Interviewing is one of the most common social science research methods; it is used by a wide array of human geographers to gather information about people and particularly their views about their world and how they feel they and others fit within it. Interview “data” are typically obtained through verbal communication between the researcher and participant: face-to-face, over the telephone, and, occasionally yet increasingly, over the Internet as textual chat or Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP). The term interview is used to describe a wide range of techniques in both popular culture and academia. Though it is sometimes used to describe face-to-face, closed-ended, survey questionnaires that are filled out by the researcher, interview more commonly describes the far less structured qualitative technique.

The interview as a ...