Mastering Qualitative Interviews: Types & Best Practices
Understanding Qualitative Interviews
Although it is implemented, it may not achieve a complete immersion in the social reality under study, to the point of view to reach the eyes of the people observed. At least you can get an approximation of the parsing and motivations that give these people for their behavior. That degree of intensity in the interaction between interviewer and interviewee, as Fontana and Frey say, the interview becomes active interaction leading to a negotiated outcome based and contextually. That is, participants in the interview situation jointly construct knowledge through the circle of questions and answers. When we talk about the world we live in, we embarked on the task of giving it a particular character. Inevitably, we assign features and events and make it work in a particular way. When we talk to someone else in our world, we consider who the other is, what the other person might assume that you know, and where they could reach that other person in relation to the world we are talking about.
However, it is difficult to speak of a single model or qualitative in-depth interview. Depending on the object of study and the characteristics of the context where it is to carry out the same, choose one or other specific practice or by the combination of several. We find classifications based on their degree of structure, in its intensity, in their specialization or in its duration. All have been used with varying success, but without doubt the best meaning that encompasses all forms of interview developed in qualitative social research is to “open or in-depth interview”, to be placed somewhere between the survey (questionnaire or interview tightly targeted) and participant observation (completely free).
Types of Interviews
The types of qualitative interviews suggested here are actually an adaptation of the practice of social research to the logic of social intervention. In the eyes of a critical review, the classification proposed opening a way for social action professionals continue to explore other potential in the classical tools of qualitative social research. As a social research design can be a complementary use of different techniques, the social worker should choose the most appropriate practices to address issues facing the.
The following are the following types of interview:
- Initial interview or contact.
- Interview advice.
- Oral history (interview on past events).
- Interviews testimonials.
- Interviews exploratory.
- Interviews on habits and practices.
- Interview with a group.
Contact Interviews
The social worker’s task is particularly important the first interview maintained contact with someone who demand help, because in the course of the same may condition the success of the intervention. This encounter between professional and client is defined as a process in which, under the theoretical umbrella of sociology and social psychology, we use the information that the person provides on their behaviors, feelings and motivations in order to better understand the individual’s situation into context and provide the most appropriate support.
This type of interview has a wide range of possibilities for structuring that can range from a rigid model led to one of great openness, almost equivalent to a non-directive interview itself qualitative social research. The social worker training and the issues it faces, will influence the decision to develop one kind or another script. However, the most critical positions in the social work discipline claim openness to the rigidity of a fully structured interview.
Whatever the model to apply, must meet a set of objectives that are summarized below: a) obtain information that will be used when deciding on the nature of the difficulties under examination and intervention, b) establishing a partnership with the client laying appreciate the interest in understanding the situation, feelings and thoughts that it poses no verbal or gesturally express value judgments, and