Informant Interviewing

Informant interviews are of a more in-depth, less structured manner (semistructured, unstructured interviews) with a small selected set of informants most often in a field setting. What distinguishes this type of interview from other possible forms (e.g., cognitive tasks, survey interviews) is the depth, breadth, structure, and purpose of the interview format. Informant interviews can be used at various stages of the research enterprise to achieve a variety of different research interview objectives. Johnson and Weller (2002) make the distinction between top-down and bottom-up interviews. Bottom-up informant interviews aid in the clarification of less well-understood topics and knowledge domains and contribute to the construction of more valid STRUCTURED INTERVIEWING formats (e.g., structured questions) used in later stages of the research. Top-down informant interviews aid in the validation and alteration of existing structured questions (e.g., SURVEY questions) leading to the more valid adaptation of existing interviewing forms (e.g., cognitive tasks) to the research context.

An important use of informant interviews concerns the exploration of a less well-understood topic of interest. Informants are selected on the basis of their knowledge, experience, or understanding of a given topical area (Johnson, 1990). In such cases, the interviewer takes on the role of student and directs the interview in such a way as to learn from the informant, who is an expert in the area. Spradley's The Ethnographic Interview (1979) provides an excellent discussion of interviewing in this vein in his distinction of “grand tour” and “mini tour” questions in initial stages of interviewing. Grand tours involve asking questions that literally have the informant take the researcher on a tour of a given place, setting, or topical area. Other questions may direct informants, for example, to describe a typical day or a typical interaction. Mini tour questions seek more specific information on any of these more general topics. The objective of these unstructured questions is to learn more about the informant's subjective understanding of social setting, scene, or knowledge domain.

An understanding of local terminology and issues gained in tour type questioning can facilitate the development of more specific questions for informants. There are a variety of more directed and structured informant interview formats that include, for example, taxonomic approaches or free recall elicitation that provide for a more organized and systematic understanding of a given topic on the part of the informants. Furthermore, such interviews can be used to develop more systematic types of questions and scales (i.e., bottom-up) that provide the ability for comparative analysis of beliefs, knowledge, and so on among informants (or respondents). In sum, informant interviews are an essential component of many forms of research, particularly ETHNOGRAPHIC research, in that they provide for the collection of data that contributes significantly to the overall VALIDITY of the research enterprise.