Russel-Research-Method-in-Anthropology

9
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Interviewing: Unstructured
and Semistructured
The Big Picture
The concept of ‘‘interviewing’’ covers a lot of ground, from totally unstructured
interactions, through semistructured situations, to highly formal
interactions with respondents. Interviewing is done on the phone, in person,
by mail—even by computer. This chapter is about unstructured and semistructured
face-to-face interviewing, including the management of focus groups.
Unstructured interviewing goes on all the time and just about anywhere—in
homes, walking along a road, weeding a millet field, hanging out
in bars, or waiting for a bus. Semistructured, orin-depth interviewing is a
scheduled activity. A semistructured interview is open ended, but follows a
general script and covers a list of topics.
There is a vast literature on how to conduct effective interviews: how to
gain rapport, how to get people to open up, how to introduce an interview,
and how to end one. You can’t learn to interview by reading about it, but after
you read this chapter, and practice some of the techniques described, you
should be well on your way to becoming an effective interviewer. You should
also have a pretty good idea of how much more there is to learn, and be on
your way to exploring the literature.
Interview Control
There is a continuum of interview situations based on the amount of control
we try to exercise over people’s responses (Dohrenwend and Richardson
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