Interviews:

1
Interviews

• Analyzing interviews/practicing interviewing

2
Open-ended QuestionsThe In-Person Interview

• Provides face-to-face social interaction between
  the interviewer and the respondent.
• Helps us see things from the respondent's point
  of view
• The best way to find out the respondents
  perceptions
• Examples of interviews in which you took part?

3
Types of Interviews

• Informal conversation Spontaneous generation of
  questions
• General interview guide The interview is guided
  by a checklist of issues to be addressed
• Standardized open-ended interview The interview
  follows a list of questions, all are worded the
  same way for all participants (Interview
  Schedule)
• Each team decides which type to employ

4
Advantages of the InterviewClass Workout

• Think about your team project and find one good
  reason for conducting an in-person interview
• Write down this reason in one phrase (2 min.)
• Turn to your neighbor and find out if she or he
  agrees with you ( 3 min.)
• Present your reason to class

5
Pitfalls in Conducting an Interview

• Questions are not truly open-ended Let
  respondents talk in their language as much as
  possible
• No dichotomous questions No questions that
  require yes or no
• Singular questions One question one idea

6
Pitfalls in Conducting an Interview

• Clear questions Making sure the respondent
  understands the questions right away
• Neutral questions The interviewer is completely
  neutral, no matter what the respondent says
• Rapport Ability to convey empathy and
  understanding without judgment

7
Interview PitfallsClass Workout

• Identify at least one problem with each of the
  eight questions on the list
• In your deliberations, think about difficulties
  respondents might have in
• answering a question
• answering it truthfully
• Time 5 minutes

8
Conducting an Interview the Right WayA Class
Workout

• Now that you know the problems with each
  question, fix each one of them to overcome the
  problems we have identified
• Team size Work together with your neighbor
• Time 10 minutes

9
Conducting an Interview the Right Wayan
Individual Workout

• Review the questions you wrote for the
  questionnaire and the interview
• Identify the problems they have
• Fix the problem and write them the right way
• Time 5 minutes

10
Stages in the Interview Process

• Introduction
• Questions Warm-up and general question
• Questions Critical event
• Question General patterns
• Wrap-up

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Introduction

• Introduce yourself and explain
• The purpose of your project
• The purpose of the interview
• How long the interview will take
• What type of questions you will ask
• Who will see the data you collect
• How will the data be presented
• Ask if the person has any questions

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Warm-up questions

• Questions that are easy to answer and that dont
  require much reflection
• Are usually general, factual and background
  questions
• Examples
• How long have you been interested in ?
• How often do you do something about ?
• Did you get any training is using ?
• With whom do you ?

13
Critical Event

• Ask the participant to describe a recent event
  when they were involved in the information
  behavior in which you are interested
• Make sure that they tell you the whole story
  (remember Assignment 1). For example
• When they initiated
• What were they doing at that time
• Why they did it at that time
• What was their goal
• What they did, step by step
• Why they stopped
• Did they achieve their goal

14
General Patterns

• Based on the critical event, you ask the
  participant questions to find out how typical
  the event was.
• Examples of questions
• How often do you have such situations?
• What do you do in other situations?
• What is your favorite way to go about solving
  such a situation?
• Do you normally solve the problem this way?

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Wrap-up

• Give the participant another opportunity to
  express thoughts and ideas
• Is there anything more youd like to add?
• Thank the participant
• Explain that you know how busy the person is and
  that you appreciate the time she or he took to
  talk to you.

16
Analyzing Interviews

• Steps in analyzing interviews
• Tape the interviews
• Transcribe them
• Read the transcript and find statements that
  indicate a certain information behavior
• Create a general description of the information
  behavior of the interviewed participant

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Taping the Interview

• Practical tips
• Use a relatively small tape recorder
• Make sure the tape recorder is not the center of
  attention
• Use a tape recorder of good quality
• Use tapes of 90 minutes
• Use a microphone
• Practice using the tape recorder so you have no
  surprises during the interview

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Transcribing the Interviews

• Practical tips
• Transcribe word for word, no summaries or
  shortcuts
• You may eliminate expressions that have no
  particular meaning. For example you saying OK
  after every sentence
• Add in parentheses comments that might be
  important. For example (pointing to the wall)
• Leave wide margins to write comments

19
Reading the Transcript

• Read each sentence and note on the margins what
  information behavior it indicates
• If a paragraph, or another part of the text,
  indicates a special attribute, write it down as
  well
• Write down your reflections and thoughts about
  the information behavior of the participant

20
Reading the TranscriptClass Workout

• Read the text of the hypothetical transcript and
  analyze it
• Time 5 minutes

21
The TranscriptI

• My sister wants to buy a Camellia tree and she
  asked me to find some information about it.
• And frankly speaking, I dont know much about
  plants, apart from the sources in general.
• I think the only sources I know about
  gardening and plants, is the Sunset book, which
  is sort of the Bible of the gardeners, especially
  on the West Coast.
• And I dont know much about the information
  thats available on the Web.
• I will just go and do a search in one of the
  search engines, on camellia, and see what I can
  find from there.

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The TranscriptII

• Since I know, I usually like Alta Vista, I
  will go straight there.
• I put plus camellia because that
  guarantees that a term is included in the
  document in Alta Vista. And I will add botany
  and horticulture and gardening and see what will
  come out.
• Okay weve got here some lists looking at the
  results, 4-H, horticulture, contest, camellia.
• 4-H, I would imagine this refers to the youth
  clubs, probably something to do with a
  horticulture contest for youth clubs, with
  camellias.
• A standard periodical directory, just browsing
  now to see... scanning results what do we have
  here. And looking at the descriptions

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The TranscriptIII

• Actually, I usually like to browse before
  opening one of the links. I prefer to do that,
  rather, so I will check one or two pages (of
  results), and then decide what I want to do next.
  scanning results
• So Im looking again at the titles, and
  scanning results Im looking at the content
  descriptions that are available.
• And I will go on to the next page to see the
  next ten references from Alta Vista. scanning
  results
• I think I will ... well, theres a good one.
  Camellias. Ill have a quick look at that one,
  even though I can share the thought with you that
  just before spotting this particular one I was
  going to reformulate the search.
• But since I spotted this one, Im going to
  have a quick look at that, since its about
  camellias only. And see what it says.

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The TranscriptIV

• Reading text This gives an explanation about
  camellias in Virginia ... describes ... heres
  some information about the types of camellias
  that will grow.
• Again concentrated only on camellias in the
  climate zones where Virginia is.
• So since we are not in the same climate zone,
  I go back, and reformulate the search.

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General Description of HIB

• How would you describe the HIB of the person who
  was looking for Camellias?