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Interviews

Interviewing is the most common way of collecting data in action research and is used in both quantitative survey research and qualitative inquiry. If action research involves observation, analysis and then doing, interviews are central to the first two steps. This short overview focuses on qualitative interviews in particular, outlining their history, their various forms and configurations and their preparation, process and analysis.

By way of an introduction, it is important to note that in action research, interviews often become a kind of dance or informal conversation between an interviewer and an interviewee. The idea of a dance suggests the highly reflective way in which participants discuss, share information and co-create a narrative about a particular experience, event or set of issues. Unlike traditional research, the roles between the two participants may blur and shift, and the creation of a narrative is always local and specific to those involved. It is meant to legitimate the experiential knowledge of the person/people being interviewed as well as enhance the skills of the interviewer/listener. It may shock, sadden, galvanize or bore, but it will always generate data or information about the question in focus.

Types of Interviews

Interviews have been used in the social sciences since the nineteenth century, with the closed-ended question survey proving to be the most popular until the 1970s. After that, less structured and more open forms of interviews started capturing the attention of researchers less concerned with emulating the scientific method and more interested in the lived experience of people as told by those people. With the advent of action research and its goal of local, social, political, organizational or community change, open-ended and more creative collection methods became even more important.

Indeed, at this point, just as there are many ways to collect data, in action research, there are many kinds of interviews. These include individual structured, semi-structured and narrative approaches as well as group interviews or focus groups. In addition, interviews may be formally or casually conducted, face-to-face, over the telephone or online. The interview data may be captured through field notes, flip charts, audio tapes or using video cameras, to name just a few methods. The team’s choice of which type of interview to do will depend on the community of interest and their cultural, political and ideological approaches; the theoretical orientation of the project; the research questions; ethics; the length of time they have to do the work; their access to equipment for recording and transcribing data; how many people need to be interviewed and compensated and, of course, resources for all of the above.

Roles and Relationships

As with other types of action research and ways of collecting data (e.g. questionnaires, observation or visual methods such as Photovoice), the interview experience will hinge on how much work has gone into establishing roles and relationships beforehand. For instance, those doing the interviews should ideally be people who have stepped forward from the community of interest doing the action research; who have been helped to prepare for, practice and carry out ‘test’ interviews and who genuinely want to do this kind of data collection. Ideally, they will have been involved in the research project from the beginning, deciding on the research questions, thinking through the ethics of the work and planning how best to collect the kind of data needed to ‘act’ in the ways and means the group needs most. It is important that the interviewers on the team are comfortable with their role, have co-created the questions on the interview guide and have the support they need both before and after the interview takes place. This could include one-to-one or group debriefings where interviewers can discuss and support each other, sharing tips and insights on the process.

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