-: Hello and welcome to part two of "Qualitative Research."
So in this part we're gonna be talking much more about
sort of the nuts and bolts of the logistics
of how do you do it,
especially how do you collect the data
and how do you sort of prepare yourself
so you get really good quality data from your efforts.
So we're going to talk about three main things here.
How do you structure an interview,
how much structure as we'll see,
types of questions
and what is a good order of questions.
So as you sort of have questions that you wanna ask
and you're developing interview guide.
What are the guidelines for the order
of questions that you will ask,
what do you ask first, what do you ask last.
So there's three main types of structure.
First there is structured
and that is where you have a very precise script.
You read it the same way.
You always ask the same questions in the same order
for all of your subjects.
You don't sort of deviate from that.
And in that way you tend to get more reliable answers.
They're very predictable
that you're asking specific questions in a specific order.
And that sort of adds some reliability to the process.
At the other end is an unstructured,
where it's much more freeform.
You may use it to just sort of have key points
that you wish to cover,
but you are free to drop or add questions,
sort of deviate from the script.
And in this way
because you're sort of letting one response lead
to the next question
and maybe you're getting much more valid questions.
And again, because you're letting the interviewee
sort of guide the process a lot more.
And as always, you're letting them express themselves
in their own words,
which is a good way to get valid answers.
Why is it that if you have multiple interviewers
like we'll be doing in this project,
why do you want a structured one?
And we'll discuss that in class.
So the in-between case is probably the one that's used most.
This is so-called semi-structured interviews.
And this sort of is in a sense
sort of the best of both worlds,
takes the strength of each one,
that there's some structure which makes sure
that you hit the key points,
that you make sure that you get data on the questions
that you wanna know about most,
but it also allows for some flexibility.
And as you learn more, you can sort of tweak,
or add new questions,
or drop ones that you find really aren't
yielding anything of interest or value.
And this is probably the most common structure
that's used in interviews by most social scientists.
So when you're doing interviews,
you wanna set an easy conversational tone.
You want your subject to be relaxed and open,
not on guard.
You sort of let, especially with semi-structured,
you let the responses shape the next question.
And it's always a good idea to have some probes in mind
where you say, "Tell me more about this,"
or, "Why does it work like that?"
or, "What's an example of this?"
And as with so many other things,
the best way to get really good at being an interviewer
is to do lots of practice.
The more you do it, the better you become.
So next, I wanna talk a bit about
open versus closed ended question.
So closed ended is you have them choose
from one of these things.
Choose one of these five things reverses open-ended
is that you let them phrase the answer in their own words
and think about which one will yield more reliable results
and which one will yield more valid results.
So think about that
and the next slide will say which is which.
So hopefully this makes sense
that if you're saying choose from one of these things,
you know they're gonna choose one of those five things.
Whereas when you're open-ended,
you're letting them express it in their own words
and it tends to be much more valid.
All right, so when you're thinking about
how do you structure an interview guide,
these are three guidelines.
Note that they are not mutually exclusive.
There are other considerations,
they may even come into conflict.
But here are sort of three guidelines
that I think it's important to follow.
First is you ask more general questions first
and then more specific questions second.
So an example of this is if you're interviewing students
and you wanna know about sort of their
general experience in the classroom
as opposed to their specific experience with one class,
you would ask the general one first.
And you do that because if you ask say,
"What were your experiences in CDAE 3500?"
They very well might have that on their mind
when you go to, "Well, tell me about your experiences
"as a UVM student?"
So you're already sort of flavoring their questions
when you ask the specific ones.
And again, you wanna move down that funnel
from general to specific.
Most to least important
because they might, you know, you might run out of time,
they may not want to do it anymore,
get to the more important information first
and last, safest to riskiest,
that if you're going to ask questions that have high risk,
that they may be offended by maybe, you know,
sort of like things that might put them,
make them vulnerable like sexuality,
or like, you know, drug use or things like that.
Or just, you know, sort of political views
and more sort of, it is sadly in my mind
becoming less safe to express political views.
So you wanna do the safest one
because it might be,
if you ask a really sensitive, risky question,
they might just sort of stop and say,
"I don't want to do this."
And the Human Subjects protocols say that
when someone doesn't, you know,
they don't have to answer a question,
they can quit at any time.
So you want to make sure that you get, you know,
save those really risky ones for the end
in case that's the very last question that you get to ask.
The most important ingredient in a good interview is you.
A thinking, observing, present researcher.
You want to at very least take notes
in a lot of sort of, you know, thesis type of work.
You record it,
but it's important to both take notes
and then go back and revise and reorganize
and see what's there, take a lot of notes,
and again, the best way to get good at it is to practice.
So here are some of the strengths and weaknesses overall
of qualitative.
They tend to be very flexible.
You get a great depth and they are very valid.
The weakness is that in most cases,
no sort of statistical analysis or inference.
You get a lack of breadth
that you don't really have a lot of time.
You know, since each interview takes a long time
and yields a lot of data,
you tend to speak with fewer of them.
And again, it's not as reliable
because you're letting them
express things in their own words
and they can sort of take things in the direction
that they want instead of choose
which of these five things is most true for you.
So again, a strength is that it's valid, it's firsthand,
direct accounts that they will probably in fact
that they should bring up things
that you wouldn't have thought of.
That, you know, if you just started with a survey,
there's probably a lot of things
that you just don't know enough to ask.
So doing interviews first can help make sure
that when you do do a survey that you ask the right things
and note that as well that a qualitative piece
can stand by itself too.
It's not just a means to the end of a survey,
but it also has its own value.
And again, it tends to be qualitative can be less reliable,
you know, it's a very sort of personal,
it's their own views.
So we need to be aware of our own biases, as I said,
and use comparisons and be specific.
And here's sort of a phrase to a good way
of the difference between a senior
and a sophomore's responses.
The top one, you know, very specific,
whereas the second one is much more vague.
And this, you know, I think one of the weaknesses
or the perceived weaknesses of qualitative is,
well that's just your view.
I just should take your word for it.
And by being specific like this,
it sort of adds meat onto those bones
and it makes the results much more credible.
So here are some things to look at
for a qualitative piece if it's done well.
So first did they do a good lit review?
Does the sample make sense?
Do the people that they talked to
make sense for what they're doing?
Did they sort of seek out deviant cases
and not just talk to people that all hold the same views,
and we're gonna learn about of coding and reporting.
But when they do the analysis, are they transparent?
It's very good when you analyze the data
to use multiple coders, which adds to the reliability.
And last when they report out, is that also transparent?
And can you sort of hear and understand
the voice of the respondents
and not just the interpretation of the researcher.
So this is what we did.
And thank you.