Conversational Interviewing

Contrasting Conversation and Research Interviews

Research interviews are frequently conducted with strangers, and researchers must first arrange a time and place for talking with research participants—either in person or via telephone. The scheduling involved in research interviews is unlike the haphazardness inherent in everyday conversation. In making use of conversational interviews in prolonged fieldwork, ethnographic interviewers are better able to emulate the spontaneity of conversation in their interviewing practice when they pose casual questions to participants about what is going on as part of their participant observations. Qualitative researchers must abide by institutional procedures for informed consent, and the requirements for obtaining written or oral consent from participants for their participation in research also deviate from everyday conversation. Thus, conversational interviewers must work against these formal constraints by simultaneously orienting participants to the purpose of upcoming interaction and setting an informal and casual tone for extended conversation.

Conversations routinely take place between people who are known to one another; thus, rapport building is not necessarily facilitated in the talk prior to a conversation but might be thought of as being produced by good conversation. In everyday life, initiating conversations with strangers is a delicate task, and topics must be introduced judiciously by speakers if the interaction is to be prolonged. Just as initiating conversations with strangers is delicate work, conversational interviews with strangers must be handled with sensitivity, and talk leading up to the discussion of research topics is thought to be important for rapport building. Thus, conversational interviews require that at the outset of interviews, researchers facilitate the kind of small talk familiar to conversationalists who have just met; for example, in Western societies, this could include observations concerning travel, weather, or occupations. Conversational entrées to research interviews are seen to facilitate openness, informality, and rapport between interviewers and interviewees.

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