and assess what is communicated.

I have now introduced a working definition of the relatively unstructured and semistructured qualitative research interview and emphasized four vital aspects: such interviews are structured by the interviewer’s purpose of obtaining knowledge; they revolve around descriptions provided by the interviewee; such descriptions are commonly about life world phenomena as experienced; and understanding the meaning of the descriptions involves some kind of interpretation . Although these aspects capture what is essential to a large number of qualitative interview studies now and in the past (and likely many in the future as well), it is important to stress that all these aspects can be and have been challenged in the methodological literature.

In relation to qualitative interviewing, as in qualitative research in general, there is never one correct way to understand or practice a method or a technique because everything depends on concrete circumstances and on the researcher’s intentions when conducting a particular research project. This does not mean that “anything goes” and that nothing is never better than something else, but it does mean that what is “better” is always relative to what one is interested in doing or knowing. The answer to the question “What’s the proper definition of and approach to qualitative interviewing?” must thus be: “It depends on what you wish to achieve by interviewing people for research purposes!” Unfortunately, too many interview researchers simply take one or another approach to interviewing for granted as the only correct one and forget to reflect on the advantages and disadvantages of their favored approach (sometimes they are not even aware that other approaches exist). These researchers thus proceed without properly theorizing their means of knowledge production.

Individual and Group Interviews

It is not only the interviewer’s agenda and research interests that structure the interaction in an interview. Unsurprisingly, the number of participants also plays an important role. As the history of interviewing testifies, the standard format of qualitative interviewing is with one person interviewing another person. This format was illustrated in the example in Box 14.1 , and although this chapter is not about group interviews, I briefly mention these to illustrate how they differ from conventional forms of qualitative interviewing.

Group Interviews

There is an increasing use of group interviews. These have been in use since the 1920s but became standard practice only after the 1950s, when market researchers in particular developed what they termed “focus group interviews” to study consumer preferences. Today, focus groups dominate consumer research and are also often used in health, education, and evaluation research; they are in fact becoming increasingly common across many disciplines in the social sciences.

In focus groups, the interviewer is conceived as a “moderator” who focuses the group discussion on specific themes of interest, and she or he will often use the group dynamic instrumentally to include a number of different perspectives on the give themes ( Morgan, 2002 ). Often, group interviews are more dynamic and flexible in comparison with individual interviews, and they may be closer to everyday discussions. They can be used, for example, when the researcher is not so much interested in people’s descriptions of their experiences as in how participants discuss, argue, and justify their opinions and attitudes.

The standard size for a focus group is between six to ten participants, led by a moderator ( Chrzanowska, 2002 ). Recently, qualitative researchers have also experimented with groups of only two participants (sometimes referred to as “the two-person interview,” although there are literally three people if one counts the interviewer), mainly because it makes the research process easier to handle than with larger groups, where people will often not show up. The moderator introduces the topics for discussion and facilitates the interchange. The point is not to reach consensus about the issues discussed but to have different viewpoints articulated about an issue. Focus group interviews are well suited for exploratory studies in little-known domains or about newly emerging social phenomena because the dynamic social interaction that results may provide more spontaneous expressions than occur in individual interviews.

Individual Interviews

Individual interviews with one interviewer and one interviewee may sometimes be less lively than group interviews, but they have a couple of other advantages: First, it is often easier for the interviewer in one-on-one interviews to lead the conversation in a direction that is useful in relation to the interviewer’s research interests. Second, when studying aspects of people’s lives that are personal, sensitive, or even taboo, it is preferable to use individual interviews that allow for more confidentiality and often make it easier for the interviewer to create an atmosphere of trust and discretion. It is very doubtful, to take a rather extreme example, that Kinsey and his colleagues could have achieved the honest descriptions of sexual behaviors from their respondents had they conducted group rather than individual interviews. And there are obviously also certain themes that simply demand one person telling a story without being interrupted or gainsaid by other participants, such as in biographical research.

Although late-modern Western culture now looks on the individual, face-to-face interview as a completely common and natural occurrence, we should be very careful not to naturalize this particular form of human relationship, as I emphasized earlier. Briggs (2007) has argued that this form of relationship implies a certain “field of communicability,” referring to a socially situated construction of communicative processes (p. 556). This construction is an artefact of cultural-historical practices and is placed within organized social fields that produce different roles, positions, relations, and forms of agency that are frequently taken for granted. There are thus certain rights, duties, and a repertoire of acts that open up when entering the field of communicability of qualitative interviewing—and others that close down. Much about this field of communicability may seem trivial—that the interviewer asks questions and the interviewee answers, that the interviewee conveys personal information that he or she would not normally tell a stranger, that the interviewee is positioned as the expert on that person’s own life, and so on—but the role of this field in the process of knowledge production is very rarely addressed by interview researchers. We too seldom stop and consider the “magic” of interviewing—that a stranger is willing to tell an interviewer so many things about her life simply because the interviewer presents herself as a researcher. Rather than naturalize this practice, we should defamiliarize ourselves with it—like ethnographers visiting a strange “interview culture”—in order to understand and appreciate its role in scientific knowledge production.

Interviewing Using Different Media

Following from Briggs’s analysis of the communicability of interviewing, it is noteworthy that the otherwise standardized format of “face-to-face interaction” was named as late as the early twentieth century by the sociologist Charles Horton Cooley but was since constructed as “primordial, authentic, quintessentially human, and necessary” ( Briggs, 2007 , p. 553). It is sometimes forgotten that the face-to-face interview, as a kind of interaction mediated by this particular social arrangement, also has a history. Other well-known media employed in qualitative interviewing include the telephone and the internet, and here we briefly look at differences among face-to-face, telephone, and internet interviews.

Face-to-Face Interviews

In face-to-face interviews, people are present not only as conversing minds, but as flesh-and-blood creatures who may laugh, cry, smile, tremble, and otherwise give away much information in terms of gestures, body language, and facial expressions. Interviewers thus have the richest source of knowledge available here, but the challenge concerns how to use it productively. In most cases, how people look and act is forgotten once the transcript is made, and the researcher carries out her analyses using the stack of transcripts rather than the embodied interaction that took place. This is a problem especially when a research assistant or someone other than the interviewer transcribes the interview because, in that case, it is not possible to note all the nonverbal signs and gestures that occurred. If possible, it is therefore preferable for the interviewer herself to transcribe the conversations, and it is optimal to do so relatively soon after the conversations are over (e.g., within a couple of days) because this guarantees better recollection of the body language, the atmosphere, and other nontranscribable features of the interaction.

Telephone Interviews

According to Shuy (2002) , the telephone interview has “swept the polling and survey industry in recent years and is now the dominant approach” (p. 539). It often follows a very structured format. In a research context, the use of telephone conversations was pioneered by conversation analysts, who were able to identify a number of common conversational mechanisms (related to turn-taking, adjacency pairs such as questions–answers, etc.) from the rather constricted format that is possible over the telephone. The constricted format may in itself have been productive in throwing light on certain core features of human talk.

Shuy emphasizes a number of advantages of telephone interviewing, such as reduced interviewer effects (important in structured polling interviews, for example), better interviewer uniformity, greater standardization of questions, greater cost-efficiency, increased researcher safety ( Shuy, 2002 , p. 540), and—we might add—better opportunities for interviewing people who live far from the interviewer. In qualitative interviewing, however, it is not possible (nor desirable) to avoid these “interviewer effects” because the interviewer herself is the research instrument, so only the latter couple of points are relevant in this context. However, Shuy also highlights some advantages of in-person interviewing versus telephone interviewing, such as more accurate responses due to contextual naturalness, greater likelihood of self-generated answers, more symmetrical distribution of interactive power, greater effectiveness with complex issues, more thoughtful responses, and the fact that such interviews are better in relation to sensitive questions (pp. 541–544). The large majority of interviews characterized as “qualitative” are conducted face-to-face, mainly because of the advantages listed by Shuy.

Internet Interviews

E-mail and chat interviews are varieties of internet interviewing, with e-mail interviewing normally implying an asynchronous interaction in time, with the interviewer writing a question and then waiting for a response, and chat interviews being synchronous or occurring in “real time” ( Mann & Stewart, 2002 ). The latter can approach a conversational format that resembles face-to-face interviews, with its quick turn takings. When doing online ethnographies (e.g., in virtual realities on the internet), chat interviews are important (see Markham, 2005 , on online ethnography). One advantage of e-mail and chat interviews is that they are “self-transcribing” in the sense that the written text itself is the medium through which researcher and respondents express themselves, and the text is thus basically ready for analysis the minute it has been typed ( Kvale & Brinkmann, 2008 , p. 149).

Disadvantages of such interview forms are related to the demanded skills of written communication. Not everyone is sufficiently skilled at writing to be able to express themselves in rich and detailed ways. Most research participants are also more comfortable when talking, rather than writing, about their lives and experiences. However, as the psychiatrist Finn Skårderud has pointed out, there are some exceptions here, and Skårderud emphasizes in particular that internet conversations can be useful when communicating with people who have problematic relationships to their bodies (e.g., eating disorders). For such people, the physical presence of a problematic body can represent an unwanted disturbance ( Skårderud, 2003 ).

In concluding on the different media of interviewing, it should be emphasized that all interviews are mediated, even if only by the spoken words and the historical arrangement of questioning through face-to-face interaction, and there is no universally correct medium that will always guarantee success. Interviewers should choose their medium according to their knowledge interests and should minimally reflect on the effects of communicating through one medium rather than another. That said, most of the themes that qualitative interviewers are interested in lend themselves more easily to face-to-face interviewing because of the trust, confidentiality, and contextual richness that this format enables.

Different Styles of Interviewing

We have now seen how interviews may differ in terms of structure, number of participants, and media. Another crucial factor is the style of interviewing; that is, the way the interviewer acts and positions herself in the conversation. In relation to this, Wengraf (2001) has introduced a general distinction between “receptive” interviewer styles and assertive styles (or strategies, as he calls them), with the former being close to Carl Rogers’s model of psychotherapy and the latter being more in line with active and Socratic approaches to interviewing (both of which were addressed earlier). Here, I describe these in greater detail as two ends on a continuum.

Receptive Interviewing

According to Wengraf, a receptive style empowers informants and enables them to have “a large measure of control in the way in which they answer the relatively few and relatively open questions they are asked” ( Wengraf, 2001 , p. 155). Much of what was said earlier on the historical contributions of Elton Mayo and Carl Rogers and on semistructured life world interviewing addressed the receptive style in a broad sense; this is often thought of as self-evidently correct, so that no alternatives are considered. Therefore, I devote more space to articulate the somewhat more unusual assertive style, which is attracting more and more attention today.

Assertive Interviewing

Wengraf states that an assertive style may come close to a legal interrogation and enables the interviewer “to control the responses, provoke and illuminate self-contradiction, absences, provoke self-reflexivity and development” (2001, p. 155), perhaps approaching transformative conceptions of interviewing to use Roulston’s terminology mentioned earlier.

A well-known and more positive exposition of the assertive style was developed by Holstein and Gubrium in their book on The Active Interview ( Holstein & Gubrium, 1995 ). They argued that, in reality, there is not much of a choice because interviews are unavoidably interpretively active, meaning-making practices, and this would apply even when interviewers attempt a more receptive style. In this case, however, their role in meaning-making would simply be more elusive and more difficult to take into account when analyzing interview talk. A consequence of this line of argument is that it is preferable for interviewers to take their inevitable role as co-constructors of meaning into account rather than trying to downplay it.

Discourse analysts such as Potter and Wetherell (1987) have also developed an active, assertive practice of interviewing. In a classic text, they describe the constructive role of the interview researcher and summarize discourse analytic interviewing as follows:

First, variation in response is as important as consistency. Second, techniques, which allow diversity rather than those which eliminate it are emphasized, resulting in more informal conversational exchanges and third, interviewers are seen as active participants rather than like speaking questionnaires. ( Potter & Wetherell, 1987 , p. 165)

Variation, diversity, informality, and an active interviewer are key, and the interview process, for Potter and Wetherell, is meant to lead to articulations of the “interpretative repertoires” of the interviewees, but without the interviewer investigating the legitimacy of these repertoires in the interview situation or the respondent’s ways of justifying them. This is in contrast to Socratic and other confronting variants of active interviews, which are designed not just to map participants’ understandings and beliefs, but also to study how participants justify their understandings and beliefs.

To illustrate concretely what a confrontative assertive style looks like, we turn to a simple and very short example from Plato’s The Republic , with Socrates as interviewer (discussed in Brinkmann, 2007 a ). The passage very elegantly demonstrates that no moral rules are self-applying or self-interpreting but must always be understood contextually. Socrates is in a conversation with Cephalus, who believes that justice ( dikaiosune )—here “doing right”—can be stated in universal rules, such as “tell the truth” and “return borrowed items”:

“That’s fair enough, Cephalus,” I [Socrates] said. “But are we really to say that doing right consists simply and solely in truthfulness and returning anything we have borrowed? Are those not actions that can be sometimes right and sometimes wrong? For instance, if one borrowed a weapon from a friend who subsequently went out of his mind and then asked for it back, surely it would be generally agreed that one ought not to return it, and that it would not be right to do so, not to consent to tell the strict truth to a madman?” “That is true,” he [Cephalus] replied. “Well then,” I [Socrates] said, “telling the truth and returning what we have borrowed is not the definition of doing right.” ( Plato, 1987 , pp. 65–66)

Here, the conversation is interrupted by Polemarchus who disagrees with Socrates’ preliminary conclusion, and Cephalus quickly leaves to go to a sacrifice. Then Polemarchus takes Cephalus’s position as Socrates’ discussion partner and the conversation continues as if no substitution had happened.

The passage is instructive because it shows us what qualitative interviewing normally is not . Socrates violates almost every standard principle of qualitative research interviewing, and we can see that the conversation is a great contrast to my own interview excerpt in Box 14.1 . Socrates talks much more than his respondent, he has not asked Cephalus to “describe a situation in which he has experienced justice” or “tell a story about doing right from his own experience” or a similar concretely descriptive question probing for “lived experience.” Instead, they are talking about the definition of an important general concept. Socrates contradicts and challenges his respondent’s view. There is no debriefing or attempt to make sure that the interaction was a pleasant experience for Cephalus, the interview is conducted in public rather than private, and the topic is not private experiences or biographical details, but justice, a theme of common human interest, at least of interest to all citizens of Athens.

Sometimes, the conversation partners in the Platonic dialogues settle on a shared definition, but more often the dialogue ends without any final, unarguable definition of the central concept (e.g., justice, virtue, love). This lack of resolution— aporia in Greek—can be interpreted as illustrating the open-ended character of our conversational reality, including the open-ended character of the discursively produced knowledge of human social and historical life. If humankind is a kind of enacted conversation, to return to my opening remarks in this chapter, the goal of social science is perhaps not to arrive at “fixed knowledge” once and for all, but to help human beings improve the quality of their conversational reality, to help them know their own society and social practices, and debate the goals and values that are important in their lives ( Flyvbjerg, 2001 ).

Interviews can be intentionally assertive, active, and confronting (good examples are found in Bellah, Madsen, Sullivan, Swidler, & Tipton, 1985 , who explicitly acknowledge a debt to Socrates), but the assertive approach can also be employed post hoc as a more analytic perspective. Consider, for example, the excerpt in Box 14.2 from a study by Shweder and Much (1987) , discussed in detail by Valsiner (2007 , pp. 385–386). The interview is set in India and was part of a research project studying moral reasoning in a cross-cultural research design. Earlier in the interview, Babaji (the interviewee) has been presented with a variant of the famous Heinz dilemma (here called the Ashok dilemma), invented by moral developmental psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg to assess people’s moral capabilities ( Kohlberg, 1981 ): a man (Heinz/Ashok) has a wife who is ill and will die if he does not steal some medicine from a pharmacist (who refuses to sell the medicine at a price that the man can afford). According to Babaji’s Hinduism, stealing is not permitted, and the interview unfolds from there (see Box 14.2 ).

According to Valsiner (2007) , we see in the interview how the interviewer (Richard Shweder), in a very active or assertive way, does everything he can to persuade Babaji to accept the Western framing of the dilemma and see the tension between stealing for a moral reason and stealing as an immoral act. But Babaji fails to, or refuses to, see the situation as a dilemma and first attempts to articulate other possibilities in addition to stealing/not stealing (viz. give shamanistic instructions) before finally suggesting that Ashok sells himself in order to raise the money. As such, the interview flow is best understood as an active and confrontational encounter between two quite different worldviews that are revealed exactly because the interviewer acts in a confronting, although not disrespectful, way. 3

Furthermore, the excerpt illustrates how cross-cultural interviewing can be quite difficult—but also extremely interesting—not least when conducted in “noninterview societies” ( Ryen, 2002 , p. 337); that is, in societies where interviewing is not common or recognized as a knowledge-producing instrument. All qualitative interviewing is a collaborative accomplishment, but this becomes exceedingly visible when collaborating cross-culturally.

Analytic Approaches to Interviewing

Before closing this chapter, I give a very brief introduction to different perspectives on how to analyze interviews. Obviously, I cannot here cover the immense variety of phenomenological, discursive, conversation analytic, feminist, poststructuralist, psychoanalytic perspectives, so instead I present a simplified dichotomy that should really be thought of as a continuum. The dichotomy has already played an implicit role earlier because it implies a distinction between interview talk as primarily descriptive (phenomenological) reports (concentrating on the “what” of communication) and interview talk as primarily (discursive) accounts (chiefly concerned with the “how” of talk). Phenomenological approaches to interviewing in a broad sense (exemplified in my exposition of semistructured life world interviewing) try to get as close as possible to precise descriptions of what people have experienced, whereas other analytical approaches (found, e.g., in certain schools of discourse analysis and conversation analysis) focus on how people express themselves and give accounts occasioned by the situation in which they find themselves. The two approaches are contrasted in Table 14.1 , with “what” approaches on the left-hand side and “how” approaches on the right-hand side.

Interviewer: Why doesn’t Hindu dharma permit stealing? Babaji: If he steals, it is a sin—so what virtue is there in saving a life. Hindu dharma keeps man from sinning. Interviewer: Why would it be a sin? Isn’t there a saying “On must jump into fire for others”? Babaji: That is there in our dharma—sacrifice, but not stealing. Interviewer: But if he doesn’t provide the medicine for his wife, she will die. Wouldn’t it be a sin to let her die? Babaji: That’s why, according to the capacities and powers which God has given him, he should try to give her shamanistic instructions and advice. Then she can be cured. Interviewer: But, that particular medicine is the only way out. Babaji: There is no reason to necessarily think that that particular drug will save her life. Interviewer: Let’s suppose she can only be saved by that drug, or else she will die. Won’t he face lots of difficulties if his wife dies? Babaji: No. Interviewer: But his family will break up. Babaji: He can marry other women. Interviewer: But he has no money. How can he remarry? Babaji: Do you think he should steal? If he steals, he will be sent to jail. Then what’s the use of saving her life to keep the family together. She has enjoyed the days destined for her. But stealing is bad. Our sacred scriptures tell that sometimes stealing is an act of dharma. If by stealing for you I can save your life, then it is an act of dharma. But one cannot steal for his wife or his offspring or for himself. If he does that, it is simply stealing. Interviewer: If I steal for myself, then it’s a sin? Babaji: Yes. Interviewer: But in this case I am stealing for my wife, not for me. Babaji: But your wife is yours. Interviewer: Doesn’t Ashok have a duty or obligation to steal the drug? Babaji: He may not get the medicine by stealing. He may sell himself. He may sell himself to someone for say 500 rupees for six months or one year. ( Shweder & Much, 1987 , p. 236)

My inspiration for slicing the cake of qualitative interviewing in this manner comes from Talmy (2010) and Rapley (2001) , who builds on a distinction from Clive Seale between interview-data-as-resource and interview-data-as-topic.

Interviews as Research Instrument

Researchers working from the former perspective (corresponding to the left-hand side of Table 14.1 ) believe that interview data can reflect the interviewees’ reality outside the interview and consequently seek to minimize the interviewer’s effects on coloring interviewees’ reports of their everyday reality. The interview becomes a research instrument in the hands of interviewers, who are supposed to act receptively and interfere as little as possible with the interviewee reporting. The validity of the interviewees’ reports becomes a prime issue when one approaches interviewing as a research instrument. And because interviews normally concern things experienced in the past, this significantly involves considerations about human memory and about how to enhance the trustworthiness of human recollections.

In one of the few publications to discuss the role of memory in interviewing, Thomsen and Brinkmann (2009) recommend that interviewers take the following points into account if they want to help interviewees’ improve the reporting and description of specific memories:

Allow time for recall and assure the interviewee that this is normal.

Provide concrete cues; for example, “the last time you were talking to a physician/nurse” rather than “a communication experience.”

Use typical content categories of specific memories to derive cues (i.e., ongoing activity, location, persons, other people’s affect and own affect).

Ask for recent specific memories.

Use relevant extended time line and landmark events as contextual cues; such as “when you were working at x” to aid the recall of older memories.

Ask the interviewee for a free and detailed narrative of the specific memory (adapted from Thomsen & Brinkmann, 2009 ).

Following such guidelines results in interviewee descriptions that are valid (they are about what the researcher intends them to be about) and close to the “lived experience” of something, or what was earlier referred to as “life world phenomena.” Although phenomenology is one typical paradigm to frame interviews analytically as research instruments, many other paradigms do so as well, for example grounded theory, developed by Glaser and Strauss (1967) with the intent of developing theoretical understandings of phenomena grounded in empirical materials through meticulous coding of data.

A typical goal of qualitative analysis within a broad phenomenological perspective is to arrive at an understanding of the essential structures of conscious experience. Analysts can here apply an inductive form of analysis known as meaning condensation ( Kvale & Brinkmann, 2008 , p. 205). This refers to an abridgement of the meanings articulated by the interviewees into briefer formulations. Longer utterances are condensed into shorter statements in which the main sense of what is said is rephrased in a few words. This technique rests on the idea in phenomenology that there is a certain essential structure to the way we experience things in the life world, and this constitutes an experience as an experience of a given something (shame, anxiety, love, learning something new, etc.).

A specific approach to phenomenological analysis has been developed in a psychological context by Amedeo Giorgi (e.g., Giorgi & Giorgi, 2003 ). Giorgi breaks the analytic process down into four steps: (1) obtain a concrete description of a phenomenon (through an interview) as lived through by someone; read the description carefully and become familiar with it to get a sense of the whole, (2) establish meaning units in the description, (3) transform each meaning unit into expressions that communicate the psychological sense of the data, and (4) based on the transformed meaning units, articulate the general structure of the experience of the phenomenon (p. 170).

A large number of books exist on how to do a concrete analysis (e.g., Silverman, 2001 ), so I will refer the reader to these and also to relevant chapters of this handbook.

Interviewing as a Social Practice

In contrast to those approaches that see interviewing as a research instrument designed to capture the “what” of what is reported as accurately as possible, others working from more constructionist, localist, and situated perspectives have much greater analytic focus on the “how” of interviewing. They view interviewing as a social practice, as a site for a specific kind of situated interaction, which means that interview data primarily reflect “a reality constructed by the interviewee and interviewer” ( Rapley, 2001 , p. 304). The idea of obtaining valid reports that accurately reflect a reality outside the conversational situation is thus questioned, and the main challenge becomes instead how to explain the relevance of interview talk. That is, if what is said in an interview is a product of this social practice itself, why is it relevant to conduct interviewing? Postmodern interviews, emphasizing performative and transformative aspects of interviewing, attempt to meet this challenge by arguing that if interviews do not concern a reality outside themselves, they can instead be used to perform or facilitate social change.

People subscribing to the right-hand side of Table 14.1 believe that interview talk should be conceived of as accounts. Unlike reports, which refer to experiences from the interviewee’s past that can be articulated when prompted, accounts are answers that are “normatively oriented to and designed for the questions that occasion them” ( Talmy, 2010 , p. 136). If interviewee talk is best understood as accounts, it must be seen as a kind of social action that has effects and does something in the situation of which it is a part. This perspective on interviewing is shared by some discourse and conversation analysts who limit themselves to analyzing interview talk as situated interaction.

Readers may wonder if these approaches are mutually exclusive. My own pragmatic answer is that they are not, but that none of the approaches should be brought to an extreme: it is true that huge problems are associated with viewing the interview as a site for pure, “unpolluted” reports of the past (we know too much about the constructive role of human memory and of how the social practice of interviewing mediates what is said to take this seriously). But it is also true that there are problems associated with denying that we can use our communicative powers to refer more or less accurately to past experiences. Those who follow the right-hand side of Table 14.1 to the extreme and deny that data can be resources for understanding experiences of the past still believe that their own communicative practice, materialized in their texts, are about matters outside this specific text. So, taken to extremes, both approaches become absurd, and I believe that it is now time for the two (sometimes opposed) camps to learn from one another and realize that they need not exclude one another. In my view, some of the most interesting interview studies are those in which analyses of the “what” and the “how” fertilize each other in productive ways. I end this chapter with a brief illustration of this, taken (rather shamelessly!) from a paper co-authored by myself ( Musaeus & Brinkmann, 2011 ) that shows how an analytic look at interviews can employ perspectives from both sides at the same time. The two forms thus need not exclude each other, and some interviews can favorably be analyzed using a combination of the two broad analytic approaches.

First a little contextualization to render the example meaningful: my colleague, Peter Musaeus, conducted in their home a relatively unstructured group qualitative interview with four members of a family that was receiving family therapy. We were interested in understanding the effects of the therapeutic process on the everyday life of the family. In the excerpt in Box 14.3 , we meet Maren and Søren, a married couple, and Maren’s daughter Kirstina, who was thirteen years old at the time (and we also see the interviewer’s voice). 4 In the following extract, Maren (the mother) has just made a joke about the movie The Planet of the Apes (a science-fiction movie telling the story of how apes are in control of the earth and keep humans as pets or slaves), and they have talked about the scene where the apes jokingly remark that females are cute, just as long as you get rid of them before puberty.

Toward the end of this sequence Søren, the father of the family, denies—as he does throughout the interview—that Maren is hitting her daughter, and he uses what the family calls a “stop sign” (line 17), which they were taught to employ in their therapy sessions. The verbal sign “STOP” (said in a loud voice) is supposed to bring the conflict cycle to a halt before it accelerates. In the interview, however, the stop sign (like other similar signs from therapy that have been appropriated by the family members) sometimes function counter-productively to raise the conflict level because it is almost shouted by family members. The sudden question in line 20 is actually much more effective in defusing the conflict by diverting the participants’ attention from the problem.

I have here just provided a glimpse of our analysis, which tries to bring forth the role of semiotic mediation—the use of signs (like the stop sign and other therapeutic tools)—in regulating social interaction in a troubled family. The point is, however, that the interview both contains family members’ descriptions of their problems and challenges, thus giving us their reports of what they experience; but we also see the persons’ shared past being formative of the present in the interview situation itself, resulting in quite significant accounts occasioned by the social episode itself. In short, the two analytic perspectives on interviewing (both as a resource providing reports and also as a topic in its own right, i.e., a social practice providing accounts) are mutually reinforcing in this case and have given us what we (as authors of the paper) believe is a valid analysis. Rather than just hearing people describing their problems, the interviewer is in fact witnessing the family members’ problems as they play out in their interaction, in front of him so to speak, thus offering him a chance to validate his analysis. The “what” and the “how” here intersect very closely.

Maren: And the comment that followed was: “Get rid of it before... ha, ha = “

Interviewer: Before it becomes a teenager?

Maren: Because it simply is so hard.

Interviewer: Yes, right, but it =

Kirstina: Should you also simply get rid of me?

Interviewer: Ha, ha.

Maren: No, are you crazy, I love you more than anything. But it’s really hard

for all of us sometimes, I think.

Kirstina: Are you also in puberty when you hit me?

Maren: No, I am in the menopause, that is different.

Søren: You don’t hit, do you? You say “when you hit”? Your mother doesn’t

Kirstina: She has hit me today and yesterday.

Maren: I probably did hit her but well =

Kirstina: Yes, but still, you may say that it isn’t hitting, when you miss.

Søren: STOP Kirstina, it isn’t true. Your mother hasn’t hit you and you don’t

Kirstina: No, no let’s just say that.

Maren: Does anyone want a cream roll?

In this chapter, I have given a broad introduction to qualitative interviewing. I have tried to demonstrate that the human world is a conversational reality in which interviewing takes a privileged position as a research method, at least in relation to a number of significant research questions that human and social scientists want to ask. Qualitative interviewing can be both a useful and valid approach, resulting in analyses with a certain objectivity in the sense that I introduced earlier. Throughout the chapter, I have kept a focus on interviewing as a social practice that has a cultural history, and I have warned against unreflective naturalization of this kind of human interaction (i.e., viewing it as a particularly natural and unproblematic way of staging human relationships).

Furthermore, I introduced a number of distinctions that are relevant when mapping the field of qualitative interviewing (e.g., between different levels of structure, numbers of participants, media of interviewing, and also interviewer styles). I also provided a detailed presentation of semistructured life world interviewing as the standard form of qualitative interviewing today.

I finally gave particular attention to two broad analytic approaches to interviewing: on the one side, experience-focused interviewing that seek to elicit accurate reports of what interviewees have experienced (in broad terms, the phenomenological positions), and, on the other side, language- and interaction-focused interviewing (discourse-oriented positions) that focus on the nature of interview interaction in its own right. In my eyes, none of these is superior per se, but each enables researchers to pose different kinds of questions to their materials. Too often, however, interviewers forget to make clear what kinds of questions they are interested in and also forget to consider whether their practice of interviewing and their analytic focus enable them to answer their research questions satisfactorily.

Future Directions

In the future, the field of qualitative interviewing is likely to continue its expansion. It is now among the most popular research tools in the human and social sciences, and nothing indicates that this trend will stop. However, a number of issues confront qualitative interviewing as particularly pressing in my opinion:

Using conversations for research purposes is close to an everyday practice of oral communication. We talk to people to get to know them, which—in a trivial sense—is also the goal of qualitative research. Will the focus on interviewing as a “method” (that can be articulated and perhaps spelled out procedurally) be counterproductive when the goal is human communication and getting to know people? Are we witnessing a fetishization of methods in qualitative research that is blocking the road to knowledge? And are there other ways of thinking about interviews and other “qualitative methods” than in the idiom of “methods”?

Qualitative interviewers can now find publication channels for their work, but has the practice of interviewing become so unproblematic that people are forgetting to justify and theorize their means of knowledge production in concrete contexts? In my view, more work should be done to theorize interviewing as a social practice (the “how”), as essential to what goes on in interview interactions.

When reporting qualitative analyses, researchers too often decontextualize interviewee statements and utterances. What person A has said is juxtaposed with the statements of person B, without any contextual clues. If an interview is a form of situated interaction, then readers of interview reports need to be provided with temporal and situational context in order to be able to interpret the talk (What question was this statement an answer to? What happened before and what came after?).

Some qualitative researchers remain convinced that they are “on the good side” in relation to ethical questions. They “give voice” to individuals, listen to their “subjective accounts,” and are thus against the quantitative and “objectifying” approaches of other, more traditional researchers. However, qualitative interviewers should, in my view, be aware that very delicate ethical questions are an inherent part of interviewing. They should avoid the “qualitatative ethicism” that sometimes characterizes qualitative inquiry, viz. that “we are good because we are qualitative.” Especially in an “interview society,” there is a need to think about the ethical problems of interviewing others (often about intimate and personal matters), when people are often seduced by the warmth and interest of interviewers to say “too much.”

The first journalistic interviews appeared in the middle of the nineteenth century ( Silvester, 1993 ), and social science interviews emerged in the course of the twentieth century (see the history of interviewing recounted later in this chapter).

Obviously, these traditions are not identical, nor are their main concepts, but I believe that they here converge on the idea of a concretely lived and experienced social reality prior to scientific abstractions of it, which Husserl originally referred to as the life world and which remains central to most (if not all) paradigms in qualitative research.

Confronting interviews are sometimes misunderstood to imply a certain aggressive or disrespectful attitude, which, of course, is a misunderstanding. An interviewer can be actively and confrontingly curious and inquiring in a very respectful way, especially if she positions herself as not-knowing (ad modum Socrates in some of the dialogues) in order to avoid framing the interview as an oral examination.

Kirstina has an older sister, who no longer lives at home, and Søren is not the biological father of the girls. He has two children from a previous marriage. One of them has attempted suicide, which, however, is not the reason for the family’s referral to therapy. The reason, instead, is Maren’s violent behavior toward her daughter Kirstina.

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The experiences and needs of older adults receiving voluntary services in Chinese nursing home organizations: a qualitative study

• Qin Shen 1 &
• Junxian Wu 1  

BMC Health Services Research volume  24 , Article number:  547 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

Metrics details

Older adults living in nursing home organizations are eager to get voluntary help, however, their past experiences with voluntary services are not satisfactory enough. To better carry out voluntary services and improve the effectiveness of services, it is necessary to have a deeper understanding of the experiences and needs of older adults for voluntary services.

The purposive sampling method was used to select 14 older adults from two nursing home organizations in Hangzhou and conduct semi-structured interviews, Collaizzi’s seven-step method was used to analyze the data.

Older adults in nursing home organizations have both beneficial experiences and unpleasant service experiences in the process of receiving voluntary services; Beneficial experiences include solving problems meeting needs and feeling warmth and care, while unpleasant service experiences include the formality that makes it difficult to benefit truly, lack of organization, regularity, sustainability, and the mismatch between service provision and actual demands. The needs for voluntary services mainly focuses on emotional comfort, Cultural and recreational, and knowledge acquisition.

Older adults in nursing home organizations have varied voluntary experiences, and their voluntary service needs are diversified. Voluntary service needs of older adults should be accurately assessed, and voluntary service activities should be focused upon.

Peer Review reports

Introduction

As a result of advancements in medical technology and improved sanitation conditions, the average life expectancy of Chinese people has increased significantly from 60 years in 1970 to 77.3 years in 2023. However, this has led to a growing number of older adults in China. According to the seventh population census conducted by the National Bureau of Statistics of China, there are now 260 million people over the age of 60 living in the country [ 1 ], The aging population in China is growing, and population balance is becoming a core challenge for the country in the long term. The increasing aging population has posed significant challenges and burdens to the state and society [ 2 ], China’s aging population challenges the current security system, requiring significant efforts from the state and society for improvement [ 3 ].

There are three main modes of old-age care in China: family old-age care, community old-age care, and institutionalized old-age care. Family old-age care is the most traditional form of old-age care in China, due to the reduction in family size and the formation of the “4-2-1” family model - which consists of four older adults, one couple, and one child - the traditional family model is no longer able to meet the growing demand for older adults care [ 4 ]; China’s community old-age care is still in the exploratory stage, facing challenges such as slow construction, insufficient staff, and lack of professional knowledge. As a result, it cannot provide meticulous care services for older adults [ 5 ]. Against this background, institutionalized older adult care has gradually become popular, it refers to older adults in social service organizations such as senior citizen apartments, welfare homes, and homes for older adults to spend their later life [ 6 ]. The challenges of population aging and the inadequacies of family and community support for older adults have resulted in a growing number of older adults opting to reside in nursing home organizations. This has undoubtedly placed additional burdens and challenges on these nursing home organizations. Due to multiple challenges such as late start, low quality, and lack of professional and technical talents, China’s nursing home organizations are still a long way from meeting the comprehensive needs of older adults in terms of health management, skilled nursing care, rehabilitation training, cultural and recreational services, psychological counseling, and social interaction [ 7 ]. To tackle the issue of an aging population in China and ensure that older adults have a high quality of life when choosing nursing home organizations, it is necessary to enhance the quality of older adult care services by engaging social forces, such as volunteer teams [ 8 ]. Voluntary services refer to the voluntary, unpaid public service offered by individuals, organizations, and voluntary service organizations to society or other organizations. The forms of voluntary services are diverse and can be either formal, planned, and long-term, or informal, spontaneous, and intermittent [ 9 ]. At present, volunteer groups in China’s nursing home organizations are mostly informal and consist of university students, healthcare workers, art workers, social workers, and others. These groups are invited by nursing home organizations or come to these institutions on their initiative to provide services for older adults. These services include a wide range of activities such as haircutting, cultural performances, spiritual comfort, hobby learning (e.g., paper-cutting, flower arranging), organizing festive activities (e.g., making rice dumplings on-site at Dragon Boat Festival, making mooncakes at Mid-Autumn Festival, etc.).

Voluntary services are a crucial aspect of long-term care and greatly complement the resources provided by the government,these nursing home organizations welcome volunteers who perform various non-medical activities associated with the daily lives of older adults [ 10 , 11 , 12 ]. Volunteers offer additional assistance and companionship to residents, provide support to employees such as nurses, nutritionists, and physical therapists, and potentially improve the overall quality of care, in China, these services have become increasingly popular and play a crucial role [ 13 , 14 ]. However, some problems have emerged in voluntary services, The voluntary services provided by volunteer organizations for older adults have certain functional defects and efficiency dilemmas, such as an unsound volunteer management system, high mobility of volunteers, and lack of a corresponding volunteer training system, which leads to the inability to provide high-quality services [ 13 ]. The above problems have undermined the effectiveness of voluntary services and affected the regular operation of nursing home organizations [ 15 ].

For effective services for older adults, it’s critical to understand the needs and experiences of older adults in nursing home organizations, there have been limited studies on how older adults feel about receiving voluntary services and if such services are suitable for their actual needs. One qualitative study documented the experiences of older adults who were helped by volunteers, but it was mainly focused on the volunteers themselves [ 16 ]. Another study looked into the benefits and experiences of receiving voluntary services, but it specifically focused on older adults who were confined to their homes [ 17 ]. There is no research available that sheds light on the emotions and requirements of older adults who receive voluntary services in nursing home organizations. To bridge this gap, we conducted interviews with older adults who have been accepted for voluntary services in two nursing home organizations in Hangzhou. The objective of this study is to gain a deeper understanding of the actual needs and experiences of older adults and use this information to guide promoting the effective growth of voluntary services and establishing a voluntary service system that is suitable for older adults in nursing home organizations.

This study adopts a qualitative descriptive approach to examine the experiences and expectations of older adults in nursing home organizations when receiving voluntary services. This study aims to gain a comprehensive understanding of the actual experiences and needs of older adults residing in nursing home organizations regarding receiving voluntary services and explore the types of voluntary services that are most suitable for the needs of older adults. To ensure accuracy and transparency, the authors followed the Consolidated Standards for Reporting Qualitative Research (COREQ) guidelines when reporting their findings [ 18 ].

Participants

During June-August 2023, the authors used purposive sampling to sample older adults residing in two nursing home organizations in Hangzhou, the inclusion criteria for the interview subjects were as follows:

they had to have resided in the nursing home organizations for more than a year;

they had to have received voluntary services;

they had to be conscious and able to express themselves effectively;

they had to have given informed consent and voluntarily agreed to participate in the study.

The number of people participating in the study was decided based on information saturation, this means the interviews were conducted until no new topics emerged and responses were repeated, the data from the twelfth interview indicated that saturation had been reached as confirmed by the other two interviews. This research principle was based on previous qualitative research studies [ 19 ]. A total of 14 older adults, coded N1-N14, were included in this study. All older adults who participated in the study agreed to the interview process, and none withdrew during the study. Detailed information can be found in Table  1 .

Interview outline

We developed an interview outline after thoroughly reviewing the literature sources and consulting with the research group [ 20 , 21 ]. We selected two older adults living in nursing home organizations to conduct pre-interviews, we adjusted the interview outline based on the feedback we received from the pre-interviews.

The interview will cover the following topics:

Please describe the voluntary services you have received in detail. How do you feel about receiving these services?

Are you satisfied with the voluntary service you have received? What aspects of the service make you satisfied?

What are your dissatisfactions with the voluntary service? Why do you feel that way?

What are your expectations and needs for the voluntary service’s content, form, and volunteers?

Is there anything else you would like to add to the discussion?

Data collection

A semi-structured interview method was utilized to gather data for this study. The main researcher, (a master’s degree nursing student) has been trained in qualitative research methods and has mastered the semi-structured interview techniques required to conduct interviews independently. Additionally, the researcher has participated in various volunteer activities in nursing organizations and has established a trustworthy relationship with the interviewees. Before conducting the interviews, the main researcher explained the study’s purpose and methodology to the interviewees and, after acquiring their consent, scheduled an appointment in advance. Face-to-face interviews were conducted with the respondents in a quiet, private, comfortable conference room. During the interview, the researcher recorded the entire process with the respondent’s consent without interrupting the respondent unnecessarily. The researcher confirmed the key concerns and the content that the respondent could not express clearly by repeating, asking follow-up questions, and asking rhetorical questions. The researcher also promptly recorded the respondent’s non-verbal information, such as movements, expressions, and tone of voice. Each interview lasted 30–45 min, and after conducting 14 interviews, no new information was obtained, indicating data saturation and ending the interview process. At the end of the interview, each interviewee was given a small token of appreciation.

Data analysis

The audio recordings of the interviews were transcribed into text within 24 h of completion, non-verbal information was noted in the transcript at relevant places. The transcribed information was then entered into the NVIVO 11.0 software (QST International, Cambridge, MA, USA) for data extraction, coding, and integration. Two researchers independently analyzed and coded the data, and the results were compared to identify common themes. Any discrepancies were resolved after the research team had discussed them to ensure that the data was complete and the analysis was accurate. Colaizzi’s seven-step analysis method was used to refine the themes from the interviews, which involved the following steps [ 22 ]:

Carefully read all the transcriptions of the interviews.

Analyze the significant statements made by the interviewees.

Code the recurring and meaningful ideas discussed in the interviews.

Gather the coded ideas and form the theme clusters.

Define and describe the themes from the coded ideas.

Identify similar ideas and sublimate the theme concepts.

Return the results to the interviewees for verification, and revision, and add the results based on the feedback from the interviewees. For detailed coding results, please see Table  2 .

After the data analysis was summarized, two main themes were identified: Experiences and Needs for volunteerism.

Theme 1: experiences

Beneficial experiences, solving problems and meeting needs.

Many older adults currently reside in nursing home organizations that are situated far away from their children and friends, they often face difficulties in getting help promptly when they encounter problems, which can affect their daily lives. For instance, in today’s rapidly developing society, many older adults own smartphones but lack the necessary knowledge to use them effectively. This, in turn, reduces their social participation and increases their sense of isolation. However, voluntary services have been instrumental in assisting them in overcoming these hurdles and leading a more fulfilling life.

N11: “When the volunteers come to teach me how to use computers, I ask them something that I don’t understand, and the teacher will explain it to me immediately.” N1: “I don’t know how to buy things online. Volunteers taught me little by little, and after a few teaching sessions, I learned how to do it so I don’t have to bother the caregiver every time. I can also do online shopping by myself, and I feel that life is much more convenient.”

Some respondents stated that volunteers could fulfill their needs. Professional volunteers also taught older adults Chinese medicine and health care and assisted with self-care.

N12: “I’m interested in Chinese medicine health care knowledge, and when students from the University of Traditional Chinese Medicine come over, and I ask them What are the functions of different acupoints, they tell me how to press them to make them work.”

Feel warmth and care

Many older adults live in nursing home organizations, away from their familiar environment and social network. This isolation can generate a sense of loneliness, making them more eager for emotional support. Volunteers provide services to add joy to the lives of older adults so that they feel cared for. Interviewees have mentioned that being taken care of on their initiative makes them feel warm and touched, increasing their overall sense of well-being.

N10: “I am delighted when I participate in volunteering, I feel that I have a group life again, I am pleased, I feel that someone cares about us.” N8: “Volunteers come to serve us, feel that people still care about us older adults, and now the country also cares about us, and society also cares about us, I am thrilled.”

Some respondents said that having someone to talk to and greet them would make them feel happy and that they were willing to communicate with young people and accept their new ideas.

N2: “As soon as I see you young people, I am happy, I feel the atmosphere of youth, my mood is different, I feel less lonely.”

Unpleasant service experiences

A formality that makes it difficult to benefit truly.

According to the interviewees, there are certain formalized phenomena in the domain of volunteering. Some volunteers engage in volunteering activities to obtain a certificate, such certificates can help them get extra points at work. Some volunteers participated in volunteering based on the mentality of the herd under the organizational arrangements of their schools or enterprises. These volunteers lack initiative, violate the principle of voluntarism, and cannot provide services that genuinely benefit older adults due to their single-mindedness and formalism during the service process. As a result, older adults have a poorer sense of experience.

N7: “Some volunteers are asked to serve by their companies, and they have to finish the job; some just go through a process.” N13: “Many volunteers come over to perform a show, then take photos and leave; the service time is very short, just like completing a task.” N5: “Some volunteers are very perfunctory; they come for a while and leave quickly.”

Lack of organization, regularity, sustainability

Many volunteers offer their services without compensation, while they have their formal jobs, which makes it difficult for them to provide services consistently. Additionally, volunteers may be more mobile, which can result in a lack of continuity in the services that are provided and the target groups that are served. However, older adults living in nursing home organizations often have monotonous and lonely lives, and occasional voluntary services may not be enough to meet their needs. As a result, some older adults may feel dissatisfied with the irregular and unsustainable nature of voluntary services.

N12: “Volunteers come on an ad hoc basis; they are not regular. Recently, a school teacher came to teach us how to sing, but unfortunately, they had to leave due to commitments and have not been able to come back.’’ N5: “Volunteers can’t come regularly; they come once in a while or not regularly and don’t have a plan.” N7: “Volunteers come to the nursing home occasionally, so they don’t want to bother them.”

The mismatch between service provision and actual demand

The voluntary services provided to older adults in nursing institutions were not able to match their real needs as the volunteers had no prior knowledge of their needs and did not make any advance preparations.

N4: “Last time, a volunteer came and asked me if I needed help with cleaning. However, I declined their kind offer because caregivers in the nursing home clean rooms every day, and the volunteers could not address the specific things I needed help with.”

The needs of older adults for volunteering can vary significantly based on their experiential backgrounds, and physiological and psychological conditions. Therefore, providing the same services to all older adults can lead to negative feelings towards volunteering among them.

N10: “Some volunteers come just to dance and sing, it feels very noisy. I don’t want to participate, I want the volunteers to talk to me peacefully and quietly.” N14: “I am not very good with my legs, so it is difficult for me to participate in activities organized by the volunteers downstairs. I would like to find activities I can participate in in my room, such as playing games or doing crafts.”

Theme 2 needs for volunteerism

Needs for emotional comfort.

Many older adults live in semi-closed institutions where they lack long-term support from their families and struggle to find someone to talk to. During the epidemic, nursing home organizations prohibited visitors to prevent the spread of the virus, leaving many seniors alone and cut off from the outside world. As a result, many older adults experience feelings of loneliness and depression. To help combat these negative emotions, volunteers can provide companionship and support, which can effectively reduce feelings of loneliness and promote emotional well-being.

N1: “I hope someone will come and chat with us; many older adults have no way to contact the outside world, so they have psychological barriers, they need psychological counseling, they need someone to come and chat with them to relieve their loneliness.” N10: “It’s better to have volunteers to come over to the service, to come and chat with me, to visit me.” N12: “I would like volunteers to communicate with us, tell us what is happening outside, tell us something new.”

Cultural and recreational needs

As people age, their social interactions tend to decrease, and they gradually tend to withdraw from daily life. This results in older adults having more free time after their retirement. Nursing home organizations can provide basic living care and medical assistance for older adults, which relieves them of the burden of cooking, cleaning, and shopping. This also means they have more free time than those who live at home or in the community. Many older adults wish to participate in cultural and recreational activities, such as singing, dancing, sports, and watching performances, to add excitement to their lives. They hope that volunteers can organize such activities to help them reduce their loneliness and spend their time in a meaningful way.

N14: “It’s good for volunteers to come and teach us how to dance, sing, and sing opera, and time passes a little faster when we all get together and learn.” N2: “It is popular for volunteers to bring cultural performances to our nursing home, we love to see young people performing programs, singing some classic old songs or Peking Opera, it is very popular.” N9: “We would like to play tai chi, it is a very suitable sport for us as it strengthens the body and the movements are softer, it would be nice if a teacher could teach us.”

Knowledge acquisition needs

According to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Theory, individuals will naturally shift their focus toward higher-level pursuits once their basic and low-level needs are met. In the case of older adults residing in nursing home organizations, their basic material needs are taken care of, and as a result, their need for knowledge and learning becomes increasingly important. Many older adults require assistance in learning how to use electronic equipment, which can help facilitate their communication with the outside world and reduce feelings of isolation.

N1: “It’s become very convenient to buy things online, but I don’t know how to operate it myself and would like someone to teach me.” N2: “My daughter bought me an expensive Apple phone, but I am unfamiliar with how to use it. It would be great if someone could systematically instruct me on how to use the smartphone.” N8: “I don’t know how to use my smartphone, I don’t understand many functions, so I would benefit from having a teacher to guide me.”

As individuals age, their bodily and cognitive functions may deteriorate, adversely affecting their quality of life. Basic healthcare knowledge can be critical for older adults to maintain good health. Many older adults have a strong desire to learn about nutritional diets, rational exercise, and traditional Chinese medicine physiotherapy as a means of improving their health.

N9: “Volunteers can come and talk to us about medicine and how to predict dementia.” N13: “I have high blood pressure and cholesterol. I need advice on what to eat and what to avoid.”

To prevent any disagreements regarding the distribution of their assets among their heirs after they pass away, older adults seek the help of volunteers to assist them in drafting a will that is by national policies and regulations and has legal validity.

N12: “Volunteers can help us learn how to write a will effectively and can avoid unnecessary trouble and conflicts in the future.”

The current situation of voluntary experiences of older adults in nursing home organizations

Analysis of beneficial experiences.

The study’s findings indicate that individuals residing in nursing home organizations who are of advanced age have mixed experiences when it comes to receiving voluntary services. Most respondents conveyed the warmth and care emanating from the volunteers and the society towards older adults. Furthermore, they shared that volunteering offered them a means to engage in activities actively, create connections with fellow older adults, and foster mutual support and camaraderie. This social participation has the potential to enhance the mental well-being of older adults, thereby decreasing feelings of loneliness and depression [ 17 ]. Voluntary activities like smartphone training can help older adults acquire the necessary needed skills and adapt better to modern technology and life. Competent skills are crucial for older adults, particularly in today’s fast-developing technological society, where electronic devices such as smartphones are becoming increasingly popular. However, many older adults need more skills to operate these devices and thus cannot fully utilize them. Through training, older adults can learn how to use smartphones, including sending text messages, browsing the web, using social media, downloading applications, and more. Learning these skills not only improves the quality of life of older adults but also helps them stay connected with family and friends, thereby reducing loneliness.

Improved skills can assist older adults in accessing and utilizing health information, including online medical advice and health apps. This information can aid in managing their health status, preventing and managing chronic illnesses, and ultimately improving their quality of life. Volunteering is crucial in nursing home organizations. It provides numerous benefits to older adults, including enhancing their mental health and quality of life and receiving the necessary support and care by participating in voluntary activities [ 23 ].

Analysis of unpleasant experiences

During the interviews, some older adults shared negative experiences regarding the content, form, and frequency of voluntary services. They pointed out that volunteers did not understand their needs in advance, focusing too much on material assistance and neglecting their psychological and intellectual needs. Additionally, the service process is often too process-oriented and formalized, with less interaction with older adults, resulting in voluntary services failing to meet their expectations.

Research suggests that negative experiences of receiving voluntary services may impact older adults’ willingness to seek help and the effectiveness of voluntary services. Therefore, when providing voluntary services to older adults, it is essential to take the initiative to understand their experiences and continuously optimize the voluntary program. This approach is crucial to improving the quality of voluntary services [ 24 ].

The current situation of the demands for voluntary services by older adults

The study results show that nursing home organizations can provide comprehensive life care services to older adults, meaning they do not require many voluntary services for life care. However, this does not imply that older adults’ needs are met. Their need for emotional support, cultural recreation, and knowledge-seeking and learning is highly concentrated.

When older adults leave their familiar family environment to move into care institutions, they may experience feelings of loneliness and boredom due to the lack of regular interaction with their children, family members, and friends. This sense of isolation can harm their mental health, and they may seek more opportunities to communicate and interact with younger individuals to gain emotional comfort [ 25 ].

As people age, cultural entertainment and knowledge learning become essential for spiritual growth. After their basic living needs are taken care of, older adults desire more fulfilling recreational activities, such as calligraphy, painting, and singing, these activities enrich the spiritual life of older adults and benefit their physical and mental health [ 26 ].

In today’s rapidly developing society, the widespread use of smartphones and the popularity of online shopping have led to a digital divide among older adults. This phenomenon has, to some extent, hindered their social participation and increased their sense of isolation. Consequently, there is a growing demand for voluntary services that assist with smartphone use and can help them enjoy a convenient and fulfilling digital life.

The need for voluntary services for older adults has changed over time. While they still require help with their daily living, they also need emotional support, cultural engagement, and opportunities to learn new things. We should focus on meeting these needs to ensure our voluntary services are beneficial. By doing so, we can help older adults live fulfilling, healthy, and happy lives in their later years [ 27 ].

Suggestions and strategies for optimizing volunteerism

Accurately assessing older adults’ voluntary service needs.

The study results reveal that some older adults have negative experiences with voluntary services that fail to meet their actual needs, leading to unsatisfactory service outcomes. This highlights the need to accurately identify the real service needs of older adults to improve the quality and effectiveness of voluntary services.

To achieve our goal, we need to take a series of steps. Firstly, we must create appropriate tools for evaluating the needs of older adults for voluntary services. We should also clarify the assessment methods and strategies for assessing these needs, before launching voluntary services, relevant organizations and volunteers must understand older adults’ service experience and needs through qualitative and quantitative assessment methods [ 28 ].

To improve the quality and effectiveness of voluntary services for older adults, we can utilize big data technology to carry out precise reforms. This involves building a unified information platform for voluntary services that enables a quick match between the needs of older adults and the specialties of volunteers through the co-construction, sharing, and everyday use of resource information [ 29 ]. By doing so, we can provide multi-level, multi-category, and personalized voluntary services that cater to the actual needs of older adults, thus achieving the purpose of “precise service.”

In conclusion, we must prioritize the actual needs of older adults and provide them with more personalized and intimate voluntary services by continuously improving the assessment tools and information platforms with the orientation of precise services, the use of big data technology will play a key role in helping us realize the goal of efficient and accurate services.

Improving the quality management system of voluntary services

Volunteering quality refers to the quality of services volunteers provide, as perceived by the direct recipients. Research has shown that low-quality voluntary services fail to achieve their intended goals, moreover, negative experiences of receiving voluntary services may discourage older adults from seeking help in the future. The study highlights a significant gap between older adults’ experience of volunteering quality and their expectations, therefore, it is necessary to strengthen the management of volunteering quality to ensure that expectations are met.

To enhance the quality of volunteering, we need to implement measures. Firstly, we must optimize the recruitment and selection system for volunteers, this entails formulating recruitment plans and selection requirements that align with the voluntary services needs of older adults. We aim to create a stable and committed volunteer team skilled in services knowledge and job skills and willing to participate in voluntary services for an extended period [ 30 ].

To enhance the level and quality of service, it is important to provide regular and standardized training to volunteers. Volunteers should receive professional information support services, such as training on volunteer spirit, etiquette, communication skills, and the physiological and psychological characteristics of older adults. The main forms of training include information consultation, professional knowledge, technology lectures, sharing of previous volunteer experiences, summarizing stage-by-stage voluntary services, and experiential services. Volunteers should be provided with face-to-face or online interaction to help them improve their ability to assist older adults. The training for volunteering encompasses theoretical knowledge about volunteering, including its characteristics and principles, the rights and interests of service users, and respect for them. It also includes basic knowledge of social work, such as interpersonal communication methods and skills, as well as knowledge of health care for older adults. The latter includes the introduction of general knowledge about daily life care for older adults, such as diet, hygiene, and exercise, and the evaluation of the training’s effectiveness. Both voluntary service organizations and nursing home organizations should participate in the training process, only volunteers who have completed the training and assessment can engage in service activities [ 31 ]. It is essential to improve the evaluation mechanism of voluntary service quality. This can be done by creating a scientific evaluation index system involving older adults in evaluating their satisfaction with the voluntary service program and conducting a comprehensive analysis of the evaluation results. This analysis can help to optimize and improve the service program, additionally, tracking and evaluating the effectiveness of optimization measures to continuously enhance service quality is crucial [ 32 ].

Improving the quality of voluntary services is a comprehensive project that enhances various aspects, such as volunteer recruitment, training, and service quality evaluation. This systematic approach can help serve the nursing home organizations better and improve their overall quality of life.

Strengths and limitations

The paper’s strength lies in its focus on the experience of older adults in nursing institutions when receiving voluntary services and their need for such services. This study’s understanding of the real feelings and needs of older adults is beneficial for various organizations in society to provide better services in a targeted manner. However, the study’s limitation is that it mainly focuses on the more developed areas of Hangzhou, which affects the sample’s representativeness and makes it challenging to reflect the general situation of older adults in nursing home organizations. Additionally, the author’s subjective viewpoints may affect the analysis of the material during the data analysis process. Finally, the sample size of this study is relatively small, and there may be individual differences in personality, physical condition, and economic situation, among others. Therefore, expanding the sample size and the region’s scope to carry out more in-depth research is necessary.

This research explored the experiences and requirements of older adults who receive voluntary services in Chinese care homes. The study categorized their experiences into two groups: beneficial experiences and unpleasant service experiences, the needs of older adults who receive voluntary services include emotional comfort, cultural and recreational, and knowledge acquisition. It is crucial to have a timely and comprehensive understanding of the experiences and needs of older adults to create a targeted voluntary service model, standardized management, and training of volunteers in nursing home organizations.

Data availability

The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request. The datasets are not publicly available due to confidentiality and ethical restrictions.

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Acknowledgements

We want to express our heartfelt appreciation to the 14 older adults who participated in the interview and shared their experiences. We are also grateful to the administrators of nursing home organizations in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, for granting us access and allowing us to conduct the interviews at their facility. Their cooperation was invaluable in gaining insights into the needs of older adults.

This study did not receive any form of financial support.

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Li and Wu were responsible for data collection, sorting, and analysis, and Li wrote the paper. Shen directed and revised the article and approved the final version for publication. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Qin Shen .

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The study protocol was approved by the Medical Ethics Committee of Zhejiang Chinese Medical University (approval No. 20230814-2). Before the interviews, the participants were provided with information regarding the study’s purpose and procedures, the voluntary nature of their participation, and the confidentiality of their data. The interview data was stored securely, and only the research team could access it. The Ethics Committee of Zhejiang Chinese Medical University approved this study.

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Li, L., Shen, Q. & Wu, J. The experiences and needs of older adults receiving voluntary services in Chinese nursing home organizations: a qualitative study. BMC Health Serv Res 24 , 547 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-024-11045-5

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-024-11045-5

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In 2024, Penn Global will support 24 new faculty-led research and engagement projects at a total funding level of $1.5 million.

The Penn Global Research and Engagement Grant Program prioritizes projects that bring together leading scholars and practitioners across the University community and beyond to develop new insight on significant global issues in key countries and regions around the world, a core pillar of Penn’s global strategic framework. 

PROJECTS SUPPORTED BY THE HOLMAN AFRICA RESEARCH AND ENGAGEMENT FUND

• Global Medical Physics Training & Development Program  Stephen Avery, Perelman School of Medicine
• Developing a Dakar Greenbelt with Blue-Green Wedges Proposal  Eugenie Birch, Weitzman School of Design
• Emergent Judaism in Sub-Saharan Africa  Peter Decherney, School of Arts and Sciences / Sara Byala, School of Arts and Sciences
• Determinants of Cognitive Aging among Older Individuals in Ghana  Irma Elo, School of Arts and Sciences;  Iliana Kohler, School of Arts and Sciences
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• A History of Regenerative Agriculture Practices from the Global South: Case Studies from Ethiopia, Kenya, and Zimbabwe Thabo Lenneiye, Kleinman Energy Center / Weitzman School of Design
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• Leveraging an Open Source Software to Prevent and Contain AMR Jonathan Strysko, Perelman School of Medicine
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• The Impacts of School Connectivity Efforts on Education Outcomes in Rwanda  Christopher Yoo, Carey Law School

PROJECTS SUPPORTED BY THE INDIA RESEARCH AND ENGAGEMENT FUND

• Routes Beyond Conflict: A New Approach to Cultural Encounters in South Asia  Daud Ali, School of Arts and Sciences
• Prioritizing Air Pollution in India’s Cities Tariq Thachil, Center for the Advanced Study of India / School of Arts and Sciences
• Intelligent Voicebots to Help Indian Students Learn English Lyle Ungar, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences

PROJECTS SUPPORTED BT THE CHINA RESEARCH AND ENGAGEMENT FUND

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• Explaining Climate Change Regulation in Cities: Evidence from Urban Brazil Alice Xu, School of Arts and Sciences
• Nurse Staffing Legislation for Scotland: Lessons for the U.S. and the U.K.  Eileen Lake, School of Nursing
• Pathways to Education Development & Their Consequences: Finland, Korea, US Hyunjoon Park, School of Arts and Sciences
• Engaged Scholarship in Latin America: Bridging Knowledge and Action Tulia Falleti, School of Arts and Sciences
• Organizing Migrant Communities to Realize Rights in Palermo, Sicily  Domenic Vitiello, Weitzman School of Design
• Exploiting Cultural Heritage in 21st Century Conflict   Fiona Cunningham, School of Arts and Sciences
• Center for Integrative Global Oral Health   Alonso Carrasco-Labra, School of Dental Medicine

This first-of-its-kind Global Medical Physics Training and Development Program (GMPTDP) seeks to serve as an opportunity for PSOM and SEAS graduate students to enhance their clinical requirement with a global experience, introduce them to global career opportunities and working effectively in different contexts, and strengthens partnerships for education and research between US and Africa. This would also be an exceptional opportunity for pre-med/pre-health students and students interested in health tech to have a hands-on global experience with some of the leading professionals in the field. The project will include instruction in automated radiation planning through artificial intelligence (AI); this will increase access to quality cancer care by standardizing radiation planning to reduce inter-user variability and error, decreasing workload on the limited radiation workforce, and shortening time to treatment for patients. GMPTDP will offer a summer clinical practicum to Penn students during which time they will also collaborate with UGhana to implement and evaluate AI tools in the clinical workflow.

The proposal will address today’s pressing crises of climate change, land degradation, biodiversity loss, and growing economic disparities with a holistic approach that combines regional and small-scale actions necessary to achieve sustainability. It will also tackle a key issue found across sub-Saharan Africa, many emerging economies, and economically developed countries that struggle to control rapid unplanned urbanization that vastly outpaces the carrying capacity of the surrounding environment.

The regional portion of the project will create a framework for a greenbelt that halts the expansion of the metropolitan footprint. It will also protect the Niayes, an arable strip of land that produces over 80% of the country’s vegetables, from degradation. This partnership will also form a south-south collaboration to provide insights into best practices from a city experiencing similar pressures.

The small-scale portion of the project will bolster and create synergy with ongoing governmental and grassroots initiatives aimed at restoring green spaces currently being infilled or degraded in the capital. This will help to identify overlapping goals between endeavors, leading to collaboration and mobilizing greater funding possibilities instead of competing over the same limited resources. With these partners, we will identify and design Nature-based Solutions for future implementation.

Conduct research through fieldwork to examine questions surrounding Jewish identity in Africa. Research will be presented in e.g. articles, photographic images, and films, as well as in a capstone book. In repeat site-visits to Uganda, South Africa, Ghana, and Zimbabwe, we will conduct interviews with and take photographs of stakeholders from key communities in order to document their everyday lives and religious practices.

The overall aim of this project is the development of a nationally representative study on aging in Ghana. This goal requires expanding our network of Ghanian collaborators and actively engage them in research on aging. The PIs will build on existing institutional contacts in Ghana that include:

1). Current collaboration with the Navrongo Health Research Center (NCHR) on a pilot data collection on cognitive aging in Ghana (funded by a NIA supplement and which provides the matching funds for this Global Engagement fund grant application);

2) Active collaboration with the Regional Institute for Population Studies (RIPS), University of Ghana. Elo has had a long-term collaboration with Dr. Ayaga Bawah who is the current director of RIPS.

In collaboration with UNHCR, we propose studying the effects of a dramatic drop in the level of support for refugees, using a regression discontinuity design to survey 2,500 refugee households just above and 2,500 households just below the vulnerability score cutoff that determines eligibility for full rations. This study will identify the effects of aid cuts on the welfare of an important marginalized population, and on their livelihood adaptation strategies. As UNHCR faces budgetary cuts in multiple refugee-hosting contexts, our study will inform policymakers on the effects of funding withdrawal as well as contribute to the literature on cash transfers.

The proposed project, titled "A History of Regenerative Agriculture Practices from the Global South: Case Studies from Ethiopia, Kenya, and Zimbabwe," aims to delve into the historical and contemporary practices of regenerative agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa. Anticipated Outputs and Outcomes:

1. Research Paper: The primary output of this project will be a comprehensive research paper. This paper will draw from a rich pool of historical and contemporary data to explore the history of regenerative agriculture practices in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Zimbabwe. It will document the indigenous knowledge and practices that have sustained these regions for generations.

2. Policy Digest: In addition to academic research, the project will produce a policy digest. This digest will distill the research findings into actionable insights for policymakers, both at the national and international levels. It will highlight the benefits of regenerative agriculture and provide recommendations for policy frameworks that encourage its adoption.

3. Long-term Partnerships: The project intends to establish long-term partnerships with local and regional universities, such as Great Lakes University Kisumu, Kenya. These partnerships will facilitate knowledge exchange, collaborative research, and capacity building in regenerative agriculture practices. Such collaborations align with Penn Global's goal of strengthening institutional relationships with African partners.

The Penn Computerized Neurocognitive Battery (PCNB) was developed at the University of Pennsylvania by Dr. Ruben C. Gur and colleagues to be administered as part of a comprehensive neuropsychiatric assessment. Consisting of a series of cognitive tasks that help identify individuals’ cognitive strengths and weaknesses, it has recently been culturally adapted and validated by our team for assessment of school-aged children in Botswana . The project involves partnership with the Botswana Ministry of Education and Skills Development (MoESD) to support the rollout of the PCNB for assessment of public primary and secondary school students in Botswana. The multidisciplinary Penn-based team will work with partners in Botswana to guide the PCNB rollout, evaluate fidelity to the testing standards, and track student progress after assessment and intervention. The proposed project will strengthen a well-established partnership between Drs. Elizabeth Lowenthal and J. Cobb Scott from the PSOM and in-country partners. Dr. Sharon Wolf, from Penn’s Graduate School of Education, is an expert in child development who has done extensive work with the Ministry of Education in Ghana to support improvements in early childhood education programs. She is joining the team to provide the necessary interdisciplinary perspective to help guide interventions and evaluations accompanying this new use of the PCNB to support this key program in Africa.

This project will build on exploratory research completed by December 24, 2023 in which the PI interviewed about 35 South Africans involved in jazz/improvised music mostly in Cape Town: venue owners, curators, creators, improvisers.

• Podcast series with 75-100 South African musicians interviewed with their music interspersed in the program.
• 59 minute radio program with extended excerpts of music inserted into the interview itself.
• Create a center of knowledge about South African jazz—its sound and its stories—building knowledge globally about this significant diasporic jazz community
• Expand understanding of “jazz” into a more diffuse area of improvised music making that includes a wide range of contemporary indigenous music and art making
• Partner w Lincoln Center Jazz (and South African Tourism) to host South Africans at Penn

This study focuses on the potential of a Megaregional approach for fostering sustainable development, economic growth, and social inclusion within the East African Community (EAC), with a specific focus on supporting the development of A Vision for An Inclusive Joint Lakefront across the 5 riparian counties in Kenya.

By leveraging the principles of Megaregion development, this project aims to create a unified socio-economic, planning, urbanism, cultural, and preservation strategy that transcends county boundaries and promotes collaboration further afield, among the EAC member countries surrounding the Lake Victoria Basin.

Anticipated Outputs and Outcomes:

1. Megaregion Conceptual Framework: The project will develop a comprehensive Megaregion Conceptual Framework for the Joint Lakefront region in East Africa. This framework, which different regions around the world have applied as a way of bridging local boundaries toward a unified regional vision will give the Kisumu Lake region a path toward cooperative, multi-jurisdictional planning. The Conceptual Framework will be both broad and specific, including actionable strategies, projects, and initiatives aimed at sustainable development, economic growth, social inclusion, and environmental stewardship.

2. Urbanism Projects: Specific urbanism projects will be proposed for key urban centers within the Kenyan riparian counties. These projects will serve as tangible examples of potential improvements and catalysts for broader development efforts.

3. Research Publication: The findings of the study will be captured in a research publication, contributing to academic discourse and increasing Penn's visibility in the field of African urbanism and sustainable development

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) has emerged as a global crisis, causing more deaths than HIV/AIDS and malaria worldwide. By engaging in a collaborative effort with the Botswana Ministry of Health’s data scientists and experts in microbiology, human and veterinary medicine, and bioinformatics, we will aim to design new electronic medical record system modules that will:

Aim 1: Support the capturing, reporting, and submission of microbiology data from sentinel surveillance laboratories as well as pharmacies across the country

Aim 2: Develop data analytic dashboards for visualizing and characterizing regional AMR and AMC patterns

Aim 3: Submit AMR and AMC data to regional and global surveillance programs

Aim 4: Establish thresholds for alert notifications when disease activity exceeds expected incidence to serve as an early warning system for outbreak detection.

  Using a novel interdisciplinary approach that bridges development economics, psychology, and neuroscience, the overall goal of this project is to improve children's development using a poverty-reduction intervention in Cote d'Ivoire (CIV). The project will directly measure the impacts of cash transfers (CTs) on neurocognitive development, providing a greater understanding of how economic interventions can support the eradication of poverty and ensure that all children flourish and realize their full potential. The project will examine causal mechanisms by which CTs support children’s healthy neurocognitive development and learning outcomes through the novel use of an advanced neuroimaging tool, functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS), direct child assessments, and parent interviews.

The proposed research, the GIGA initiative for Improving Education in Rwanda (GIER), will produce empirical evidence on the impact of connecting schools on education outcomes to enable Rwanda to better understand how to accelerate the efforts to bring connectivity to schools, how to improve instruction and learning among both teachers and students, and whether schools can become internet hubs capable of providing access e-commerce and e-government services to surrounding communities. In addition to evaluating the impact of connecting schools on educational outcomes, the research would also help determine which aspects of the program are critical to success before it is rolled out nationwide.

Through historical epigraphic research, the project will test the hypothesis that historical processes and outcomes in the 14th century were precipitated by a series of related global and local factors and that, moreover, an interdisciplinary and synergistic analysis of these factors embracing climatology, hydrology, epidemiology linguistics and migration will explain the transformation of the cultural, religious and social landscapes of the time more effectively than the ‘clash of civilizations’ paradigm dominant in the field. Outputs include a public online interface for the epigraphic archive; a major international conference at Penn with colleagues from partner universities (Ghent, Pisa, Edinburgh and Penn) as well as the wider South Asia community; development of a graduate course around the research project, on multi-disciplinary approaches to the problem of Hindu-Muslim interaction in medieval India; and a public facing presentation of our findings and methods to demonstrate the path forward for Indian history. Several Penn students, including a postdoc, will be actively engaged.  

India’s competitive electoral arena has failed to generate democratic accountability pressures to reduce toxic air. This project seeks to broadly understand barriers to such pressures from developing, and how to overcome them. In doing so, the project will provide the first systematic study of attitudes and behaviors of citizens and elected officials regarding air pollution in India. The project will 1) conduct in-depth interviews with elected local officials in Delhi, and a large-scale survey of elected officials in seven Indian states affected by air pollution, and 2) partner with relevant civil society organizations, international bodies like the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), domain experts at research centers like the Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI), and local civic organizations (Janagraaha) to evaluate a range of potential strategies to address pollution apathy, including public information campaigns with highly affected citizens (PHFI), and local pollution reports for policymakers (Janagraaha).

The biggest benefit from generative AI such as GPT, will be the widespread availability of tutoring systems to support education. The project will use this technology to build a conversational voicebot to support Indian students in learning English. The project will engage end users (Indian tutors and their students) in the project from the beginning. The initial prototype voice-driven conversational system will be field-tested in Indian schools and adapted. The project includes 3 stages of development:

1) Develop our conversational agent. Specify the exact initial use case and Conduct preliminary user testing.

2) Fully localize to India, addressing issues identified in Phase 1 user testing.

3) Do comprehensive user testing with detailed observation of 8-12 students using the agent for multiple months; conduct additional assessments of other stakeholders.

The project partners with Ashoka University and Pratham over all three stages, including writing scholarly papers.

Through empirical policy analysis and data-based scenario planning, this project actively contributes to this global effort by investigating planning and policy responses to autonomous transportation in the US and China. In addition to publishing several research papers on this subject, the PI plans to develop a new course and organize a forum at PWCC in 2025. These initiatives are aligned with an overarching endeavor that the PI leads at the Weitzman School of Design, which aims to establish a Future Cities Lab dedicated to research and collaboration in the pursuit of sustainable cities.

This study aims to fill this gap through a more humanistic approach to measuring the impact of education on national development. Leveraging a mixed methods research design consisting of analysis of quantitative data for trends over time, observations of schools and classrooms, and qualitative inquiry via talking to people and hearing their stories, we hope to build a comprehensive picture of educational trends in Nepal and their association with intra-country development. Through this project we strive to better inform the efforts of state authorities and international organizations working to enhance sustainable development within Nepal, while concurrently creating space and guidance for further impact analyses. Among various methods of dissemination of the study’s findings, one key goal is to feed this information into writing a book on this topic.

Developing cities across the world have taken the lead in adopting local environmental regulation. Yet standard models of environmental governance begin with the assumption that local actors should have no incentives for protecting “the commons.” Given the benefits of climate change regulation are diffuse, individual local actors face a collective action problem. This project explores why some local governments bear the costs of environmental regulation while most choose to free-ride. The anticipated outputs of the project include qualitative data that illuminate case studies and the coding of quantitative spatial data sets for studying urban land-use. These different forms of data collection will allow me to develop and test a theoretical framework for understanding when and why city governments adopt environmental policy.

The proposed project will develop new insights on the issue of legislative solutions to the nurse staffing crisis, which will pertain to many U.S. states and U.K. countries. The PI will supervise the nurse survey data collection and to meet with government and nursing association stakeholders to plan the optimal preparation of reports and dissemination of results. The anticipated outputs of the project are a description of variation throughout Scotland in hospital nursing features, including nurse staffing, nurse work environments, extent of adherence to the Law’s required principles, duties, and method, and nurse intent to leave. The outcomes will be the development of capacity for sophisticated quantitative research by Scottish investigators, where such skills are greatly needed but lacking.  

The proposed project will engage multi-cohort, cross-national comparisons of educational-attainment and labor-market experiences of young adults in three countries that dramatically diverge in how they have developed college education over the last three decades: Finland, South Korea and the US. It will produce comparative knowledge regarding consequences of different pathways to higher education, which has significant policy implications for educational and economic inequality in Finland, Korea, the US, and beyond. The project also will lay the foundation for ongoing collaboration among the three country teams to seek external funding for sustained collaboration on educational analyses.

With matching funds from PLAC and CLALS, we will jointly fund four scholars from diverse LAC countries to participate in workshops to engage our community regarding successful practices of community-academic partnerships.

These four scholars and practitioners from Latin America, who are experts on community-engaged scholarship, will visit the Penn campus during the early fall of 2024. As part of their various engagements on campus, these scholars will participate after the workshops as key guest speakers in the 7th edition of the Penn in Latin America and the Caribbean (PLAC) Conference, held on October 11, 2024, at the Perry World House. The conference will focus on "Public and Community Engaged Scholarship in Latin America, the Caribbean, and their Diasporas."

Palermo, Sicily, has been a leading center of migrant rights advocacy and migrant civic participation in the twenty-first century. This project will engage an existing network of diverse migrant community associations and anti-mafia organizations in Palermo to take stock of migrant rights and support systems in the city. Our partner organizations, research assistants, and cultural mediators from different communities will design and conduct a survey and interviews documenting experiences, issues and opportunities related to various rights – to asylum, housing, work, health care, food, education, and more. Our web-based report will include recommendations for city and regional authorities and other actors in civil society. The last phase of our project will involve community outreach and organizing to advance these objectives. The web site we create will be designed as the network’s information center, with a directory of civil society and services, updating an inventory not current since 2014, which our partner Diaspore per la Pace will continue to update.

This interdisciplinary project has four objectives: 1) to investigate why some governments and non-state actors elevated cultural heritage exploitation (CHX) to the strategic level of warfare alongside nuclear weapons, cyberattacks, political influence operations and other “game changers”; 2) which state or non-state actors (e.g. weak actors) use heritage for leverage in conflict and why; and 3) to identify the mechanisms through which CHX coerces an adversary (e.g. catalyzing international involvement); and 4) to identify the best policy responses for non-state actors and states to address the challenge of CHX posed by their adversaries, based on the findings produced by the first three objectives.

Identify the capacity of dental schools, organizations training oral health professionals and conducting oral health research to contribute to oral health policies in the WHO Eastern Mediterranean region, identify the barriers and facilitators to engage in OHPs, and subsequently define research priority areas for the region in collaboration with the WHO, oral health academia, researchers, and other regional stakeholders.

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