Informant interviews II

Learning Objectivesdescribe the characteristics of a good informant, how

to locate and select such

recount the behavioral stages of an interview and pitfall in the process

list various ways of recording and managing information from interviews

conduct an interview in class

Exercise #2: Direct Observation Student experiences?

Open ended interviewing Most critical aspect of qualitative research in learning

about a domain/culture/perceptions

hard to do especially for clinical people who are used to structured interviews

hard for most public health people since they are used to material they can quantify

prepare a fieldguide, with 5-6 questions, some probes, one page MAX

Length at most 10 questions (to take about an hour to complete the interview)

- Descriptive questions:

- typical day- can you tell me what happens to you in a typical day for you as a student?

- examples- can you give me an example of ______

- language questions- can you tell me what _____ means

- experience- “Tell me about this activity?”- You've probably had some interesting experiences with your research

doing- "images of early hominids in popular cinema" MA thesis- coding female circumscision in Senegal and The Gambia- hormonal syncronization in pair bonded couples- teaching biological anthropology

- Structural questions

- what are all the different experiences anthropology graduate students haveat UW

- Contrast questions (what is difference between ____ and ___ _ )

- Iteration:

- tell me about ___

- probing

- what else

- repetition

- Last Question:

- is there anything else you would like to tell me?

- is there anything else I should have asked you?

Disclosure statement

Telephone interviewpeople often more comfortable talking on the phone

can record this if ask permission

Behavioral stages of an interviewphysical set up is critical, try not to directly face the

informant, but sit to the side & below– quiet place with no distractions

Greetings

explanations, project confidentiality statement

Consider a different term than interview: – having a conversation, talk, …

RAPPORT PROCESSApprehension: get informant talking

Exploration– make repeated explanations (your purpose is, to learn

about their ideas)– restate what informants say (in their words, don’t

reinterpret)

Affinity Respect Trust ART

RapportDon’t ask for meaning, ask for use,

Cooperation: how to deal with someone who drags on and on in an interview?

Encourage by telling what they say is appreciated

psychoneurolinguistics

native language speak as you would naturally

– "cool"

During interviewExpress cultural ignorance

– “I’m like a small child, I need to be told everything”

Express interest– “gee, that’s interesting”

Try to use local expressions– (if don't use them correctly, will be less effective,

possibly laughed at)

Closing comments, desire to meet again, thank you

is there anything else you would like to share with me?

one+ question each group plans to ask in their interview.

put questions up on the boards

comment as a group on how to make the question more broad, less leading.

CLASS EXERCISE

Working in another language

Fieldworker using a non-native language may miss what is said

Difficulty capturing verbatim flow of dialogue even when understood

Work with local assistant to help you understand what people are saying

Usually write field notes in your own language– include key non-English words to preserve local meanings

BIASING EFFECTSnot a term used by anthropologist

in epidemiology, bias is a deviation of results or inferences from the truth

Response effect (variation among informants)

Inter-interviewer variability effect– tall / short or obese / slim or male / female– tone of voice

Experience effectIf you think you are experienced in the culture, you

tend to not to ask basic questions

I'm like a child, I need to be told everything– University Police– Alternative Medicine– Blood Donors– Big Time Studiers– Elevator Riders

Thomas Pynchon

Deference effect They tell you what they think you want to know

– in some cultures won't say NO

Informant deliberately try to mislead researcher/interviewer (sucker bias)

Expectancy effect: interpret things consistent with your pre-conceived

concepts of social patternsBig Time Brewery Study Hall

Progress in Developing Countries

Determinants of Health

University Police

Colonics

Blood Donors

Elevator Riders

Trader Joe's shoppers

Madison Market shoppers

Distortion effectYou'll see what you want to see even when it's not

there– Newar women pierce noses

Make notes on what you were doing before the interview/observation– might effect what you observe or hear or way you

interact if you just got a speeding ticket, or had a fight with your partner, or visit with the boss

RecallYou forget, especially what you don’t write down

Writing Up Field Notes

ContextDescribe setting (environment)

Describe informant(s)

Technique of data collection

Describing informantVague and over generalized note:

– The informant was uneasy.

Detailed: At first the lady sat very stiffly on the chair next to my desk. She picked up a magazine and let the pages flutter through her fingers very quickly without really looking at any of the pages. She set the magazine down, looked at her watch, pulled her skirt down, and picked up the magazine again. Her eyes turned from me to the magazine to the other people in the room. She avoided eye contact.

EncounterWhat happened, what was said

Details of behavior

Evaluate encounterEmerging ideas about how culture is organized

Possible biasing effects and other threats to validity

Assess method used and lessons learned

Quotes with / without audio recordingIf you don’t record, how close is close enough to the

verbatim to be a quote?

SUGGEST write quotation marks around the exact words said, and then otherwise indicate the content of the missed material (say use brackets, also …)

"nice being there, hard being back… but it gets old… keep myself busy, sit around…grew up in Los Angeles, used to it, eventually I have hunger for the speed of a big city, getting things done"

Indirect quotationSpeech not written down word for word at the time could

be presented as 'indirect quotation" which more closely approximates dialogue

‘hypothesis I want to test is the foundation for a longer study but this is less costly and will allow me to test the material’

'pair bonded couples, married, male/female, reproductive hormone levels coordinating, a new idea'

'at a party, wife was in bedroom feeding Elsa, a friend walked in and was freaked out seeing his wife's breasts…don't understand what the big deal is, my wife is from Sweden, it's the norm public breast feeding is normal'

Speech can be paraphrasedtranslates speech into the interviewer’s terms and

tends to summarize, obscuring the flavor of the dialogue

Elsa Margaret is four months old, our first child, a new experience for us, really neat to see her develop, feisty, she knows what she wants, she will be an interesting teenager

Be very conservative in editing direct quotations,

also makes you more alert to presenting informant’s views, and not your own

Managing Field Notes Emerson helpful here

NOTEBOOKSdairies, composition notebooks, logs

CARDS

audio recorder, not a substitute

Transcribe everything (audio recording)

include false starts, umm, aah, pauses, repetitions (disfluencies) for this conveys speaker’s emotional state or mood, which may be important to the subject

at same time, need to make the material readable

need for balance

Number paragraphs in write upLegal numbering system useful

– 2.4.6.23• Means 2nd interviewer,

• 4th informant (subject),

• 6th interview,

• 23rd paragraph

2.4.6.23. My sister in the area, doesn’t have problems with her kids either. She ismore of mother’s sort of softside, and let things go side. (Sister in Lynnwood).Erica’s mom. Her kids are doing fine. My younger sister’s got 5 kids now.Doing fine. My sister in Portland had 5. Seem to be all doing fine. My brotherJohn had a son things are great with, a daughter he had real problems with.Kind of an issue where she got to be an adolescent made me think of“reviving Ophelia” She got to be an adolescent and he had broken up with hiswife, and she lived with her mother. She couldn’t get along with her mother,and moved in with him. And he just couldn’t deal with her. He was Dad. Therewas no mom to intervene. He has basically disowned her.

Dialogue includes information on verbal and nonverbal expression

Can't be done from an audio tape and in a video tape depends on cameraperson

record meanings inferred from body expression, tone of voice– turns towards me crosses legs, arms crossed in front of him

– face less smiley, eyes closed

– eyes opens, closes eyes (victim of political violence)

– eyes opened, face softens

– looked up at ceiling

in group settings they talk together

Pitfalls in interviewing Interruptions

– especially telephone and cellular phone

DistractionsTime scheduled right afterwards by interviewer or

informant

Stage fright

Being judgmental

Dealing with someone who drags on

look them directly in the eye

look at your watch?

Reflect back to them what you have heard, regarding the area of interest,

with their quotes

Sensitive questionsasking if married, instead ask who is in the household

my experience in ER is everyone has a fiancé

asking about salary, savings, resources, economics

poor people may be less sensitive about this than those more well off

ask how well off they perceive they are

ask about quantitative ranges may be easier

Counselingavoid giving advice, or stating your own feelings on a

topic, be neutral

Shallownessoften because interviewer moves participant along too

quickly

Secret informationdon’t violate confidentiality, nor use information an

informant asked you not to

Audio recorder takes 6-7 times the amount of time of interview, cf 3

times the amount of time of interview if use notes,

hand-held, battery-operated, often comes with built in microphone, but get kind with external microphone jack

– buy one now, and get used to using it

Audio recordingOptimal: combine the two,

– take notes & use recorder for items missed

small cassette tape recorder, with external mic jack is cheapest (<$50), a back up unit is wise– check operation before you begin

Digitial recorders to media (no tape): – Olympus VN 480 PC– Marantz PMD 660 (Compact Flash Card)

business dictation machine, some models put a tone on the tape to allow quick access during rewind or fast forward, (indexing)

Helpful hintshave spare batteries around, use fresh ones, try to

avoid units that only run on rechargeable batteries if you will be in remote non-electrified places– carry a spare battery pack– NiMH AA rechargeable batteries quite reliable now – use long enough tapes so you don’t have to change

them half-way – most advise against C 120 tapes, but I use them – clean the recording head before use

Microphonelapel microphone less obtrusive, capture all the sound

details ($30), two are ideal with a Y jack, if you only have one, and the informant is not shy about wearing it, that would be preferable

Binaural microphone worn on glasses is very unobtrusive

Pressure Zone Microphone ideal as well

wireless microphones, mixers, good for focus groups

Other recording detailsmake sure the audio recorder is ON, not paused

And that TAPE IS MOVING and recording function is on (not playing back only)

speak the date, time, place, persons on the tape at beginning and end (digital ones often record that)

label the media, prevent re-recording on the tape, make a back up for crucial material

Audio recording detailsspeak clearly and not too fast, and informant is more

likely to do the same

could play back a segment for the respondent, to see if conversation is being picked up, provided you don’t think this will cause stage fright

don’t rustle papers, etc. near the mike (or at all), or play with microphone cord

Transcriptionvery time consuming

use a commercial machine with a foot pedal to move tape back and forth

consider inputting the audio onto a computer and having rapid start stop capabilities

MICROCOMPUTER for noteshas become the standard, since much more readable,

can search easily

BACK UP EVERYTHING

Budgetingif writing a grant proposal, suggest use 6-8 hours of

staff time for each hour of interview time to transcribe, read, analyze

Class Exercise: a student interviews another student, emphasizing

techniques from this & previous lecture

Three-up: one informant, one interviewer and one to observe

Interviewer chooses topic

focus of interview: what do you do in a typical day regarding your

health?

memorable aspects of growing up, events that affected you, as an insight to your culture

if new here: finding a place to live in Seattle,

or if established here, a typical day

What do you in a typical day regarding your health

– What do you do about your health in a typical day?

memorable aspects of growing up, events that affected you, as an insight to your culture

– I’d like to hear from you about what it was like growing up, and what insights you had about your culture? Can you talk about that?

if new here: finding a place to live in Seattle

– I understand you have only been in Seattle a short time, and I’m interested in learning what it is like to come here and find a place to live and get to know the area. Can you talk about that?

if established here, a typical day

– I’m interested in know what you do in a typical day. Can you talk about that?

INTERVIEW EXERCISE

Formattake 3 minutes to develop an brief field guide

take 10 minutes, and then present to the group for 2 minutes

Discuss your reactions, what you learned

THURSDAY: Insider-Outsider Issues

Hoang thi Dieu-Hien

CHARACTERISTICS OF DESIRABLE INFORMANTS

Knowledgeable

Social network

Select so as to provide access to all parts of social system

Both formal and informal position in community

Immersed in culture

Desirable informants

Articulate, observant and able to give precise information -- good storytellers but not analytic

Accessible -- willingness yes but beware of the "too friendly" = marginalized

Cultural consensus and cultural competence (shared knowledge; how well fit consensus in community)

Desirable informants

Understands method of investigation

Able to act as intermediaries or "guides"

Investment by both parties ---> trust

Somehow representative of a community