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Convergent Interviewing

Convergent interviewing (CI) is a technique developed by Bob Dick from the University of Queensland in Australia. CI aims to collect, analyze, and interpret people's experiences, opinions, attitudes, beliefs, and knowledge that converge around a set of interviews. It was created primarily to address issues in underre-searched areas. Although used and documented mainly by Australian researchers in marketing/business disciplines with foci on organizational change and development, it has been extended and adapted to broader social science and health research. This entry describes the CI process and compares and contrasts it with other qualitative techniques and methods. CI provides a mechanism to flexibly structure research projects while using unstructured content to enable greater reflexivity throughout the different phases of research.

CI permits in-depth interviewing by promoting a cyclical research process that requires ongoing analysis as part of the overall strategy. It is most suitably applied when multiple interviewers are being used in a project, and its aim is to document priority issues when these converge over a series of interviews. According to David Carson and colleagues, this process is iterative and, thus, enables continuous refinement. Interviewers engage in a constant comparative reflexive process that permits detailed rich content and theoretical sampling as researchers seek to continuously test emerging interpretations from early interviews in subsequent interviews.

Although designed to accommodate the use of multiple interviewers, a single interviewer can be used provided that he or she can hold discussions with one or more members of the research team. CI provides a structured process while using unstructured content to enable greater reflexivity throughout the different phases of research.

Several aspects of CI bear mentioning, including use of prior literature, sampling, designing the interview questions, data capture, and comparing and contrasting during the interview process through to the analysis phases.

Prior Literature

Unlike with grounded theory approaches and earlier articulations of CI, Bob Dick encouraged researchers to engage with the literature from the beginning. Prior knowledge is designed to facilitate the development of rapport (interviewers/researchers can make more convincing “sounds” showing their understanding of what participants are expressing), to enable researchers to recognize potential priority issues (arising out of discussions with participants as well as the literature), to aid in the development of a relevantly worded opening question (which can keep participants talking without needing to ask additional questions), to assist in the selection of an appropriate sample, and to increase researchers' confidence when conducting interviews. As Carson and colleagues noted, engaging with the literature throughout the process—both data collection and data analysis—permits an “unfolding” of the literature as priority issues emerge from the interviews.

Sampling and Developing Interview Questions

Sampling is heterogeneous, seeking maximum variation that may be augmented through snowball sampling strategies as deemed appropriate. Participants are sampled as information-rich cases where each subsequent interview is designed to pursue areas of agreement or disagreement on what the priority issues are for the phenomenon under study. To accomplish this, a very general opening question is used to guide the process. This opening question is designed to have the participant speak for a long period of time (up to an hour) without the interviewer needing to ask additional questions beyond gentle follow-ups on what is raised specifically by the respondent; for example, when the respondent discusses issues of trust, the interviewer might say, “Trust? Please elaborate.” Dick argued that this type of approach helps to ensure that the interviewer does not guide or introduce the content.

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