Abstract
As any empirical qualitative researcher won’t fail to have noticed (being an observant bunch on the whole) there are an awful lot of books on interviewing around. Indeed, the appetite for such texts seems inexhaustible and here are two more to add to the collection. It might be wondered what more can be written on the topic, surely there can be nothing new to say. Perhaps not, but part of the problem with interviewing is that we are all so familiar with it as a method in the social sciences that we do not see it as a problem. We all think we know how to do an interview and so we forget to make the interview strange. One of the reasons for this is because, as Edwards and Holland say in What is Qualitative Interviewing? ‘Interviews are ubiquitous in everyday life’ (as are such opening sentences in books on qualitative interviewing).
Witzel and Reiter, however, in The Problem-Centred Interview have succeeded in making the interview very strange indeed – or at least they have succeeded in making a book on interviewing very strange. The problem-centred interview (defined as ‘a qualitative discursive-dialogic method of reconstructing knowledge about relevant problems’, p. 4; original emphasis) was apparently developed in Germany in the 1970s in ‘an attempt to firmly establish qualitative interviewing as a recognised alternative within the range of social science research methods’ (p. 12). The authors continue: A second motivation was the design of a method of interviewing that was more reflected and appropriate for the collection of ‘qualitative’ knowledge about the social world than the ‘semi-structured’ interview, which is hardly more than ‘a query tool without theoretical foundation’.
Witzel and Reiter regard the semi-structured interview as a method undertaken by ‘naïve’ empiricists, unable to ‘restrain themselves’, and hell bent on ‘corrupting the respondent’s perspective’ (p. 5). This came as a bit of a jolt. I hadn’t realised either that qualitative interviewing wasn’t a recognised method in the social sciences, or that the semi-structured interview was in such dangerously inept hands. This book therefore sets out to rescue qualitative interviewing from this perilous state by introducing a bit of discipline into the proceedings.
Witzel and Reiter adopt the metaphor of the interviewer as the ‘well-informed traveller’ who has done ‘her’ homework but wants a local guide with inside knowledge. They contrast this with the metaphor of the interviewer as miner, digging up ‘pure nuggets’ of knowledge (drawing on Kvale). A distinction which follows a rather well-worn path. Next they set out the three stages to the problem-centred interview. These are: preparation; doing the interview; and processing the material collected. Before the interview the interviewer must ask themselves, ‘What do I want to know, and why? And how can I find out about it?’. Then they must prepare. They should find out where the respondent would like to be interviewed – perhaps offering them a variety of locations. The interviewer is advised to think carefully about their opening question, to probe the respondent. And so it goes on. Perfectly ordinary and widely accepted interview procedures and protocols are presented as if they are unique to the problem-centred interview. Thus, Witzel and Reiter recommend that the interviewer write up some notes afterwards. This they call the ‘post script’, short for ‘post-communication description’ (p. 95). They recommend transcribing parts of the interview, though they warn this can be time-consuming. So prescriptive on preparing and conducting the interview, they are strangely laissez-faire about analysis, suggesting that you can analyse the problem-centred interview any way you want, though they offer some examples.
It is not that the authors provide any particularly illuminating insights into any of these aspects of interviewing but by presenting the qualitative interview as if it is something they have just invented it does prompt a re-examination of what is, when you think about it, a very strange activity. A clue to the whole project is provided on page 30 where the authors say that there has been a confusing proliferation of terms for ‘specialised interviewing techniques’ in Germany. In response, they came up with another one. Perhaps no-one told them that this just isn’t the case in the Anglophone world. We’ve been doing semi-structured interviews for years, in our empirical naivety, completely unable to restrain ourselves. Having said all this, however, the book does offer a fairly thorough grounding for carrying out a perfectly ordinary and recognisable semi-structured interview in a largely post-positivist idiom that may well be helpful to the neophyte researcher.
If The Problem-Centred Interview is clearly rooted in the Germanic tradition, then in What is Qualitative Interviewing? we are firmly back in traditional Anglophone territory where, to the best of my knowledge, the importance of the semi-structured interview has never been in doubt and a plurality of approaches located in differing epistemological and ontological frameworks has long been accepted. This is, in every way, a completely inoffensive little book. It is slim, concise and written in an admirably clear manner. At less than 100 pages, set out in eight chapters, it is an easy read and there is a useful annotated bibliography of books, journals and online resources. (The index however is singularly useless.) Overall, the eight chapters offer a very practical guide to how to think about and carry out an interview but there is less (i.e. nothing) on what to do with it once you have your data (not even the advice that transcription can be time-consuming).
Many of the chapters cover very familiar ground. The first three chapters, for example, look at respectively: key terms; the historical development of the qualitative interview (and how nice it was to see reference to Thomas and Znaniecki and their Polish peasant again! Probably the most cited (and least read?) life history in the qualitative canon); and various forms of qualitative interviews. Chapters 6 and 7 also cover fairly well-worn ground considering practicalities and power dynamics. But there are innovations and Chapter 4 ‘Where can qualitative interviews take place?’, for instance, brings us bang up to date starting with a consideration of the importance of ‘micro-geographies of interview sites’ and the current obsession for ‘walking and talking’. It also includes advice on online and e-interviewing and interviews where interviewer and interviewee are separated in time and/or space. Chapter 5 too offers something new with its consideration of the various tools (‘writing, seeing and creating’) that interviewers can use to elicit information to augment and extend the talking. The final chapter, ‘What are the strengths, challenges and future of qualitative interviews?’ adopts a curiously apologetic tone, the assertion that, ‘we are in a cycle of increased acceptance of qualitative interviews and other qualitative methods’ (p. 90), rather suggests the opposite (in an era obsessed with ‘big data’) and the qualitative interview is here positioned in relation to, and rather subservient to, quantitative methods. The final section on the future of the qualitative interview which starts ‘An optimistic take on the future for qualitative interviewing …’ is therefore strangely dispiriting especially when one considers the defiantly ebullient tone adopted by Witzel and Reiter in The Problem-Centred Interview. However, overall I liked this little book. This is one in a series of guides. If they are all as clear and concise as this one, then together it constitutes a very useful resource for the neophyte researcher at whom the series is presumably aimed.
Both books contribute something of use. To (mis)appropriate Witzel and Reiter’s metaphoric distinction, where What is Qualitative Interviewing? provides a starting point for considering the horizons and possibilities that are opened up for the qualitative interviewer setting out on their journey, The Problem-Centred Interview drills down. But both books are thought provoking, in their very different ways, and indicate that in the house of qualitative research there are many mansions (and plenty of shelving).