RESEARCH METHOD COHEN ok

PLANNING INTERVIEW-BASED RESEARCH PROCEDURES 367
Box 16.5
continued
Make sure you summarize and crystallize every so often.
How to handle interviewees who know more about the topic than you do
Do you have males interviewing females and vice versa (think of age/gender/race etc. of interviewers and interviewees)
Give some feedback to respondents every so often.
What is the interview doing that cannot be done in a questionnaire
If there are status differentials then don’t try to alter them in the space of an interview.
Plan what to do if the interviewee turns the tables and tries to be the interviewer.
Plan what to do with aggressive or angry interviewees.
Plan what to do if powerful interviewees don’t answer your questions: maybe you need to admit that you haven’t
understood very well, and ask for clarification, i.e. that it is your fault.
Be very prepared, so that you don’t need to look at your schedule.
Know your subject matter well.
If people speak fast then try toslowdowneverything.
As an interviewer, you have the responsibility for making sure the interview runs well.
Chapter 16
communication. Morrison (1993: 63) recounts the
incident of an autocratic headteacher extolling the
virtues of collegiality and democratic decisionmaking
while shaking her head vigorously from
side to side and pressing the flat of her hand
in a downwards motion away from herself as if
to silence discussion! To replace audio recording
with video-recording might make for richer data
and catch non-verbal communication, but this
then becomes very time-consuming to analyse.
Transcriptions inevitably lose data from the
original encounter. This problem is compounded,
for a transcription represents the translation from
one set of rule systems (oral and interpersonal)
to another very remote rule system (written
language). As Kvale (1996: 166) suggests, the
prefix trans indicates a change of state or
form; transcription is selective transformation.
Therefore it is unrealistic to pretend that the
data on transcripts are anything but already
interpreted data. As Kvale (1996: 167) remarks, the
transcript can become an opaque screen between
the researcher and the original live interview
situation.
Hence there can be no single ‘correct’
transcription; rather the issue becomes whether, to
what extent, and how a transcription is useful for
the research. Transcriptions are decontextualized,
abstracted from time and space, from the dynamics
of the situation, from the live form, and from the
social, interactive, dynamic and fluid dimensions
of their source; they are frozen.
The words in transcripts are not necessarily
as solid as they were in the social setting of
the interview. Scheurich (1995: 240) suggests
that even conventional procedures for achieving
reliability are inadequate here, for holding
constant the questions, the interviewer, the
interviewee, the time and place does not guarantee
stable, unambiguous data. Indeed Mishler (1991:
260) suggests that data and the relationship
between meaning and language are contextually
situated; they are unstable, changing and capable
of endless reinterpretation.
We are not arguing against transcriptions, rather
we are cautioning against the researcher believing
that they tell everything that took place in the
interview. This might require the researcher to
ensure that different kinds of data are recorded in
the transcript of the audiotape, for example:
what was being said
the tone of voice of the speaker(s) (e.g. harsh,
kindly, encouraging)
the inflection of the voice (e.g. rising or falling,
a question or a statement, a cadence or a pause,