Interviews and focus groups Flashcards
What are they useful for
- Getting first-hand knowledge of an institution/policy area/experience.
- Providing data on personal experience and private emotions
- Interviews focus on personal experience – help to understand link between structure and agency
- Theory building not testing
Interviews
- Conversation with purpose
- generally one on one
- Recorded for extensive notes
Focus groups
- Involve questions to multiple respondents (4-10) with a moderator/facilitator.
- Usually focus on a specific topic or issue (may be more controversial/difficult to discuss in one-on-one setting)
- Possibly use a video camera to record the focus group.
Positivist and interpretist
POSITIVIST - to find out facts or information
INTERPRETIVIST - to see how the interviewee/subject explains things in their owns terms, how they see the world
What are they bad for
- Large N, not always
- reliability
- Access hard to reach some groups, cabinet officials
Highly structured
Questions and answers are pre-coded
Semi-structured
Some questions agreed to set agenda
Unstructured (open)
Conversational; may be more personal
Data analysis
- Data reduction
- data display
- drawing conclusions/verification
Data reduction
Process the collected data e.g. turn interviews into transcripts then begin coding process.
Data display
As you gather information, produce notes and an interim summary of the research. This may be incomplete and sketchy but it will help when you are going through the process of coding.
Drawing conclusions/verification:
Using Matrices or Networks to help develop conclusions
Matrices
Use of tables or databases to identify trends, patterns, information.
Networks
Identify blocks (nodes) and the connections between them
