interview in ethnographic research

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• Published: 15 September 2022

Interviews in the social sciences

• Eleanor Knott   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-9131-3939 1 ,
• Aliya Hamid Rao   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-0674-4206 1 ,
• Kate Summers   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-9964-0259 1 &
• Chana Teeger   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-5046-8280 1  

Nature Reviews Methods Primers volume  2 , Article number:  73 ( 2022 ) Cite this article

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In-depth interviews are a versatile form of qualitative data collection used by researchers across the social sciences. They allow individuals to explain, in their own words, how they understand and interpret the world around them. Interviews represent a deceptively familiar social encounter in which people interact by asking and answering questions. They are, however, a very particular type of conversation, guided by the researcher and used for specific ends. This dynamic introduces a range of methodological, analytical and ethical challenges, for novice researchers in particular. In this Primer, we focus on the stages and challenges of designing and conducting an interview project and analysing data from it, as well as strategies to overcome such challenges.

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Introduction.

In-depth interviews are a qualitative research method that follow a deceptively familiar logic of human interaction: they are conversations where people talk with each other, interact and pose and answer questions 1 . An interview is a specific type of interaction in which — usually and predominantly — a researcher asks questions about someone’s life experience, opinions, dreams, fears and hopes and the interview participant answers the questions 1 .

Interviews will often be used as a standalone method or combined with other qualitative methods, such as focus groups or ethnography, or quantitative methods, such as surveys or experiments. Although interviewing is a frequently used method, it should not be viewed as an easy default for qualitative researchers 2 . Interviews are also not suited to answering all qualitative research questions, but instead have specific strengths that should guide whether or not they are deployed in a research project. Whereas ethnography might be better suited to trying to observe what people do, interviews provide a space for extended conversations that allow the researcher insights into how people think and what they believe. Quantitative surveys also give these kinds of insights, but they use pre-determined questions and scales, privileging breadth over depth and often overlooking harder-to-reach participants.

In-depth interviews can take many different shapes and forms, often with more than one participant or researcher. For example, interviews might be highly structured (using an almost survey-like interview guide), entirely unstructured (taking a narrative and free-flowing approach) or semi-structured (using a topic guide ). Researchers might combine these approaches within a single project depending on the purpose of the interview and the characteristics of the participant. Whatever form the interview takes, researchers should be mindful of the dynamics between interviewer and participant and factor these in at all stages of the project.

In this Primer, we focus on the most common type of interview: one researcher taking a semi-structured approach to interviewing one participant using a topic guide. Focusing on how to plan research using interviews, we discuss the necessary stages of data collection. We also discuss the stages and thought-process behind analysing interview material to ensure that the richness and interpretability of interview material is maintained and communicated to readers. The Primer also tracks innovations in interview methods and discusses the developments we expect over the next 5–10 years.

We wrote this Primer as researchers from sociology, social policy and political science. We note our disciplinary background because we acknowledge that there are disciplinary differences in how interviews are approached and understood as a method.

Experimentation

Here we address research design considerations and data collection issues focusing on topic guide construction and other pragmatics of the interview. We also explore issues of ethics and reflexivity that are crucial throughout the research project.

Research design

Participant selection.

Participants can be selected and recruited in various ways for in-depth interview studies. The researcher must first decide what defines the people or social groups being studied. Often, this means moving from an abstract theoretical research question to a more precise empirical one. For example, the researcher might be interested in how people talk about race in contexts of diversity. Empirical settings in which this issue could be studied could include schools, workplaces or adoption agencies. The best research designs should clearly explain why the particular setting was chosen. Often there are both intrinsic and extrinsic reasons for choosing to study a particular group of people at a specific time and place 3 . Intrinsic motivations relate to the fact that the research is focused on an important specific social phenomenon that has been understudied. Extrinsic motivations speak to the broader theoretical research questions and explain why the case at hand is a good one through which to address them empirically.

Next, the researcher needs to decide which types of people they would like to interview. This decision amounts to delineating the inclusion and exclusion criteria for the study. The criteria might be based on demographic variables, like race or gender, but they may also be context-specific, for example, years of experience in an organization. These should be decided based on the research goals. Researchers should be clear about what characteristics would make an individual a candidate for inclusion in the study (and what would exclude them).

The next step is to identify and recruit the study’s sample . Usually, many more people fit the inclusion criteria than can be interviewed. In cases where lists of potential participants are available, the researcher might want to employ stratified sampling , dividing the list by characteristics of interest before sampling.

When there are no lists, researchers will often employ purposive sampling . Many researchers consider purposive sampling the most useful mode for interview-based research since the number of interviews to be conducted is too small to aim to be statistically representative 4 . Instead, the aim is not breadth, via representativeness, but depth via rich insights about a set of participants. In addition to purposive sampling, researchers often use snowball sampling . Both purposive and snowball sampling can be combined with quota sampling . All three types of sampling aim to ensure a variety of perspectives within the confines of a research project. A goal for in-depth interview studies can be to sample for range, being mindful of recruiting a diversity of participants fitting the inclusion criteria.

Study design

The total number of interviews depends on many factors, including the population studied, whether comparisons are to be made and the duration of interviews. Studies that rely on quota sampling where explicit comparisons are made between groups will require a larger number of interviews than studies focused on one group only. Studies where participants are interviewed over several hours, days or even repeatedly across years will tend to have fewer participants than those that entail a one-off engagement.

Researchers often stop interviewing when new interviews confirm findings from earlier interviews with no new or surprising insights (saturation) 4 , 5 , 6 . As a criterion for research design, saturation assumes that data collection and analysis are happening in tandem and that researchers will stop collecting new data once there is no new information emerging from the interviews. This is not always possible. Researchers rarely have time for systematic data analysis during data collection and they often need to specify their sample in funding proposals prior to data collection. As a result, researchers often draw on existing reports of saturation to estimate a sample size prior to data collection. These suggest between 12 and 20 interviews per category of participant (although researchers have reported saturation with samples that are both smaller and larger than this) 7 , 8 , 9 . The idea of saturation has been critiqued by many qualitative researchers because it assumes that meaning inheres in the data, waiting to be discovered — and confirmed — once saturation has been reached 7 . In-depth interview data are often multivalent and can give rise to different interpretations. The important consideration is, therefore, not merely how many participants are interviewed, but whether one’s research design allows for collecting rich and textured data that provide insight into participants’ understandings, accounts, perceptions and interpretations.

Sometimes, researchers will conduct interviews with more than one participant at a time. Researchers should consider the benefits and shortcomings of such an approach. Joint interviews may, for example, give researchers insight into how caregivers agree or debate childrearing decisions. At the same time, they may be less adaptive to exploring aspects of caregiving that participants may not wish to disclose to each other. In other cases, there may be more than one person interviewing each participant, such as when an interpreter is used, and so it is important to consider during the research design phase how this might shape the dynamics of the interview.

Data collection

Semi-structured interviews are typically organized around a topic guide comprised of an ordered set of broad topics (usually 3–5). Each topic includes a set of questions that form the basis of the discussion between the researcher and participant (Fig.  1 ). These topics are organized around key concepts that the researcher has identified (for example, through a close study of prior research, or perhaps through piloting a small, exploratory study) 5 .

a | Elaborated topics the researcher wants to cover in the interview and example questions. b | An example topic arc. Using such an arc, one can think flexibly about the order of topics. Considering the main question for each topic will help to determine the best order for the topics. After conducting some interviews, the researcher can move topics around if a different order seems to make sense.

Topic guide

One common way to structure a topic guide is to start with relatively easy, open-ended questions (Table  1 ). Opening questions should be related to the research topic but broad and easy to answer, so that they help to ease the participant into conversation.

After these broad, opening questions, the topic guide may move into topics that speak more directly to the overarching research question. The interview questions will be accompanied by probes designed to elicit concrete details and examples from the participant (see Table  1 ).

Abstract questions are often easier for participants to answer once they have been asked more concrete questions. In our experience, for example, questions about feelings can be difficult for some participants to answer, but when following probes concerning factual experiences these questions can become less challenging. After the main themes of the topic guide have been covered, the topic guide can move onto closing questions. At this stage, participants often repeat something they have said before, although they may sometimes introduce a new topic.

Interviews are especially well suited to gaining a deeper insight into people’s experiences. Getting these insights largely depends on the participants’ willingness to talk to the researcher. We recommend designing open-ended questions that are more likely to elicit an elaborated response and extended reflection from participants rather than questions that can be answered with yes or no.

Questions should avoid foreclosing the possibility that the participant might disagree with the premise of the question. Take for example the question: “Do you support the new family-friendly policies?” This question minimizes the possibility of the participant disagreeing with the premise of this question, which assumes that the policies are ‘family-friendly’ and asks for a yes or no answer. Instead, asking more broadly how a participant feels about the specific policy being described as ‘family-friendly’ (for example, a work-from-home policy) allows them to express agreement, disagreement or impartiality and, crucially, to explain their reasoning 10 .

For an uninterrupted interview that will last between 90 and 120 minutes, the topic guide should be one to two single-spaced pages with questions and probes. Ideally, the researcher will memorize the topic guide before embarking on the first interview. It is fine to carry a printed-out copy of the topic guide but memorizing the topic guide ahead of the interviews can often make the interviewer feel well prepared in guiding the participant through the interview process.

Although the topic guide helps the researcher stay on track with the broad areas they want to cover, there is no need for the researcher to feel tied down by the topic guide. For instance, if a participant brings up a theme that the researcher intended to discuss later or a point the researcher had not anticipated, the researcher may well decide to follow the lead of the participant. The researcher’s role extends beyond simply stating the questions; it entails listening and responding, making split-second decisions about what line of inquiry to pursue and allowing the interview to proceed in unexpected directions.

Optimizing the interview

The ideal place for an interview will depend on the study and what is feasible for participants. Generally, a place where the participant and researcher can both feel relaxed, where the interview can be uninterrupted and where noise or other distractions are limited is ideal. But this may not always be possible and so the researcher needs to be prepared to adapt their plans within what is feasible (and desirable for participants).

Another key tool for the interview is a recording device (assuming that permission for recording has been given). Recording can be important to capture what the participant says verbatim. Additionally, it can allow the researcher to focus on determining what probes and follow-up questions they want to pursue rather than focusing on taking notes. Sometimes, however, a participant may not allow the researcher to record, or the recording may fail. If the interview is not recorded we suggest that the researcher takes brief notes during the interview, if feasible, and then thoroughly make notes immediately after the interview and try to remember the participant’s facial expressions, gestures and tone of voice. Not having a recording of an interview need not limit the researcher from getting analytical value from it.

As soon as possible after each interview, we recommend that the researcher write a one-page interview memo comprising three key sections. The first section should identify two to three important moments from the interview. What constitutes important is up to the researcher’s discretion 9 . The researcher should note down what happened in these moments, including the participant’s facial expressions, gestures, tone of voice and maybe even the sensory details of their surroundings. This exercise is about capturing ethnographic detail from the interview. The second part of the interview memo is the analytical section with notes on how the interview fits in with previous interviews, for example, where the participant’s responses concur or diverge from other responses. The third part consists of a methodological section where the researcher notes their perception of their relationship with the participant. The interview memo allows the researcher to think critically about their positionality and practice reflexivity — key concepts for an ethical and transparent research practice in qualitative methodology 11 , 12 .

Ethics and reflexivity

All elements of an in-depth interview can raise ethical challenges and concerns. Good ethical practice in interview studies often means going beyond the ethical procedures mandated by institutions 13 . While discussions and requirements of ethics can differ across disciplines, here we focus on the most pertinent considerations for interviews across the research process for an interdisciplinary audience.

Ethical considerations prior to interview

Before conducting interviews, researchers should consider harm minimization, informed consent, anonymity and confidentiality, and reflexivity and positionality. It is important for the researcher to develop their own ethical sensitivities and sensibilities by gaining training in interview and qualitative methods, reading methodological and field-specific texts on interviews and ethics and discussing their research plans with colleagues.

Researchers should map the potential harm to consider how this can be minimized. Primarily, researchers should consider harm from the participants’ perspective (Box  1 ). But, it is also important to consider and plan for potential harm to the researcher, research assistants, gatekeepers, future researchers and members of the wider community 14 . Even the most banal of research topics can potentially pose some form of harm to the participant, researcher and others — and the level of harm is often highly context-dependent. For example, a research project on religion in society might have very different ethical considerations in a democratic versus authoritarian research context because of how openly or not such topics can be discussed and debated 15 .

The researcher should consider how they will obtain and record informed consent (for example, written or oral), based on what makes the most sense for their research project and context 16 . Some institutions might specify how informed consent should be gained. Regardless of how consent is obtained, the participant must be made aware of the form of consent, the intentions and procedures of the interview and potential forms of harm and benefit to the participant or community before the interview commences. Moreover, the participant must agree to be interviewed before the interview commences. If, in addition to interviews, the study contains an ethnographic component, it is worth reading around this topic (see, for example, Murphy and Dingwall 17 ). Informed consent must also be gained for how the interview will be recorded before the interview commences. These practices are important to ensure the participant is contributing on a voluntary basis. It is also important to remind participants that they can withdraw their consent at any time during the interview and for a specified period after the interview (to be decided with the participant). The researcher should indicate that participants can ask for anything shared to be off the record and/or not disseminated.

In terms of anonymity and confidentiality, it is standard practice when conducting interviews to agree not to use (or even collect) participants’ names and personal details that are not pertinent to the study. Anonymizing can often be the safer option for minimizing harm to participants as it is hard to foresee all the consequences of de-anonymizing, even if participants agree. Regardless of what a researcher decides, decisions around anonymity must be agreed with participants during the process of gaining informed consent and respected following the interview.

Although not all ethical challenges can be foreseen or planned for 18 , researchers should think carefully — before the interview — about power dynamics, participant vulnerability, emotional state and interactional dynamics between interviewer and participant, even when discussing low-risk topics. Researchers may then wish to plan for potential ethical issues, for example by preparing a list of relevant organizations to which participants can be signposted. A researcher interviewing a participant about debt, for instance, might prepare in advance a list of debt advice charities, organizations and helplines that could provide further support and advice. It is important to remember that the role of an interviewer is as a researcher rather than as a social worker or counsellor because researchers may not have relevant and requisite training in these other domains.

Box 1 Mapping potential forms of harm

Social: researchers should avoid causing any relational detriment to anyone in the course of interviews, for example, by sharing information with other participants or causing interview participants to be shunned or mistreated by their community as a result of participating.

Economic: researchers should avoid causing financial detriment to anyone, for example, by expecting them to pay for transport to be interviewed or to potentially lose their job as a result of participating.

Physical: researchers should minimize the risk of anyone being exposed to violence as a result of the research both from other individuals or from authorities, including police.

Psychological: researchers should minimize the risk of causing anyone trauma (or re-traumatization) or psychological anguish as a result of the research; this includes not only the participant but importantly the researcher themselves and anyone that might read or analyse the transcripts, should they contain triggering information.

Political: researchers should minimize the risk of anyone being exposed to political detriment as a result of the research, such as retribution.

Professional/reputational: researchers should minimize the potential for reputational damage to anyone connected to the research (this includes ensuring good research practices so that any researchers involved are not harmed reputationally by being involved with the research project).

The task here is not to map exhaustively the potential forms of harm that might pertain to a particular research project (that is the researcher’s job and they should have the expertise most suited to mapping such potential harms relative to the specific project) but to demonstrate the breadth of potential forms of harm.

Ethical considerations post-interview

Researchers should consider how interview data are stored, analysed and disseminated. If participants have been offered anonymity and confidentiality, data should be stored in a way that does not compromise this. For example, researchers should consider removing names and any other unnecessary personal details from interview transcripts, password-protecting and encrypting files and using pseudonyms to label and store all interview data. It is also important to address where interview data are taken (for example, across borders in particular where interview data might be of interest to local authorities) and how this might affect the storage of interview data.

Examining how the researcher will represent participants is a paramount ethical consideration both in the planning stages of the interview study and after it has been conducted. Dissemination strategies also need to consider questions of anonymity and representation. In small communities, even if participants are given pseudonyms, it might be obvious who is being described. Anonymizing not only the names of those participating but also the research context is therefore a standard practice 19 . With particularly sensitive data or insights about the participant, it is worth considering describing participants in a more abstract way rather than as specific individuals. These practices are important both for protecting participants’ anonymity but can also affect the ability of the researcher and others to return ethically to the research context and similar contexts 20 .

Reflexivity and positionality

Reflexivity and positionality mean considering the researcher’s role and assumptions in knowledge production 13 . A key part of reflexivity is considering the power relations between the researcher and participant within the interview setting, as well as how researchers might be perceived by participants. Further, researchers need to consider how their own identities shape the kind of knowledge and assumptions they bring to the interview, including how they approach and ask questions and their analysis of interviews (Box  2 ). Reflexivity is a necessary part of developing ethical sensibility as a researcher by adapting and reflecting on how one engages with participants. Participants should not feel judged, for example, when they share information that researchers might disagree with or find objectionable. How researchers deal with uncomfortable moments or information shared by participants is at their discretion, but they should consider how they will react both ahead of time and in the moment.

Researchers can develop their reflexivity by considering how they themselves would feel being asked these interview questions or represented in this way, and then adapting their practice accordingly. There might be situations where these questions are not appropriate in that they unduly centre the researchers’ experiences and worldview. Nevertheless, these prompts can provide a useful starting point for those beginning their reflexive journey and developing an ethical sensibility.

Reflexivity and ethical sensitivities require active reflection throughout the research process. For example, researchers should take care in interview memos and their notes to consider their assumptions, potential preconceptions, worldviews and own identities prior to and after interviews (Box  2 ). Checking in with assumptions can be a way of making sure that researchers are paying close attention to their own theoretical and analytical biases and revising them in accordance with what they learn through the interviews. Researchers should return to these notes (especially when analysing interview material), to try to unpack their own effects on the research process as well as how participants positioned and engaged with them.

Box 2 Aspects to reflect on reflexively

For reflexive engagement, and understanding the power relations being co-constructed and (re)produced in interviews, it is necessary to reflect, at a minimum, on the following.

Ethnicity, race and nationality, such as how does privilege stemming from race or nationality operate between the researcher, the participant and research context (for example, a researcher from a majority community may be interviewing a member of a minority community)

Gender and sexuality, see above on ethnicity, race and nationality

Social class, and in particular the issue of middle-class bias among researchers when formulating research and interview questions

Economic security/precarity, see above on social class and thinking about the researcher’s relative privilege and the source of biases that stem from this

Educational experiences and privileges, see above

Disciplinary biases, such as how the researcher’s discipline/subfield usually approaches these questions, possibly normalizing certain assumptions that might be contested by participants and in the research context

Political and social values

Lived experiences and other dimensions of ourselves that affect and construct our identity as researchers

In this section, we discuss the next stage of an interview study, namely, analysing the interview data. Data analysis may begin while more data are being collected. Doing so allows early findings to inform the focus of further data collection, as part of an iterative process across the research project. Here, the researcher is ultimately working towards achieving coherence between the data collected and the findings produced to answer successfully the research question(s) they have set.

The two most common methods used to analyse interview material across the social sciences are thematic analysis 21 and discourse analysis 22 . Thematic analysis is a particularly useful and accessible method for those starting out in analysis of qualitative data and interview material as a method of coding data to develop and interpret themes in the data 21 . Discourse analysis is more specialized and focuses on the role of discourse in society by paying close attention to the explicit, implicit and taken-for-granted dimensions of language and power 22 , 23 . Although thematic and discourse analysis are often discussed as separate techniques, in practice researchers might flexibly combine these approaches depending on the object of analysis. For example, those intending to use discourse analysis might first conduct thematic analysis as a way to organize and systematize the data. The object and intention of analysis might differ (for example, developing themes or interrogating language), but the questions facing the researcher (such as whether to take an inductive or deductive approach to analysis) are similar.

Preparing data

Data preparation is an important step in the data analysis process. The researcher should first determine what comprises the corpus of material and in what form it will it be analysed. The former refers to whether, for example, alongside the interviews themselves, analytic memos or observational notes that may have been taken during data collection will also be directly analysed. The latter refers to decisions about how the verbal/audio interview data will be transformed into a written form, making it suitable for processes of data analysis. Typically, interview audio recordings are transcribed to produce a written transcript. It is important to note that the process of transcription is one of transformation. The verbal interview data are transformed into a written transcript through a series of decisions that the researcher must make. The researcher should consider the effect of mishearing what has been said or how choosing to punctuate a sentence in a particular way will affect the final analysis.

Box  3 shows an example transcript excerpt from an interview with a teacher conducted by Teeger as part of her study of history education in post-apartheid South Africa 24 (Box  3 ). Seeing both the questions and the responses means that the reader can contextualize what the participant (Ms Mokoena) has said. Throughout the transcript the researcher has used square brackets, for example to indicate a pause in speech, when Ms Mokoena says “it’s [pause] it’s a difficult topic”. The transcription choice made here means that we see that Ms Mokoena has taken time to pause, perhaps to search for the right words, or perhaps because she has a slight apprehension. Square brackets are also included as an overt act of communication to the reader. When Ms Mokoena says “ja”, the English translation (“yes”) of the word in Afrikaans is placed in square brackets to ensure that the reader can follow the meaning of the speech.

Decisions about what to include when transcribing will be hugely important for the direction and possibilities of analysis. Researchers should decide what they want to capture in the transcript, based on their analytic focus. From a (post)positivist perspective 25 , the researcher may be interested in the manifest content of the interview (such as what is said, not how it is said). In that case, they may choose to transcribe intelligent verbatim . From a constructivist perspective 25 , researchers may choose to record more aspects of speech (including, for example, pauses, repetitions, false starts, talking over one another) so that these features can be analysed. Those working from this perspective argue that to recognize the interactional nature of the interview setting adequately and to avoid misinterpretations, features of interaction (pauses, overlaps between speakers and so on) should be preserved in transcription and therefore in the analysis 10 . Readers interested in learning more should consult Potter and Hepburn’s summary of how to present interaction through transcription of interview data 26 .

The process of analysing semi-structured interviews might be thought of as a generative rather than an extractive enterprise. Findings do not already exist within the interview data to be discovered. Rather, researchers create something new when analysing the data by applying their analytic lens or approach to the transcripts. At a high level, there are options as to what researchers might want to glean from their interview data. They might be interested in themes, whereby they identify patterns of meaning across the dataset 21 . Alternatively, they may focus on discourse(s), looking to identify how language is used to construct meanings and therefore how language reinforces or produces aspects of the social world 27 . Alternatively, they might look at the data to understand narrative or biographical elements 28 .

A further overarching decision to make is the extent to which researchers bring predetermined framings or understandings to bear on their data, or instead begin from the data themselves to generate an analysis. One way of articulating this is the extent to which researchers take a deductive approach or an inductive approach to analysis. One example of a truly inductive approach is grounded theory, whereby the aim of the analysis is to build new theory, beginning with one’s data 6 , 29 . In practice, researchers using thematic and discourse analysis often combine deductive and inductive logics and describe their process instead as iterative (referred to also as an abductive approach ) 30 , 31 . For example, researchers may decide that they will apply a given theoretical framing, or begin with an initial analytic framework, but then refine or develop these once they begin the process of analysis.

Box 3 Excerpt of interview transcript (from Teeger 24 )

Interviewer : Maybe you could just start by talking about what it’s like to teach apartheid history.

Ms Mokoena : It’s a bit challenging. You’ve got to accommodate all the kids in the class. You’ve got to be sensitive to all the racial differences. You want to emphasize the wrongs that were done in the past but you also want to, you know, not to make kids feel like it’s their fault. So you want to use the wrongs of the past to try and unite the kids …

Interviewer : So what kind of things do you do?

Ms Mokoena : Well I normally highlight the fact that people that were struggling were not just the blacks, it was all the races. And I give examples of the people … from all walks of life, all races, and highlight how they suffered as well as a result of apartheid, particularly the whites… . What I noticed, particularly my first year of teaching apartheid, I noticed that the black kids made the others feel responsible for what happened… . I had a lot of fights…. A lot of kids started hating each other because, you know, the others are white and the others were black. And they started saying, “My mother is a domestic worker because she was never allowed an opportunity to get good education.” …

Interviewer : I didn’t see any of that now when I was observing.

Ms Mokoena : … Like I was saying I think that because of the re-emphasis of the fact that, look, everybody did suffer one way or the other, they sort of got to see that it was everybody’s struggle … . They should now get to understand that that’s why we’re called a Rainbow Nation. Not everybody agreed with apartheid and not everybody suffered. Even all the blacks, not all blacks got to feel what the others felt . So ja [yes], it’s [pause] it’s a difficult topic, ja . But I think if you get the kids to understand why we’re teaching apartheid in the first place and you show the involvement of all races in all the different sides , then I think you have managed to teach it properly. So I think because of my inexperience then — that was my first year of teaching history — so I think I — maybe I over-emphasized the suffering of the blacks versus the whites [emphasis added].

Reprinted with permission from ref. 24 , Sage Publications.

From data to codes

Coding data is a key building block shared across many approaches to data analysis. Coding is a way of organizing and describing data, but is also ultimately a way of transforming data to produce analytic insights. The basic practice of coding involves highlighting a segment of text (this may be a sentence, a clause or a longer excerpt) and assigning a label to it. The aim of the label is to communicate some sort of summary of what is in the highlighted piece of text. Coding is an iterative process, whereby researchers read and reread their transcripts, applying and refining their codes, until they have a coding frame (a set of codes) that is applied coherently across the dataset and that captures and communicates the key features of what is contained in the data as it relates to the researchers’ analytic focus.

What one codes for is entirely contingent on the focus of the research project and the choices the researcher makes about the approach to analysis. At first, one might apply descriptive codes, summarizing what is contained in the interviews. It is rarely desirable to stop at this point, however, because coding is a tool to move from describing the data to interpreting the data. Suppose the researcher is pursuing some version of thematic analysis. In that case, it might be that the objects of coding are aspects of reported action, emotions, opinions, norms, relationships, routines, agreement/disagreement and change over time. A discourse analysis might instead code for different types of speech acts, tropes, linguistic or rhetorical devices. Multiple types of code might be generated within the same research project. What is important is that researchers are aware of the choices they are making in terms of what they are coding for. Moreover, through the process of refinement, the aim is to produce a set of discrete codes — in which codes are conceptually distinct, as opposed to overlapping. By using the same codes across the dataset, the researcher can capture commonalities across the interviews. This process of refinement involves relabelling codes and reorganizing how and where they are applied in the dataset.

From coding to analysis and writing

Data analysis is also an iterative process in which researchers move closer to and further away from the data. As they move away from the data, they synthesize their findings, thus honing and articulating their analytic insights. As they move closer to the data, they ground these insights in what is contained in the interviews. The link should not be broken between the data themselves and higher-order conceptual insights or claims being made. Researchers must be able to show evidence for their claims in the data. Figure  2 summarizes this iterative process and suggests the sorts of activities involved at each stage more concretely.

As well as going through steps 1 to 6 in order, the researcher will also go backwards and forwards between stages. Some stages will themselves be a forwards and backwards processing of coding and refining when working across different interview transcripts.

At the stage of synthesizing, there are some common quandaries. When dealing with a dataset consisting of multiple interviews, there will be salient and minority statements across different participants, or consensus or dissent on topics of interest to the researcher. A strength of qualitative interviews is that we can build in these nuances and variations across our data as opposed to aggregating them away. When exploring and reporting data, researchers should be asking how different findings are patterned and which interviews contain which codes, themes or tropes. Researchers should think about how these variations fit within the longer flow of individual interviews and what these variations tell them about the nature of their substantive research interests.

A further consideration is how to approach analysis within and across interview data. Researchers may look at one individual code, to examine the forms it takes across different participants and what they might be able to summarize about this code in the round. Alternatively, they might look at how a code or set of codes pattern across the account of one participant, to understand the code(s) in a more contextualized way. Further analysis might be done according to different sampling characteristics, where researchers group together interviews based on certain demographic characteristics and explore these together.

When it comes to writing up and presenting interview data, key considerations tend to rest on what is often termed transparency. When presenting the findings of an interview-based study, the reader should be able to understand and trace what the stated findings are based upon. This process typically involves describing the analytic process, how key decisions were made and presenting direct excerpts from the data. It is important to account for how the interview was set up and to consider the active part that the researcher has played in generating the data 32 . Quotes from interviews should not be thought of as merely embellishing or adding interest to a final research output. Rather, quotes serve the important function of connecting the reader directly to the underlying data. Quotes, therefore, should be chosen because they provide the reader with the most apt insight into what is being discussed. It is good practice to report not just on what participants said, but also on the questions that were asked to elicit the responses.

Researchers have increasingly used specialist qualitative data analysis software to organize and analyse their interview data, such as NVivo or ATLAS.ti. It is important to remember that such software is a tool for, rather than an approach or technique of, analysis. That said, software also creates a wide range of possibilities in terms of what can be done with the data. As researchers, we should reflect on how the range of possibilities of a given software package might be shaping our analytical choices and whether these are choices that we do indeed want to make.

Applications

This section reviews how and why in-depth interviews have been used by researchers studying gender, education and inequality, nationalism and ethnicity and the welfare state. Although interviews can be employed as a method of data collection in just about any social science topic, the applications below speak directly to the authors’ expertise and cutting-edge areas of research.

When it comes to the broad study of gender, in-depth interviews have been invaluable in shaping our understanding of how gender functions in everyday life. In a study of the US hedge fund industry (an industry dominated by white men), Tobias Neely was interested in understanding the factors that enable white men to prosper in the industry 33 . The study comprised interviews with 45 hedge fund workers and oversampled women of all races and men of colour to capture a range of experiences and beliefs. Tobias Neely found that practices of hiring, grooming and seeding are key to maintaining white men’s dominance in the industry. In terms of hiring, the interviews clarified that white men in charge typically preferred to hire people like themselves, usually from their extended networks. When women were hired, they were usually hired to less lucrative positions. In terms of grooming, Tobias Neely identifies how older and more senior men in the industry who have power and status will select one or several younger men as their protégés, to include in their own elite networks. Finally, in terms of her concept of seeding, Tobias Neely describes how older men who are hedge fund managers provide the seed money (often in the hundreds of millions of dollars) for a hedge fund to men, often their own sons (but not their daughters). These interviews provided an in-depth look into gendered and racialized mechanisms that allow white men to flourish in this industry.

Research by Rao draws on dozens of interviews with men and women who had lost their jobs, some of the participants’ spouses and follow-up interviews with about half the sample approximately 6 months after the initial interview 34 . Rao used interviews to understand the gendered experience and understanding of unemployment. Through these interviews, she found that the very process of losing their jobs meant different things for men and women. Women often saw job loss as being a personal indictment of their professional capabilities. The women interviewed often referenced how years of devaluation in the workplace coloured their interpretation of their job loss. Men, by contrast, were also saddened by their job loss, but they saw it as part and parcel of a weak economy rather than a personal failing. How these varied interpretations occurred was tied to men’s and women’s very different experiences in the workplace. Further, through her analysis of these interviews, Rao also showed how these gendered interpretations had implications for the kinds of jobs men and women sought to pursue after job loss. Whereas men remained tied to participating in full-time paid work, job loss appeared to be a catalyst pushing some of the women to re-evaluate their ties to the labour force.

In a study of workers in the tech industry, Hart used interviews to explain how individuals respond to unwanted and ambiguously sexual interactions 35 . Here, the researcher used interviews to allow participants to describe how these interactions made them feel and act and the logics of how they interpreted, classified and made sense of them 35 . Through her analysis of these interviews, Hart showed that participants engaged in a process she termed “trajectory guarding”, whereby they sought to monitor unwanted and ambiguously sexual interactions to avoid them from escalating. Yet, as Hart’s analysis proficiently demonstrates, these very strategies — which protect these workers sexually — also undermined their workplace advancement.

Drawing on interviews, these studies have helped us to understand better how gendered mechanisms, gendered interpretations and gendered interactions foster gender inequality when it comes to paid work. Methodologically, these studies illuminate the power of interviews to reveal important aspects of social life.

Nationalism and ethnicity

Traditionally, nationalism has been studied from a top-down perspective, through the lens of the state or using historical methods; in other words, in-depth interviews have not been a common way of collecting data to study nationalism. The methodological turn towards everyday nationalism has encouraged more scholars to go to the field and use interviews (and ethnography) to understand nationalism from the bottom up: how people talk about, give meaning, understand, navigate and contest their relation to nation, national identification and nationalism 36 , 37 , 38 , 39 . This turn has also addressed the gap left by those studying national and ethnic identification via quantitative methods, such as surveys.

Surveys can enumerate how individuals ascribe to categorical forms of identification 40 . However, interviews can question the usefulness of such categories and ask whether these categories are reflected, or resisted, by participants in terms of the meanings they give to identification 41 , 42 . Categories often pitch identification as a mutually exclusive choice; but identification might be more complex than such categories allow. For example, some might hybridize these categories or see themselves as moving between and across categories 43 . Hearing how people talk about themselves and their relation to nations, states and ethnicities, therefore, contributes substantially to the study of nationalism and national and ethnic forms of identification.

One particular approach to studying these topics, whether via everyday nationalism or alternatives, is that of using interviews to capture both articulations and narratives of identification, relations to nationalism and the boundaries people construct. For example, interviews can be used to gather self–other narratives by studying how individuals construct I–we–them boundaries 44 , including how participants talk about themselves, who participants include in their various ‘we’ groupings and which and how participants create ‘them’ groupings of others, inserting boundaries between ‘I/we’ and ‘them’. Overall, interviews hold great potential for listening to participants and understanding the nuances of identification and the construction of boundaries from their point of view.

Education and inequality

Scholars of social stratification have long noted that the school system often reproduces existing social inequalities. Carter explains that all schools have both material and sociocultural resources 45 . When children from different backgrounds attend schools with different material resources, their educational and occupational outcomes are likely to vary. Such material resources are relatively easy to measure. They are operationalized as teacher-to-student ratios, access to computers and textbooks and the physical infrastructure of classrooms and playgrounds.

Drawing on Bourdieusian theory 46 , Carter conceptualizes the sociocultural context as the norms, values and dispositions privileged within a social space 45 . Scholars have drawn on interviews with students and teachers (as well as ethnographic observations) to show how schools confer advantages on students from middle-class families, for example, by rewarding their help-seeking behaviours 47 . Focusing on race, researchers have revealed how schools can remain socioculturally white even as they enrol a racially diverse student population. In such contexts, for example, teachers often misrecognize the aesthetic choices made by students of colour, wrongly inferring that these students’ tastes in clothing and music reflect negative orientations to schooling 48 , 49 , 50 . These assessments can result in disparate forms of discipline and may ultimately shape educators’ assessments of students’ academic potential 51 .

Further, teachers and administrators tend to view the appropriate relationship between home and school in ways that resonate with white middle-class parents 52 . These parents are then able to advocate effectively for their children in ways that non-white parents are not 53 . In-depth interviews are particularly good at tapping into these understandings, revealing the mechanisms that confer privilege on certain groups of students and thereby reproduce inequality.

In addition, interviews can shed light on the unequal experiences that young people have within educational institutions, as the views of dominant groups are affirmed while those from disadvantaged backgrounds are delegitimized. For example, Teeger’s interviews with South African high schoolers showed how — because racially charged incidents are often framed as jokes in the broader school culture — Black students often feel compelled to ignore and keep silent about the racism they experience 54 . Interviews revealed that Black students who objected to these supposed jokes were coded by other students as serious or angry. In trying to avoid such labels, these students found themselves unable to challenge the racism they experienced. Interviews give us insight into these dynamics and help us see how young people understand and interpret the messages transmitted in schools — including those that speak to issues of inequality in their local school contexts as well as in society more broadly 24 , 55 .

The welfare state

In-depth interviews have also proved to be an important method for studying various aspects of the welfare state. By welfare state, we mean the social institutions relating to the economic and social wellbeing of a state’s citizens. Notably, using interviews has been useful to look at how policy design features are experienced and play out on the ground. Interviews have often been paired with large-scale surveys to produce mixed-methods study designs, therefore achieving both breadth and depth of insights.

In-depth interviews provide the opportunity to look behind policy assumptions or how policies are designed from the top down, to examine how these play out in the lives of those affected by the policies and whose experiences might otherwise be obscured or ignored. For example, the Welfare Conditionality project used interviews to critique the assumptions that conditionality (such as, the withdrawal of social security benefits if recipients did not perform or meet certain criteria) improved employment outcomes and instead showed that conditionality was harmful to mental health, living standards and had many other negative consequences 56 . Meanwhile, combining datasets from two small-scale interview studies with recipients allowed Summers and Young to critique assumptions around the simplicity that underpinned the design of Universal Credit in 2020, for example, showing that the apparently simple monthly payment design instead burdened recipients with additional money management decisions and responsibilities 57 .

Similarly, the Welfare at a (Social) Distance project used a mixed-methods approach in a large-scale study that combined national surveys with case studies and in-depth interviews to investigate the experience of claiming social security benefits during the COVID-19 pandemic. The interviews allowed researchers to understand in detail any issues experienced by recipients of benefits, such as delays in the process of claiming, managing on a very tight budget and navigating stigma and claiming 58 .

These applications demonstrate the multi-faceted topics and questions for which interviews can be a relevant method for data collection. These applications highlight not only the relevance of interviews, but also emphasize the key added value of interviews, which might be missed by other methods (surveys, in particular). Interviews can expose and question what is taken for granted and directly engage with communities and participants that might otherwise be ignored, obscured or marginalized.

Reproducibility and data deposition

There is a robust, ongoing debate about reproducibility in qualitative research, including interview studies. In some research paradigms, reproducibility can be a way of interrogating the rigour and robustness of research claims, by seeing whether these hold up when the research process is repeated. Some scholars have suggested that although reproducibility may be challenging, researchers can facilitate it by naming the place where the research was conducted, naming participants, sharing interview and fieldwork transcripts (anonymized and de-identified in cases where researchers are not naming people or places) and employing fact-checkers for accuracy 11 , 59 , 60 .

In addition to the ethical concerns of whether de-anonymization is ever feasible or desirable, it is also important to address whether the replicability of interview studies is meaningful. For example, the flexibility of interviews allows for the unexpected and the unforeseen to be incorporated into the scope of the research 61 . However, this flexibility means that we cannot expect reproducibility in the conventional sense, given that different researchers will elicit different types of data from participants. Sharing interview transcripts with other researchers, for instance, downplays the contextual nature of an interview.

Drawing on Bauer and Gaskell, we propose several measures to enhance rigour in qualitative research: transparency, grounding interpretations and aiming for theoretical transferability and significance 62 .

Researchers should be transparent when describing their methodological choices. Transparency means documenting who was interviewed, where and when (without requiring de-anonymization, for example, by documenting their characteristics), as well as the questions they were asked. It means carefully considering who was left out of the interviews and what that could mean for the researcher’s findings. It also means carefully considering who the researcher is and how their identity shaped the research process (integrating and articulating reflexivity into whatever is written up).

Second, researchers should ground their interpretations in the data. Grounding means presenting the evidence upon which the interpretation relies. Quotes and extracts should be extensive enough to allow the reader to evaluate whether the researcher’s interpretations are grounded in the data. At each step, researchers should carefully compare their own explanations and interpretations with alternative explanations. Doing so systematically and frequently allows researchers to become more confident in their claims. Here, researchers should justify the link between data and analysis by using quotes to justify and demonstrate the analytical point, while making sure the analytical point offers an interpretation of quotes (Box  4 ).

An important step in considering alternative explanations is to seek out disconfirming evidence 4 , 63 . This involves looking for instances where participants deviate from what the majority are saying and thus bring into question the theory (or explanation) that the researcher is developing. Careful analysis of such examples can often demonstrate the salience and meaning of what appears to be the norm (see Table  2 for examples) 54 . Considering alternative explanations and paying attention to disconfirming evidence allows the researcher to refine their own theories in respect of the data.

Finally, researchers should aim for theoretical transferability and significance in their discussions of findings. One way to think about this is to imagine someone who is not interested in the empirical study. Articulating theoretical transferability and significance usually takes the form of broadening out from the specific findings to consider explicitly how the research has refined or altered prior theoretical approaches. This process also means considering under what other conditions, aside from those of the study, the researcher thinks their theoretical revision would be supported by and why. Importantly, it also includes thinking about the limitations of one’s own approach and where the theoretical implications of the study might not hold.

Box 4 An example of grounding interpretations in data (from Rao 34 )

In an article explaining how unemployed men frame their job loss as a pervasive experience, Rao writes the following: “Unemployed men in this study understood unemployment to be an expected aspect of paid work in the contemporary United States. Robert, a white unemployed communications professional, compared the economic landscape after the Great Recession with the tragic events of September 11, 2001:

Part of your post-9/11 world was knowing people that died as a result of terrorism. The same thing is true with the [Great] Recession, right? … After the Recession you know somebody who was unemployed … People that really should be working.

The pervasiveness of unemployment rendered it normal, as Robert indicates.”

Here, the link between the quote presented and the analytical point Rao is making is clear: the analytical point is grounded in a quote and an interpretation of the quote is offered 34 .

Limitations and optimizations

When deciding which research method to use, the key question is whether the method provides a good fit for the research questions posed. In other words, researchers should consider whether interviews will allow them to successfully access the social phenomena necessary to answer their question(s) and whether the interviews will do so more effectively than other methods. Table  3 summarizes the major strengths and limitations of interviews. However, the accompanying text below is organized around some key issues, where relative strengths and weaknesses are presented alongside each other, the aim being that readers should think about how these can be balanced and optimized in relation to their own research.

Breadth versus depth of insight

Achieving an overall breadth of insight, in a statistically representative sense, is not something that is possible or indeed desirable when conducting in-depth interviews. Instead, the strength of conducting interviews lies in their ability to generate various sorts of depth of insight. The experiences or views of participants that can be accessed by conducting interviews help us to understand participants’ subjective realities. The challenge, therefore, is for researchers to be clear about why depth of insight is the focus and what we should aim to glean from these types of insight.

Naturalistic or artificial interviews

Interviews make use of a form of interaction with which people are familiar 64 . By replicating a naturalistic form of interaction as a tool to gather social science data, researchers can capitalize on people’s familiarity and expectations of what happens in a conversation. This familiarity can also be a challenge, as people come to the interview with preconceived ideas about what this conversation might be for or about. People may draw on experiences of other similar conversations when taking part in a research interview (for example, job interviews, therapy sessions, confessional conversations, chats with friends). Researchers should be aware of such potential overlaps and think through their implications both in how the aims and purposes of the research interview are communicated to participants and in how interview data are interpreted.

Further, some argue that a limitation of interviews is that they are an artificial form of data collection. By taking people out of their daily lives and asking them to stand back and pass comment, we are creating a distance that makes it difficult to use such data to say something meaningful about people’s actions, experiences and views. Other approaches, such as ethnography, might be more suitable for tapping into what people actually do, as opposed to what they say they do 65 .

Dynamism and replicability

Interviews following a semi-structured format offer flexibility both to the researcher and the participant. As the conversation develops, the interlocutors can explore the topics raised in much more detail, if desired, or pass over ones that are not relevant. This flexibility allows for the unexpected and the unforeseen to be incorporated into the scope of the research.

However, this flexibility has a related challenge of replicability. Interviews cannot be reproduced because they are contingent upon the interaction between the researcher and the participant in that given moment of interaction. In some research paradigms, replicability can be a way of interrogating the robustness of research claims, by seeing whether they hold when they are repeated. This is not a useful framework to bring to in-depth interviews and instead quality criteria (such as transparency) tend to be employed as criteria of rigour.

Accessing the private and personal

Interviews have been recognized for their strength in accessing private, personal issues, which participants may feel more comfortable talking about in a one-to-one conversation. Furthermore, interviews are likely to take a more personable form with their extended questions and answers, perhaps making a participant feel more at ease when discussing sensitive topics in such a context. There is a similar, but separate, argument made about accessing what are sometimes referred to as vulnerable groups, who may be difficult to make contact with using other research methods.

There is an associated challenge of anonymity. There can be types of in-depth interview that make it particularly challenging to protect the identities of participants, such as interviewing within a small community, or multiple members of the same household. The challenge to ensure anonymity in such contexts is even more important and difficult when the topic of research is of a sensitive nature or participants are vulnerable.

Increasingly, researchers are collaborating in large-scale interview-based studies and integrating interviews into broader mixed-methods designs. At the same time, interviews can be seen as an old-fashioned (and perhaps outdated) mode of data collection. We review these debates and discussions and point to innovations in interview-based studies. These include the shift from face-to-face interviews to the use of online platforms, as well as integrating and adapting interviews towards more inclusive methodologies.

Collaborating and mixing

Qualitative researchers have long worked alone 66 . Increasingly, however, researchers are collaborating with others for reasons such as efficiency, institutional incentives (for example, funding for collaborative research) and a desire to pool expertise (for example, studying similar phenomena in different contexts 67 or via different methods). Collaboration can occur across disciplines and methods, cases and contexts and between industry/business, practitioners and researchers. In many settings and contexts, collaboration has become an imperative 68 .

Cheek notes how collaboration provides both advantages and disadvantages 68 . For example, collaboration can be advantageous, saving time and building on the divergent knowledge, skills and resources of different researchers. Scholars with different theoretical or case-based knowledge (or contacts) can work together to build research that is comparative and/or more than the sum of its parts. But such endeavours also carry with them practical and political challenges in terms of how resources might actually be pooled, shared or accounted for. When undertaking such projects, as Morse notes, it is worth thinking about the nature of the collaboration and being explicit about such a choice, its advantages and its disadvantages 66 .

A further tension, but also a motivation for collaboration, stems from integrating interviews as a method in a mixed-methods project, whether with other qualitative researchers (to combine with, for example, focus groups, document analysis or ethnography) or with quantitative researchers (to combine with, for example, surveys, social media analysis or big data analysis). Cheek and Morse both note the pitfalls of collaboration with quantitative researchers: that quality of research may be sacrificed, qualitative interpretations watered down or not taken seriously, or tensions experienced over the pace and different assumptions that come with different methods and approaches of research 66 , 68 .

At the same time, there can be real benefits of such mixed-methods collaboration, such as reaching different and more diverse audiences or testing assumptions and theories between research components in the same project (for example, testing insights from prior quantitative research via interviews, or vice versa), as long as the skillsets of collaborators are seen as equally beneficial to the project. Cheek provides a set of questions that, as a starting point, can be useful for guiding collaboration, whether mixed methods or otherwise. First, Cheek advises asking all collaborators about their assumptions and understandings concerning collaboration. Second, Cheek recommends discussing what each perspective highlights and focuses on (and conversely ignores or sidelines) 68 .

A different way to engage with the idea of collaboration and mixed methods research is by fostering greater collaboration between researchers in the Global South and Global North, thus reversing trends of researchers from the Global North extracting knowledge from the Global South 69 . Such forms of collaboration also align with interview innovations, discussed below, that seek to transform traditional interview approaches into more participatory and inclusive (as part of participatory methodologies).

Digital innovations and challenges

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has centred the question of technology within interview-based fieldwork. Although conducting synchronous oral interviews online — for example, via Zoom, Skype or other such platforms — has been a method used by a small constituency of researchers for many years, it became (and remains) a necessity for many researchers wanting to continue or start interview-based projects while COVID-19 prevents face-to-face data collection.

In the past, online interviews were often framed as an inferior form of data collection for not providing the kinds of (often necessary) insights and forms of immersion face-to-face interviews allow 70 , 71 . Online interviews do tend to be more decontextualized than interviews conducted face-to-face 72 . For example, it is harder to recognize, engage with and respond to non-verbal cues 71 . At the same time, they broaden participation to those who might not have been able to access or travel to sites where interviews would have been conducted otherwise, for example people with disabilities. Online interviews also offer more flexibility in terms of scheduling and time requirements. For example, they provide more flexibility around precarious employment or caring responsibilities without having to travel and be away from home. In addition, online interviews might also reduce discomfort between researchers and participants, compared with face-to-face interviews, enabling more discussion of sensitive material 71 . They can also provide participants with more control, enabling them to turn on and off the microphone and video as they choose, for example, to provide more time to reflect and disconnect if they so wish 72 .

That said, online interviews can also introduce new biases based on access to technology 72 . For example, in the Global South, there are often urban/rural and gender gaps between who has access to mobile phones and who does not, meaning that some population groups might be overlooked unless researchers sample mindfully 71 . There are also important ethical considerations when deciding between online and face-to-face interviews. Online interviews might seem to imply lower ethical risks than face-to-face interviews (for example, they lower the chances of identification of participants or researchers), but they also offer more barriers to building trust between researchers and participants 72 . Interacting only online with participants might not provide the information needed to assess risk, for example, participants’ access to a private space to speak 71 . Just because online interviews might be more likely to be conducted in private spaces does not mean that private spaces are safe, for example, for victims of domestic violence. Finally, online interviews prompt further questions about decolonizing research and engaging with participants if research is conducted from afar 72 , such as how to include participants meaningfully and challenge dominant assumptions while doing so remotely.

A further digital innovation, modulating how researchers conduct interviews and the kinds of data collected and analysed, stems from the use and integration of (new) technology, such as WhatsApp text or voice notes to conduct synchronous or asynchronous oral or written interviews 73 . Such methods can provide more privacy, comfort and control to participants and make recruitment easier, allowing participants to share what they want when they want to, using technology that already forms a part of their daily lives, especially for young people 74 , 75 . Such technology is also emerging in other qualitative methods, such as focus groups, with similar arguments around greater inclusivity versus traditional offline modes. Here, the digital challenge might be higher for researchers than for participants if they are less used to such technology 75 . And while there might be concerns about the richness, depth and quality of written messages as a form of interview data, Gibson reports that the reams of transcripts that resulted from a study using written messaging were dense with meaning to be analysed 75 .

Like with online and face-to-face interviews, it is important also to consider the ethical questions and challenges of using such technology, from gaining consent to ensuring participant safety and attending to their distress, without cues, like crying, that might be more obvious in a face-to-face setting 75 , 76 . Attention to the platform used for such interviews is also important and researchers should be attuned to the local and national context. For example, in China, many platforms are neither legal nor available 76 . There, more popular platforms — like WeChat — can be highly monitored by the government, posing potential risks to participants depending on the topic of the interview. Ultimately, researchers should consider trade-offs between online and offline interview modalities, being attentive to the social context and power dynamics involved.

The next 5–10 years

Continuing to integrate (ethically) this technology will be among the major persisting developments in interview-based research, whether to offer more flexibility to researchers or participants, or to diversify who can participate and on what terms.

Pushing the idea of inclusion even further is the potential for integrating interview-based studies within participatory methods, which are also innovating via integrating technology. There is no hard and fast line between researchers using in-depth interviews and participatory methods; many who employ participatory methods will use interviews at the beginning, middle or end phases of a research project to capture insights, perspectives and reflections from participants 77 , 78 . Participatory methods emphasize the need to resist existing power and knowledge structures. They broaden who has the right and ability to contribute to academic knowledge by including and incorporating participants not only as subjects of data collection, but as crucial voices in research design and data analysis 77 . Participatory methods also seek to facilitate local change and to produce research materials, whether for academic or non-academic audiences, including films and documentaries, in collaboration with participants.

In responding to the challenges of COVID-19, capturing the fraught situation wrought by the pandemic and the momentum to integrate technology, participatory researchers have sought to continue data collection from afar. For example, Marzi has adapted an existing project to co-produce participatory videos, via participants’ smartphones in Medellin, Colombia, alongside regular check-in conversations/meetings/interviews with participants 79 . Integrating participatory methods into interview studies offers a route by which researchers can respond to the challenge of diversifying knowledge, challenging assumptions and power hierarchies and creating more inclusive and collaborative partnerships between participants and researchers in the Global North and South.

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Acknowledgements

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A pre-written interview outline for a semi-structured interview that provides both a topic structure and the ability to adapt flexibly to the content and context of the interview and the interaction between the interviewer and participant. Others may refer to the topic guide as an interview protocol.

Here we refer to the participants that take part in the study as the sample. Other researchers may refer to the participants as a participant group or dataset.

This involves dividing a population into smaller groups based on particular characteristics, for example, age or gender, and then sampling randomly within each group.

A sampling method where the guiding logic when deciding who to recruit is to achieve the most relevant participants for the research topic, in terms of being rich in information or insights.

Researchers ask participants to introduce the researcher to others who meet the study’s inclusion criteria.

Similar to stratified sampling, but participants are not necessarily randomly selected. Instead, the researcher determines how many people from each category of participants should be recruited. Recruitment can happen via snowball or purposive sampling.

A method for developing, analysing and interpreting patterns across data by coding in order to develop themes.

An approach that interrogates the explicit, implicit and taken-for-granted dimensions of language as well as the contexts in which it is articulated to unpack its purposes and effects.

A form of transcription that simplifies what has been said by removing certain verbal and non-verbal details that add no further meaning, such as ‘ums and ahs’ and false starts.

The analytic framework, theoretical approach and often hypotheses, are developed prior to examining the data and then applied to the dataset.

The analytic framework and theoretical approach is developed from analysing the data.

An approach that combines deductive and inductive components to work recursively by going back and forth between data and existing theoretical frameworks (also described as an iterative approach). This approach is increasingly recognized not only as a more realistic but also more desirable third alternative to the more traditional inductive versus deductive binary choice.

A theoretical apparatus that emphasizes the role of cultural processes and capital in (intergenerational) social reproduction.

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The Ethnographic Interview: An Interdisciplinary Guide for Developing an Ethnographic Disposition in Health Research

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• 1 La Trobe University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia.
• 2 Monash University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia.
• PMID: 39110509
• DOI: 10.1177/10497323241241225

Interviews are central to the health ethnographers' toolkit. In this article, we offer a critical engagement with methodological literature coupled with reflective examples from our own research, in order to articulate the value of the ethnographic interview in health research. We contribute to literature on ethnographic interviews in two ways: by decoupling ethnographic interviews from the necessity of accompanying participant observation, and by outlining an ethnographic disposition towards interviewing. We define the seven key epistemic dispositions underpinning the ethnographic interview. These are humility, a readiness to revise core assumptions about a research topic, attentiveness to context, relationality, openness to complexity, an attention to ethnographic writing, and a consideration of the politics and history of the method. The strength of an epistemic understanding of the ethnographic interview is that it offers flexibility for developing a diverse array of interview techniques responsive to the needs of different research contexts and challenges. Ethnographic interviews, we show, contribute to the study of health through a richly explorative, responsive, contextualised, and reflexive approach.

Keywords: ethnographic disposition; ethnographic interview; health ethnography; interviews; methodology; qualitative interview.

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Declaration of Conflicting InterestsThe author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

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Extract insights from Interviews. At Scale.

How to conduct an ethnographic interview: a comprehensive guide.

Home » How to Conduct an Ethnographic Interview: A Comprehensive Guide

Ethnographic interviewing is a powerful tool for researchers seeking to uncover deep insights into human behavior and cultural patterns. This comprehensive guide will equip you with the knowledge and skills needed to conduct effective ethnographic interviews, allowing you to gather rich, qualitative data that illuminates the lived experiences of your participants.

As we embark on this journey through the world of ethnographic research, we'll explore the key principles, techniques, and ethical considerations that underpin successful interviews. Whether you're a seasoned anthropologist or a curious newcomer to the field, this guide will provide valuable insights to enhance your interviewing skills and help you navigate the complex terrain of human culture and social interaction.

Understanding Ethnographic Interviews

Ethnographic interviews offer a window into the lived experiences of individuals and communities. Unlike structured surveys, these in-depth conversations allow researchers to explore cultural nuances and personal perspectives. The art of conducting an ethnographic interview lies in creating a comfortable environment where participants feel at ease sharing their stories.

To master this technique, interviewers must develop active listening skills and learn to ask open-ended questions. These questions should encourage detailed responses and probe deeper into the participant's worldview. By approaching each interview with genuine curiosity and respect, researchers can uncover rich, qualitative data that provides valuable insights into social phenomena and cultural practices.

What is an Ethnographic Interview?

Ethnographic interviewing is a powerful qualitative research method that delves deep into the lived experiences of individuals within their cultural context. This approach goes beyond surface-level questioning, aiming to uncover rich insights about people's beliefs, values, and behaviors. By immersing themselves in the participant's world, researchers can gain a holistic understanding of complex social phenomena.

At its core, an ethnographic interview is a conversation with purpose. It combines the art of active listening with the science of systematic inquiry. Unlike structured interviews, ethnographic conversations flow more naturally, allowing participants to share their stories in their own words. This method requires researchers to approach each interaction with genuine curiosity and empathy, creating a safe space for authentic expression. Through careful observation and thoughtful probing, interviewers can unearth valuable data that might otherwise remain hidden, providing a nuanced perspective on the human experience within specific cultural contexts.

Importance of Ethnographic Interviewing in Research

Ethnographic interviewing stands as a cornerstone in qualitative research, offering unparalleled insights into human behavior and cultural nuances. This method allows researchers to delve deep into the lived experiences of individuals, uncovering rich narratives that quantitative data often fails to capture. By immersing themselves in the participant's environment, interviewers gain a holistic understanding of context, motivations, and social dynamics.

The importance of ethnographic interviewing lies in its ability to bridge gaps between researchers and subjects, fostering trust and encouraging authentic responses. This approach moves beyond surface-level observations, revealing underlying beliefs, values, and practices that shape communities. As researchers navigate through these in-depth conversations, they uncover patterns and themes that contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of social phenomena, making ethnographic interviewing an invaluable tool in the researcher's arsenal.

Preparation for Ethnographic Interviews: An Ethnographic Interviewing Guide

Preparing for an ethnographic interview requires careful planning and consideration. The key to a successful interview lies in creating a comfortable environment where participants feel at ease sharing their experiences and perspectives. Begin by researching the cultural context of your interviewees, ensuring you have a basic understanding of their background and customs.

Develop a flexible interview guide with open-ended questions that encourage detailed responses. This guide should serve as a roadmap rather than a strict script, allowing for natural conversation flow. Consider the physical setting of the interview, choosing a location that is both convenient and familiar to the participant. Prepare your recording equipment in advance, testing it to avoid technical issues during the interview. Lastly, reflect on your own biases and assumptions, striving to approach the interview with an open mind and genuine curiosity about the participant's lived experiences.

Selecting the Right Participants

Selecting the right participants is crucial for the success of any ethnographic interview study. The quality and relevance of your data depend heavily on who you choose to interview. When identifying potential participants, consider individuals who have firsthand experience with the topic you're researching. Look for diversity in age, gender, background, and perspectives to ensure a well-rounded understanding of the subject matter.

To find suitable participants, start by defining your target demographic and creating a screening questionnaire. This will help you filter out candidates who don't meet your criteria. Reach out to community organizations, social media groups, or professional networks related to your research topic. Consider offering incentives for participation, such as gift cards or compensation for their time. Remember, the goal is to gather rich, insightful data, so prioritize participants who are willing to share their experiences openly and honestly.

Designing Effective Questions

Crafting effective questions is the cornerstone of successful ethnographic interviews. The art of inquiry goes beyond simple information gathering; it's about creating a dialogue that uncovers deep insights into the participant's world. When designing questions, consider the context of your research and the unique perspective of each interviewee.

Start with open-ended questions that encourage detailed responses and allow participants to share their experiences freely. For example, instead of asking, "Do you like your job?" try "Can you walk me through a typical day at work?" This approach invites rich, descriptive answers that can reveal unexpected themes. Follow up with probing questions to delve deeper into specific areas of interest, but be mindful of maintaining a natural flow in the conversation. Remember, the goal is to create a comfortable environment where participants feel empowered to share their authentic stories and perspectives.

Conducting the Ethnographic Interview

Ethnographic interviews are a powerful tool for gaining deep insights into people's lives, cultures, and experiences. To conduct an effective ethnographic interview, start by creating a comfortable environment for your participant. This might involve meeting in a familiar location or engaging in a shared activity to build rapport.

Begin with open-ended questions that allow the interviewee to share their story freely. Listen actively and observe non-verbal cues, as these can provide valuable context to their responses. As the conversation progresses, delve deeper into specific areas of interest, but remain flexible enough to explore unexpected themes that may emerge. Remember, the goal is to understand the participant's perspective, not to confirm preconceived notions. By approaching the interview with curiosity and respect, you'll gather rich, authentic data that can inform your research and drive meaningful insights.

Building Rapport with Participants

Building rapport with participants is a crucial step in conducting effective ethnographic interviews. Establishing a comfortable and trusting relationship allows interviewees to open up and share authentic insights. Begin by creating a welcoming environment, whether in-person or virtual, that puts participants at ease.

Demonstrate genuine interest in their experiences and perspectives by actively listening and showing empathy. Use open body language, maintain appropriate eye contact, and mirror their communication style to foster connection. Start with casual conversation to break the ice before delving into more focused questions. Throughout the interview, remain respectful of cultural differences and personal boundaries. By building rapport, you'll create a foundation for rich, meaningful exchanges that yield valuable ethnographic data.

Active Listening and Observation Techniques

Active listening and keen observation are crucial skills for conducting effective ethnographic interviews. When engaging with participants, it's essential to be fully present and attentive to both verbal and non-verbal cues. This involves maintaining eye contact, nodding to show understanding, and using appropriate facial expressions to encourage open communication.

To enhance your active listening abilities, practice paraphrasing and summarizing the interviewee's responses. This technique not only demonstrates your engagement but also helps clarify any misunderstandings. Additionally, pay close attention to body language, tone of voice, and subtle gestures that may provide valuable insights into the participant's thoughts and feelings. By honing these observation skills, you'll be better equipped to gather rich, nuanced data during your ethnographic research.

Analyzing and Reporting Findings: Ethnographic Interviewing Guide

After conducting ethnographic interviews, the crucial task of analyzing and reporting findings begins. This phase transforms raw data into actionable insights, shaping the direction of research or product development. The process involves several key steps to ensure thorough and meaningful analysis.

Firstly, researchers must immerse themselves in the data, reviewing transcripts, notes, and recordings multiple times. This deep dive allows patterns and themes to emerge organically. Next, coding the data helps categorize information and identify recurring concepts. Many researchers use specialized software to streamline this process, making it easier to manage large volumes of qualitative data. Once coded, the data can be synthesized into broader themes and insights.

Reporting findings effectively is equally important. Researchers should craft compelling narratives that bring the data to life, using direct quotes and anecdotes to illustrate key points. Visual aids like charts or journey maps can help communicate complex ideas succinctly. The final report should not only present findings but also offer clear recommendations based on the insights gained from the ethnographic interviews.

Transcribing and Coding Data

Transcribing and coding data are crucial steps in the ethnographic interview process. After conducting your interviews, you'll need to transform the raw audio or video recordings into analyzable text. This process begins with transcription, where every word spoken during the interview is carefully documented.

Once you have your transcripts, the next step is coding. This involves systematically categorizing and labeling the data to identify patterns, themes, and key insights. Effective coding allows researchers to make sense of complex qualitative information and draw meaningful conclusions. There are various approaches to coding, including open coding, axial coding, and selective coding, each serving different analytical purposes. As you work through your transcripts, remember that the goal is to uncover the rich, contextual information that makes ethnographic research so valuable.

Presenting Your Findings

After conducting your ethnographic interviews, presenting your findings effectively is crucial. Start by organizing your data into clear themes or categories. This will help you identify patterns and insights across different interviews. Visual aids like charts, graphs, or word clouds can be powerful tools to illustrate key points and make your findings more accessible.

When crafting your presentation, consider your audience's needs and interests. Highlight the most relevant and impactful insights that address their specific concerns or questions. Use compelling quotes or anecdotes from your interviews to bring your findings to life and provide concrete examples. Remember to maintain confidentiality by anonymizing your sources. Finally, conclude with actionable recommendations based on your research, demonstrating the practical value of your ethnographic interviewing process.

Conclusion to Ethnographic Interviewing Guide

Ethnographic interviewing is a powerful tool for gaining deep insights into people's experiences, beliefs, and cultures. As we conclude this comprehensive guide, it's essential to reflect on the key principles and techniques we've explored. Remember that successful ethnographic interviews require careful preparation, active listening, and a genuine curiosity about your participants' perspectives.

By following the strategies outlined in this guide, you'll be well-equipped to conduct meaningful ethnographic interviews that yield rich, qualitative data. Always approach your interviews with empathy and respect, allowing your participants to share their stories in their own words. As you gain experience, you'll develop your own unique interviewing style while staying true to the core principles of ethnographic research. Keep honing your skills, and you'll unlock valuable insights that can inform decision-making across various fields, from anthropology to user experience design.

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Article contents

Interviews and interviewing in the ethnography of education.

• Geoffrey Walford Geoffrey Walford University of Oxford
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.013.320
• Published online: 24 May 2018

Interviews are frequently used in ethnographic research, but it is argued that they pose particular difficulties in interpretation. While ethnographers are interested in understanding how people construct and interpret cultures in their natural settings, interviews are based on rules that counteract most normal interactions. Thus interviews in ethnography can only be interpreted within the context of that wider ethnography and the data generated has to be tested against other data generated by different means and data generated in other interviews.

Although some ethnographers avoid the use of interviews, others use a range of different forms of interviews. It is argued that Basil Bernstein’s concepts of classification and framing can be used to clarify the range of forms and to highlight the potential relationships between the form of interview and class, gender, and ethnicity.

• ethnography
• Basil Bernstein
• classification

Introduction

We live in a world where interviews are pervasive. We are stopped in the street by people who claim to want to interview us, but who are often trying to sell us something. We watch television interviews where politicians avoid questions and present answers to alternative questions in an attempt to make their policies or activities seem more acceptable. We read magazine articles that claim to show us how to answer possible tricky questions in a job interview so that we can present our “weakest points” as being positive strengths.

Interviews in ethnography are not like any of these popular conceptions of the nature of interviews. First, they are research interviews. The aim of these interviews is not to trick the person being interviewed into saying something he or she may later regret, but to establish some kind of “truth” about his or her experiences, behaviors, interpretations, or views.

Second, with a few possible exceptions in policy research, the people interviewed are not selected because they are well-known or famous but because they belong to a particular group, or hold a particular position within an organization or group. They will usually not be identified by name in any publication related to the research. In ethnographic interviewing, the individuals selected will not be seen as representative of that group, but just as one of that group and thus having some of the possible range of experiences, behaviors, and so on that a person in that group can have.

Third, interviews in ethnography are exactly that—they are interviews that are conducted within a wider ethnography. They are just one of several ways by which ethnographers generate data about the culture of a particular group that is the focus of concern. What a person says in a particular interview will always be interpreted by the researcher taking into account the time, place, and wider situation in which the interview was conducted. What is said will not be taken as the only possible thing that might have been said about an issue and will be tested against other data generated in different ways and against what is said by the same person or others in different interviews.

The Nature of Ethnography

I wish to argue here, as elsewhere (Walford, 2009 ), that ethnography is not another word for qualitative research. It is a separate research strategy that has developed over the past century and entails far more than simply qualitative research. Indeed, I argue that the distinction between qualitative research and quantitative research is somewhat simplistic and unhelpful when it comes to trying to understand cultures. I advocate what might be called a traditional form of ethnography within educational research. The common idea of thinking about ethnography as being synonymous with qualitative research misrepresents traditional ethnography within education and schooling, as early practitioners used a wide variety of what are now thought of as qualitative and quantitative methods. While ethnographers were unlikely to use sophisticated statistical analysis, they often generated quantitative data as well as qualitative field notes and descriptions. Some of the classic educational ethnographies (such as Hargreaves, 1967 ; Lacey, 1970 ; Ball, 1981 ; or Becker, Geer, Hughes, & Strauss, 1961 ) present a considerable amount of quantitative data to support their arguments.

Quantitative claims, which are frequently made in ethnographies (if only in terms of “many” or “most”), require quantitative data, so the use of structured observation, time-sampling, and even surveys may be required in addition to more open-ended participant observation and more semi-structured interviewing. The methods used depend upon the research questions that the study eventually tries to answer. Thus, one very noticeable feature of early sociology of education such as Ball’s study ( 1981 ) of a comprehensive school is the diversity of ways of generating data that were used. Observations were made in a multitude of contexts: in classrooms, while accompanying groups on school visits, during invigilation of examinations, while playing cricket, in the wider community, and so on. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with pupils and teachers, questionnaires were circulated (including socio-metric questionnaires), pupil diaries were kept, school records and registers were examined. The results of the research were presented in a similar variety of ways: with figures, diagrams, and charts alongside quotations from interviews and observed naturally occurring conversations.

Moreover, for a piece of research to count as ethnographic, it must rely on more than just interviews—interviews are only one of the research tools that researchers may use within an ethnography, for the very interpretation of interviews demands that other methods of generating data are available to test the interview data against. This is not to say that researchers cannot use interviews alone in their research—it is simply that this is not ethnography. There are many research questions that are not centered on culture, and far from all research questions are amenable to ethnography.

It worth trying to define what is meant by ethnography more fully. Hammersley and Atkinson ( 2007 , p. 3), for example, start their discussion in the following way:

In terms of data collection, ethnography usually involves researcher participating, overtly or covertly, in people’s daily lives for an extended period of time, watching what happens, listening to what is said, and/or asking questions through informal and formal interviews, collecting documents and artefacts—in fact, gathering whatever data are available to throw light on the issues that are the emerging focus of inquiry.

Alternatively, some writers favor lists. One example, with which I was involved, was put forward by the editors of Ethnography and Education , who listed in the first issue what they saw as the seven main features of ethnography:

The key elements of ethnographic research applied to the study of education contexts as discussed in Troman, Gordon, Jeffrey, & Walford (2006, p.1) are:

the focus on the study of cultural formation and maintenance;

the use of multiple methods and thus the generation of rich and diverse forms of data;

the direct involvement and long-term engagement of the researcher(s);

the recognition that the researcher is the main research instrument;

the high status given to the accounts of participants’ perspectives and understandings;

the engagement in a spiral of data collection, hypothesis building and theory testing—leading to further data collection; and

the focus on a particular case in depth, but providing the basis for theoretical generalization.

While there are some differences between the description and list provided, these writers claim that there is a set of specific criteria that have to be met before a study can be considered to be ethnographic. There needs to be long-term engagement, the use of multiple research methods, and the generation of rich data. The research process also needs to be theory-led and systematic. Understanding is not achieved through chaotic or biased processes, but by systematic and well-ordered generation of data appropriate to the task.

The Nature of Interviews

Ethnography focuses on research questions that are concerned with the complexity of trying to understand cultures. The fundamental question to be answered is “How do they do things around here?” (Deal, 1985 ). This is a very different type of question from that which can be answered through survey or experimental research, and ethnographic research grew, in part, as a reaction to the positivistic and experimental research that once held sway. Survey research through questionnaires or interviews with representative samples might be seen as reliable and the results generalizable to a wider population, but they could generate answers only to simple research questions. Experimental methods were castigated as setting up unreal situations such that the results could not be expected to be valid or generalizable to wider circumstances. In contrast, ethnography, with its long-term involvement and desire to understand activities in their natural settings, was thought to bring greater validity, as the everyday activities being investigated would be disturbed as little as possible.

Schools and school classrooms, for example, provide a physical space in which teachers and students interact according to rules that are co-constructed. But the culture created is complex and understood somewhat differently by each of the participants. No matter how hard the teacher may try, the shared culture is not made explicit, and participants may not even be able to recognize or articulate some of its aspects. For example, some early studies of classrooms focused on interactions between participants in terms of gender or ethnicity, and found clear biases in the ways that some children from ethnic minorities were treated, alongside major differences between interactions between teachers and male and female students. But it was not that teachers necessarily deliberately treated students differently according to gender or ethnicity and, when confronted with evidence, they were often shocked by the findings. Ethnographers recognized that interviews with teachers would not have been able to uncover the disjuncture between what people think they do and what they actually do, and that observation was a fundamental necessity in generating particular data on cultures.

It is worth remembering what a strange situation an interview is. It cannot be defined as “a conversation with a purpose” as some commentators suggest—all conversations have purposes, if only to pass time amiably. In contrast, in a research interview in its most structured form, the socially accepted rules of conversation and reciprocity between people are suspended. One person takes the lead and asks a series of questions of the other. The other has agreed that this is to be a special form of verbal interaction and is prepared for his or her views to be continuously questioned without the usual ability to be able to return the question. There is no natural “turn-taking” and ability for both to control the flow of topics. Instead, the topics to be covered are under the control of the “interviewer,” and the “interviewee” is expected to have opinions or information about each of the questions asked. Moreover, and most strangely, what the interviewee says in this particularly odd situation is usually taken to have lasting importance—it is recorded for future analysis. This is not a transitory conversation but one that is invested with future significance. Given that the interview is such an extraordinary situation, it is remarkable that so many researchers take the data so generated as reliable and valid.

I have argued elsewhere (Walford, 2017 ) that concern over the validity of interviews is far from new. How interviewees respond to questions may well depend upon the time of day or year, the weather, and external events. Crucially, the appearance, gender, ethnicity, clothing, accent, and other variables associated with the interviewer will also influence what is said.

We know that interviewers and interviewees co-construct the interview and that the replies to questions are produced for that particular occasion and circumstance. Interviewers and interviewees take part in a performative and rhetorical interchange and will select their words with care and will moderate what they have to say to the particular circumstances. If we put to one side the epistemological question of whether or not there is any ultimate “reality” to be communicated, the interviewees may have incomplete knowledge or faulty memory. They will always have subjective perceptions that will be related to their own past experiences and current conditions. At best, interviewees will give only what they are prepared to reveal about their subjective perceptions of events and opinions. These perceptions and opinions will change over time, and according to circumstance. They may be at some considerable distance from any “reality” as others might see it.

Some critics of interviews go even further and propose that researchers need to move beyond the traditional cooperative paradigm and recognize the underlying conflictual nature of society. In his typical colorful language Douglas ( 1976 ) argues that:

In its most extreme form [. . .] the cooperative paradigm of society assumed it is possible to ask members what is going on and they will tell. Yet everyone knows when he [sic] thinks about it that only the naive, the innocent, the dupe takes this position all the time in everyday life. Rather, all competent adults are assumed to know that there are at least four major problems lying in the way of getting at social reality by asking people what is going on and that these problems must be dealt with if one is to avoid being taken in, duped, deceived, used, put on, fooled, suckered, made a patsy, left holding the bag, fronted and so on. (Douglas, 1976 , p. 57)

Douglas argues that researchers should assume that people and groups are in conflict with one another, and that their aims and objectives often clash. He describes the problems that we encounter in interviews in terms of misinformation, evasion, lies, and fronts, and follows this with a detailed exposition of the problems of taken-for-granted meanings, problematic meanings, and self-deception. In places, ethical questions are not always at the forefront of his suggested strategies, but the overall point is well made: what people tell us in interviews is often not to be taken at face value. He argues that this is particularly true when the interviewer asks about aspects of experience that are of special importance to the person being interviewed—for example, issues of sex, money, and power.

But misinformation, evasion, lies, and fronts are only part of the problem. These are the more explicit and conscious ways in which researchers may be misled. There are also taken-for-granted meanings, problematic meanings, and self-deception. We do not have full control over our lives—they are not inherently coherent. They are a result of chance and circumstance as much as our own activities and plans. The unexpected happens; the expected does not. We act as if we will live forever (or, at least, for a long time yet), but we may be dead tomorrow. In this uncertainty we all try to make sense of our own worlds, and the interview is one occasion when we try to do so in a semi-public forum. We try to present a reasonably rational image of our own uncertainty. People construct accounts about themselves, their activities, and beliefs that are far more coherent than the lived reality.

Yet, in interviews, and in particular in the transcribed versions of interviews, a coherent and constructed account gives the impression of permanence to something that is inherently transitory. It becomes a text that can be edited, copied, and recontextualized. The original event becomes data to be entered into a qualitative analysis package, and segments become examples drawn from the data bank at the touch of a key. In short, the transcribed interview encourages the possibility of the spoken word being taken too seriously. The phrase that someone happened to have used on a hot Monday afternoon following a double mathematics class gets wrenched out of its context and presented as if it represented the “truth” about one person’s views or understandings.

Observation Within Ethnography

Participant observation is the key method that is used in ethnography—where the researcher takes on a role within the research setting and observes what is going on. In the 1970s and 1980s, before ethics committees made it almost impossible to conduct covert research, there were numerous studies of learning in sites other than schools. One of the best known of these is Patrick’s study ( 1973 ) of a Glasgow gang, where he briefly took on the role of a peripheral member of one of the gangs. Edgerton ( 1979 ) provided an account of activity on an urban beach and shows how the users of the beach learn to act such that social order is constructed. The first part of the notorious book by Humphreys ( 1970 ) focuses on male public toilets as a learning location—here men learn how to engage in sexual activity with other men without any verbal communication between them. All of these studies, and more, were conducted covertly and thus no interviews were used. Instead, participant observation was the core of the fieldwork.

Even where research is openly conducted some researchers have found that they do not need to conduct interviews to answer their research questions. A recent study by Clerke and Hopwood ( 2014 ; Hopwood, 2016 ) researched professional workplace practices and learning within a residential unit in Sydney where each week up to 10 troubled families with young children were equipped with a range of strategies to help them respond to their children and eventually bring about positive changes in family life. In this fieldwork researchers observed, took photographs, collected documents, recorded naturally occurring verbal interactions, and even videoed some activities, but identifiable interviews played no part. Interviews were not seen as being able to help answer the research questions.

Similarly, Barley ( 2014 ) used an array of methods in her study of identity and social interaction in a multiethnic classroom of early years’ children. This included a great deal of observation (which, as Delamont [ 2014 , pp. 146–163] reminds us, includes smell, touch, hearing, and tasting, as well as looking), and also various activities with the children to generate data within the classroom environment. Again, interviews played little part.

So Why Use Interviews at All?

In spite of the many problems previously outlined, many ethnographers still use interviews within ethnography, and there are a variety of reasons why they do so.

One reason is simply that other people think that interviews are important. For example, those who allow initial access to the research site often feel that interviews should be part of the research. Before I was granted access to one of the major British private schools to conduct a term-long ethnographic study, the head teacher insisted that I conduct interviews with a range of staff and students. His concern was with size and representativeness, as he wanted to ensure that I obtained information from a wide range of people and did not focus on just a small group, but I was certainly glad that I agreed to his demand. I found that the head teacher was far from being alone in seeing interviews as central to research. It became clear that many of the teachers also saw it as important and were reluctant to allow me to observe until they had had their chance to be interviewed and put forward their views. Thus I found that the teaching staff and students wanted to be interviewed, and this then facilitated access to classrooms and other places for observation and other forms of data generation.

Interviewing at the start of an ethnographic research period does, however, have disadvantages. Ideally, interviews might better be conducted some way into the project when relationships have been established and those involved are comfortable in their knowledge of the researcher and what he or she is aiming to achieve. Interviewing early may help with access, but also may lead to more evasive and misleading responses to questions. With early interviews there has not been enough time for trust to have been developed, so that there is really a need for multiple interviews if these interviews are to be used as a source of factual data. Comparing what is said in early and later interviews can be revealing.

Beyond the strategic, there are several other reasons why ethnographers might use interviews in their studies. For example, it is often important to know something of the informant’s history in interpreting what is seen in the classroom or other learning sites, and that is most conveniently obtained directly through an interview. Similarly, interviews can be used to try to understand what is going on during a period of observation, or to get various participants’ views after an event. Interviews can give information on activities that occurred outside of the period of study, or during the period of study but when the research did not obtain access. In all cases the key is that interviews need to be seen as being potentially flawed, and they can be interpreted only through integration and challenge with other data generated in the ethnographic research process. Interviews in ethnography must be seen as a particular form of observation of a situation in which the interviewer has set up a strange theatrical performance where both participants perform only partially scripted roles.

What Type of Interviews May Be Used?

Many commentators go to considerable lengths to distinguish between such descriptors as structured, semi-structured, loosely structured, and unstructured interviews. I will not do so here, as a single interview can contain elements of all of these. At some points in an interview, explicit questions might be asked that require a yes or no answer, or a precise number. At other times the ethnographer might ask the interviewee to describe an activity that has just occurred, or ask the person to describe some of the good or bad parts of their teaching experiences. It is likely that most interviews within ethnographies will use many open questions where the interviewees are able to put forward their own views—or, at least, those views packaged for the particular circumstances of the interview. These open questions may be followed by more probing questions that respond to what has been said and ask for more details or further explanations.

Some time ago I conducted some research where I interviewed a small sample of well-known ethnographers of education (Walford, 2007 ). The main suggestion that I put forward then was that it was fruitful to use Basil Bernstein’s ideas of classification and framing to describe and think about the nature and process of ethnographic interviewing. These two concepts were introduced in a much-quoted article (Bernstein, 1971 ), where they relate to the form and structure of the curriculum and the transmission of educational knowledge. Two educational knowledge codes are discussed, differing according to the underlying principles that shape curriculum, pedagogy, and evaluation. A curriculum of a collection type is characterized by strongly bounded knowledge areas with little linkage between them. On the other hand, an integrated curriculum emphasizes the interdependence of various areas of knowledge and attempts to transcend traditional boundaries. Bernstein argues that any structure for the transmission of knowledge will symbolically reproduce the distribution of power in society, and introduces the concept of classification to clarify this relationship:

Where classification is strong, contents are well insulated from each other by strong boundaries. Where classification is weak, there is reduced insulation between contents, for the boundaries between contents are weak or blurred. Classification thus refers to the degree of boundary maintenance between contents . (Bernstein, 1971 , p. 49) (original emphasis)

The concept of frame refers to the strength of the boundary between what may be transmitted and what may not be transmitted in the pedagogic relationship. It indicates “the degree of control teacher and pupil possess over the selection, organization, pacing and timing of knowledge transmitted and received in the pedagogical relationship” (Bernstein, 1971 , p. 50). The strength of framing thus refers to the range of options available to teacher and taught in the control of what is transmitted and received.

Bernstein’s work has been applied to very many different empirical situations, and many researchers have found the general framework useful in attempting to clarify a range of educational problems. Some early examples include Walker ( 1983 ), who used Bernstein’s concepts of classification and framing within a historical analysis of different social regimes in colleges of education over a century, while Aggleton and Whitty ( 1985 ) applied them to a study of the subcultural practices of a group of new middle-class students in an English college of further education. Examples of broader and more flexible usage include Rodger’s study ( 1985 ) of a large public inquiry and Walford’s account ( 1981 ) of problems within postgraduate research and of the curriculum in major private boarding schools (Walford, 1986 ).

Applying the concepts of classification and framing to interviewing within ethnography requires a little stretching, but knowledge is still being transmitted from one person to another in a specific situation. The main difference is that, for the most part, knowledge is actually being sought by the interviewer rather than information being given by a teacher. The power within the relationship is thus rather different in that, while the interviewer generally has greater power to classify and frame the situation, it is the interviewee who can (re)construct the information transmitted, and who has the ultimate sanction of withholding information.

Classification and Framing of Interviewing

Classification is thus concerned with separation. In a similar way to there being a collection or integrated code in terms of the curriculum, we can think of there being a collection or integrated code with regard to the method and nature of generating data through interviews in ethnography. There is a range of ways in which interviews are conducted such that, while some are kept deliberately separate from other activities, others hardy appear to be interviews at all, and may even not be recognized as such by participants. At various points in their studies, ethnographers may sometimes use strongly classified interviews where two people face one another over a desk and recording instrument, and at other times simply discuss events together, with the interviewer later making notes.

In Bernstein’s usage the concept of frame refers to the strength of the boundary between what may be transmitted and what may not be transmitted in the pedagogic relationship. It indicates “the degree of control teacher and pupil possess over the selection, organization, pacing and timing of knowledge transmitted and received in the pedagogical relationship” (Bernstein, 1971 , p. 50). By analogy, in interviewing framing refers to the degree of control that the interviewer and interviewee possess over the selection, organization, pacing, and timing of the knowledge transmitted within the interview situation.

The variability that is possible in the nature of interviews can be seen through some quotations from my interviews with ethnographers. For example, in discussing his work with Mexican children, in his interview with me (G), Bradley Levinson (B) described his early stage of participant observation:

B So a lot of it was really just roaming out and observing early on especially before I got to know . . . but actually the kids didn’t let me do too much of that because a lot of them very early on took an interest in me or a liking to me and they’d see me walking round and they’d go, tsh tsh, come over here and they’d call me over and they’d want to ask me who I was and what I was doing or they’d want to ask me, what did I think about what I’d just observed in class [oh yes] or they just wanted to kind of incorporate me into their friendship dynamics in ways I could bring a kind of prestige to some of these groups by association.

Here we see an example of a form of interview that is hardly distinguished as such. There is weak classification between this activity and other activities—observation, in the form of listening and interacting with the students, shades into interview. From the point of view of the researcher, framing is also weak, for the students were asking questions of the researcher as well as the other way around.

This form of interaction/interviewing is far from unusual. Sara Delamont’s (S) discussion of what she did in her capoeira research (Stephens & Delamont, 2006 ; Delamont, Stephens, & Campos, 2017 ) reveals similar weakly classified and framed interviews.

S For instance there is one woman who is basically a dancer who is fascinated by capoeira and she actually borrows books off me and, but she’s equally likely to ask me if I’ve got a book about Alexander the Great or a book about the whirling dervishes, because she’s always making up dance programmes with all sorts of cultural [. . .] and she talks to me about human movement theory and that sort of thing. But I think for her, because she’s not in higher education I think actually I’m her free library. I mean she’s delightful [G yeah, yeah] I like her, but I think she talks to me about things like that because she knows that if she says to me ‘you don’t happen to have a book about witchcraft beliefs in . . . and if so can I borrow it?’ um or ‘do you know anything about Santeria in Cuba and do you happen to have a book about Santeria drumming I could borrow?’

Here, not only is information being generated through everyday conversation, it is again a two-way process with Sara being asked questions as well as her asking them.

Yet both of these ethnographers also conducted interviews that were more tightly classified and framed. In the same capoeira research, Sara Delamont almost defines “an interview” by where it is conducted. I have left some of the indications of hesitation in this transcript as they indicate some of the thinking through of the question of place that happened during the interview.

S oh I do all the interviews here [in her office at the university] G right, why do you do that? S oh, because it’s an appropriate space [G ok] and I feel very strongly about that I do all the interviews here G tell me about what an appropriate space is S well where else would I do them? [G yeah I agree that’s obviously a problem] um I think there are three reasons why I do them here. Partly because I think it’s, I could do them at the house and that would be fine and that isn’t a problem. I’m not frightened of having these young men or the women, I wouldn’t be frightened of having them in the house or anything like—we could sit and do interviews on my dining room table or something [G yes]. But I’ve gone in for doing it here because I think that signals to people that it is part of a university job [G yes] and when Ben gossips afterwards, I mean Ben will come in and say—the first time he came in here it was kind of ‘hell’ you know ‘what a lot of books.’ But as far as, I said, if I’m interviewing formally about capoeira he comes here and I would expect. I think it’s three things. I think one is it’s to prove that I really am a person in a university because how can they know? [G no, quite, no I agree] and secondly I think it’s because for me it marks it as work [G yeah] and thirdly I think, I think I feel it’s sort of more appropriate um, I wouldn’t, I mean if somebody said come to my flat and interview me there I’d say no, I think I’d say I’d rather you came to me if you don’t mind. Maybe I would go but. . . . When I did the interview part of the St Luke’s study [of a girls’ private school] I actually interviewed them all off school premises [G did you] in my flat [G did you] as a sort of, yeah, I sort of interviewed them off premises in their ordinary clothes and I organised for them to come, they came in sort of friendship groups and sat around and drank coffee and I hooked them out of the friendship group and took them to another room and interviewed them [G right, right interesting] um and I just thought that was right then.

We have already seen that Bradley Levinson generated some data using very weakly classified and framed interviews, but the following quote illustrates that he also used slightly more strongly framed interviews in asking specific follow-up questions as well as strongly classified one-to-one interviews. He indicates that, in this case, the latter were not as productive as he had hoped.

B The interviews ranged from following up on a particular event that I had witnessed in their classroom [G oh really?] so it would be, you know, sometimes there were these key incidents you might say in the fieldwork when there was a big argument that had run between a whole class and a teacher and they were very illuminating of certain, we anthropologists always love these juicy moments of confrontation because of the sort of the fissures that they reveal. So I would try to get perspectives of different groups of students on it, if I noticed what seemed to be some kind of tension in the group, social tension between different friendship cliques within the group I’d want to go round and get their different perspective on it so it wasn’t really any sort of intrinsic part of what I’d call my research design initially. My research design was sort of doing focal student interviews, choosing my focal students and doing a series of so-called talking diary interviews with them, ideally at least three over the course of the school year. I would say as an aside that I think I stayed too wedded to that design even when it became clear to me relatively early on that wasn’t going to be terrible fruitful especially because some of the students were not very good interviewees, they were just too immature especially the boys they were just too immature or too uncomfortable in a one-on-one situation to really articulate things very well.

Clearly there is considerable variability in the framing of interviews. At one end of the spectrum within ethnographic interviewing might be the style used by Lois Weis (L) when conducting her re-interviews more than a decade later of the young people who were part of the Working Class Without Work project (Weis, 1995 , 2004 ). She explained her way of working at this point as:

L When I re-interviewed the Class Reunion kids, I had a page of questions. It was more than a page, two pages of questions. And I actually showed them the questions I had intended in order to get their consent. I said “these are the questions that we will be talking around, do you have any objection, here’s the tape recorder button if you ever feel you want to turn it off” and so that is my way of also letting them know we were going to do and getting their permission to tape. G So in some ways it was more of a tactic to gain access [L: yes] than what you would necessarily follow. Obviously you would follow in general those questions, but L It’s both. I did follow the questions. Sometimes the questions worked a little less well, but I knew what I was doing then. They were issues I really wanted to cover and they were issues I wanted to cover because I knew they were important by all the work I had done and from books that I had read.

Here Lois Weis is trying to use the interviews to cover particular aspects that fit with her empirical and theoretical concerns and is using a list of questions to ensure strong framing of the situation. The following extract from our interview shows both that strong framing has to be fought for, and that at the end of these same interviews Lois allowed a section that was much more weakly framed when she passed back to them the transcripts of their previous childhood interviews.

G Ok you gradually work your way through the questions and, as I’m doing, presumably you darted around a bit? L Absolutely, I always dart, yeah. And I feed off what they say. I mean, like you, you know you get pretty good at this after a while and I feed off what they say. So I move with them. G How do you end the interview? L The Class Reunion ones were really fun because I gave them a typed version of their transcript from when they were sixteen and they flipped, they just freaked out. G You gave that after you’d interviewed them did you? L Yes I gave it to them afterwards. And then we talked about it a little bit, it was more a sort of my closing. G With the tape recorder still on? L Yes. It elicited a little less than I thought it would, with the tape recorder on because I think they didn’t think about it.

In contrast, the interviews conducted by Paul Connolly ( 1998 , 2004 ) with his primary school children were much more weakly framed.

P. I asked a child to nominate two others and I found that a group of three was probably the optimal number for me for that age [G: ok]. With four you started to create dynamics where you could have two against two [G: yeah] and with just two, you know, if one wasn't speaking much it became quite stunted. Three for most of the time actually worked pretty well. So you’ve got a friendship group of three, basically sat down, and there’d be opening questions that I had—just about what were you doing today in the playground or I’d have more general questions about what are you going to do tonight when you get home, or what do you like to do at home, what do you like to play, what do you watch on TV. Just to get the discussion going [G: yeah]. And then really it would take on a logic of its own. So for the most part I really just let the children talk in whatever ways they wanted to. And I had that luxury of being a PhD student where I could spend three days a week for a year in the school so I could take my time [G: sure] and just allow them to discuss whatever they wanted to. And invariably, you know, it’s an inner city school in a multi-racial area, and race came into their discussions very quickly.

Here the circumstances were designed such that the children could take a large degree of control over the framing of the situation. It was deemed appropriate because the research centered on the understandings that these children gave to race and ethnicity. Allowing them considerable power to frame the situation meant that they could exhibit their own worldviews.

At first sight, it might be thought that classification and framing when applied to interviews are overlapping variables rather than being independent—but, while strong framing and strong classification often seem to go together, as do weak classification and weak framing, there are many situations where the strength of each variable is in opposition.

It is far from unusual, for example, for researchers to have to struggle if they wish to impose strong framing. Jan Nespor (J) describes an occasion where he was invited to interview a group of people in the school committee and the framing was fought over:

J I actually served on, like there was a site based school committee there, site based management committee, that I was a member of for a couple of years and I know one of the members of that group from the church was on it. Some way or another I hooked up with them and I went over and interviewed about ten of them simultaneously. Which really wasn’t my idea but that was like, I said ‘Can I come and interview you about what you’re doing after school and what the school was like in the past?’ and she says, ‘Oh yes we’d love, we’ll bring a whole bunch of people who were there.’ You know, they kind of introduced themselves, and you’d try to take notes so you can reconstruct who said what because everybody sounds the same on the tape. [. . .] And of course with ten people that very quickly became them talking to each other more than me asking questions.

Or there might be particular people who are reluctant to go along with the strong framing that the interviewer might desire. Jan Nespor recounted one such woman:

J She was very involved in opposition to the school and she would never sit down and be interviewed. She was one of those people who would grab you in the parking lot and tell you everything that had happened to her and talk for twenty or thirty minutes but just didn’t want to have it on tape. And I’d say can I write about that? I mean I didn’t actually because I could never remember. It was like, you know, it’d be the end of the day and you’re tired, and this person just downloads you know tries to download all of this complex stuff and of course by the time I get to the typewriter I can’t remember half of it.

Researching the powerful in education can also challenge both classification and framing. In an edited collection on the topic of researching the powerful (Walford, 1994 ) there are numerous examples where policymakers were interviewed to try to gain insights into their own role in particular policy decisions. Stephen Ball gives an example of his interview with Sir Keith Joseph where the interviewer and interviewee have somewhat different agendas and struggle to control the framing of the interview. The classification is very strong, but the framing, from the researchers’ point of view, keeps slipping away. Similarly, John Fitz and David Halpin describe an interview with Kenneth Baker where official advisers sat in on the interview and “the interview that followed was dominated by Baker”(Fitz & Halpin, 1994 , p. 44). Those who are powerful and used to being interviewed on-record find it easy to make sure that interviews are actually weakly framed even where the interviewer plans it to be strong.

I have argued that there are many problems with interviewing in educational research, but that this does not necessarily mean that interviews should be abandoned within ethnography. Interviews within ethnography should always be recognized as being part of the wider ethnography and must be interpreted in conjunction with data obtained through other research methods or through other interviews. Interviews can inform us of what the person interviewed is prepared to say about a topic in the social context, time, and place of that particular interview. We need to recognize that what is said will be co-constructed in that interview, and will be limited by perception, memory, evasions, self-deception, and more on the part of both interviewee and interviewer, and researchers certainly cannot uncritically take what is said in any particular interview as “the truth” for all times. Interviews have to be treated as generated accounts and performances (Atkinson, 2015 , p. 96) and to be recognized as occasions when those interviewed will construct themselves as particular types of people.

This means that ethnographers need to analyze interviews with much more care than is often given to them. We need to focus on what is not said as much as what is said. We need to be cautious in interpreting the words produced in interviews, and try to generate further data about the same topics in a variety of ways and in different circumstances. This means that we need to search for misinformation, evasion, lies, and fronts, and also to look for taken-for-granted meanings, problematic meanings, and self-deception. We need to interrogate the interviews and compare what is said in one account with what is indicated by another interview or research method.

I have used Bernstein’s categories of classification and framing and applied them to the variety of interview situations within ethnography. As with the original formulation of educational knowledge codes, there is a tendency for high classification to be associated with high framing and low classification to be associated with low framing, but two distinct dimensions can be identified.

The more challenging implication of using the framework of classification and framing is that, in Bernstein’s original formulation, the educational success of children of differing classes (and, one might add, genders and ethnicities) will be related to the classification and framing to be found in teaching situations. “Where framing is strong [. . .] social class may play a crucial role [. . .] it often means that the images, voices and practices the school reflects make it difficult for children of marginalized classes to recognize themselves in the school” (Bernstein, 2000 , p. 14). One would expect there to be similar relationships between class and other elements of marginalization in the interview process. One advantage of the use of classification and framing as a way of thinking about interviewing is that it may make researchers examine the possible differential validities and reliabilities that various approaches may have with interviewees of different social classes, genders, and ethnicities. It is an empirical question as to which type of interviewing technique is likely to generate the most valid data, and this requires a separate research investigation, but it is inevitable that this relationship between validity and method will be mediated by class, race, and gender.

Author Note

As with much of my writing, this contribution draws upon and develops some previous work, in particular, Walford, 2001 , 2007 , 2008 , 2009 , and 2017 . This article largely takes a British and European viewpoint. It does so because, sadly, since the late 20th century, in the United States in particular, the two words “qualitative” and “ethnography” have become almost synonymous. Just as seriously, many in the United States use the word “ethnography” to describe studies that are based on interviews only. For example, the Ethnography in Education Research Forum held each year in Philadelphia advertises itself as the “the largest annual meeting of qualitative researchers” and has papers using a wide range of qualitative methods, but disappointingly few that use ethnography. The U.S.–based journal Anthropology and Education Quarterly has many articles that are based on interviews only rather than the traditional focus of anthropology on ethnography. But in the United Kingdom and most of Europe the distinction remains clearer, with, for example, the European-based journal Ethnography and Education only publishing articles based on the traditional view of ethnography and the annual Ethnography and Education Conference held at Oxford not accepting interview-only papers.

Further Reading

• Beach, D. , Bagley, C. , & Maques da Silva, S. (Eds.). (2018). The Wiley handbook of ethnography of education . London, U.K.: Wiley.
• Aggleton, P. J. , & Whitty, G. (1985). Rebels without a cause? Socialization and subcultural style among the children of the new middle class. Sociology of Education , 58 , 60–72.
• Atkinson, P. (2006). Rescuing autoethnography. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography , 35 (4), 400–404.
• Atkinson, P. (2015). For ethnography . London, U.K.: SAGE.
• Ball, S. J. (1981). Beachside comprehensive: A case study of secondary schooling . Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
• Barley, R. (2014). Identity and social interaction in a multi-ethnic classroom . London, U.K.: Tufnell.
• Becker, H. S. , Geer, B. , Hughes, E. C. , & Strauss, A. L. (1961). Boys in white: Student culture in a medical school . Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
• Bernstein, B. (1971). On the classification and framing of educational knowledge. In M. F. D. Young (Ed.), Knowledge and control (pp. 47–69). London, U.K.: Collier-Macmillan.
• Bernstein, B. (2000). Pedagogy, symbolic control and identity (rev. ed.). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
• Clerke, T. , & Hopwood, N. (2014). Doing ethnography in teams: A case study of asymmetries in collaborative research . London, U.K.: Springer.
• Connolly, P. (1998). Racism, gender identity and young children . London, U.K.: Routledge.
• Connolly, P. (2004). Boys and schooling in the early years . London, U.K.: RoutledgeFalmer.
• Deal T. E. (1985). The symbolism of effective schools. Elementary School Journal , 85 (5), 601–620.
• Delamont, S. (2005). No place for women among them? Reflections on the axé of fieldwork. Sport, Education and Society , 10 (3), 305–320.
• Delamont, S. (2014). Key Themes in the Ethnography of Education . Los Angeles, CA: SAGE.
• Delamont, S. , Stephens, N. , & Campos, C. (2017). Embodying Brazil: An ethnography of diasporic capoeira . London, U.K.: Routledge.
• Douglas, J. D. (1976). Investigative social research: Individual and team field research . London, U.K.: SAGE.
• Edgerton, R. B. (1979). Alone together: Social order on an urban beach . Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Fitz, J. , & Halpin, D. (1994). Ministers and mandarins: educational research in elite settings. In G. Walford (Ed.), Researching the Powerful in Education . London, U.K.: UCL Press.
• Hammersley, M. , & Atkinson, P. (2007). Ethnography: Principles in practice (3rd ed.). London, U.K.: Routledge.
• Hargreaves, D. (1967). Social relations in the secondary school . London, U.K.: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
• Hopwood, N. (2016). Professional practice and learning: Times, spaces, bodies, things . London, U.K.: Springer.
• Humphreys, L. (1970). Tearoom trade . London, U.K.: Duckworth.
• Lacey, C. (1970). Hightown grammar . Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press.
• Nespor, J. (1997). Tangled up in school: Politics, space, bodies, and signs in the educational process . Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
• Patrick, J. (1973). A Glasgow gang observed . London, U.K.: Eyre Methuen.
• Rodger, J. J. (1985). Natural justice and the big public inquiry: A sociological perspective. Sociological Review , 33 , 409–429.
• Stephens, N. , & Delamont, S. (2006). Balancing the Berimbau: Embodied ethnographic understanding. Qualitative Enquiry , 12 (2), 316–339.
• Troman, G. , Gordon, T. , Jeffrey, B. , & Walford, G. (2006). Editorial. Ethnography and Education , 1 (1), 1–2.
• Walford, G. (1981). Classification and framing in postgraduate education. Studies in Higher Education , 6 (2), 147–158.
• Walford, G. (1986). Ruling-class classification and framing. British Educational Research Journal , 12 (2), 183–195.
• Walford, G. (2001). Doing qualitative educational research: A personal guide to the research process . London, U.K.: Continuum.
• Walford, G. (2007). Classification and framing of interviews in ethnographic interviewing. Ethnography and Education , 2 (2), 145–157.
• Walford, G. (2009). For ethnography. Ethnography and Education , 4 (3), 273–284.
• Walford, G. (2017). Recognisable continuity: A defence of multiple methods. In D. Beach , C. Bagley , & S. M. de Silva (Eds.), The Wiley handbook of the ethnography of education . London, U.K.: Wiley.
• Walford, G. (Ed.). (1994). Researching the powerful in education . London, U.K.: Routledge.
• Walford, G. (Ed.). (2008). How to do educational ethnography . London, U.K.: Tufnell.
• Walker, M. (1983). Control and consciousness in the college. British Educational Research Journal , 9 , 129–140.
• Weis, L. (1995). Working class without work: High school students in a de-industrializing economy . London, U.K.: Routledge.
• Weis, L. (2004). Class reunion: The remaking of the American white working class . London, U.K.: Routledge.

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This chapter of the book deals with the nature of ethnographic research and the research tools it employs—ethnographic interviews and participant observation. The chapter focuses on the role of ethnographic researchers, the dimensions that ethnographers must consider in order to get a comprehensive collection of information, and the analysis of findings.

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Research methods: The ethnographic interview (course content)

dawn pankonien

What is ethnography?

éthnos (Greek): folk/the people + grapho (Greek): to write. Ethnography means, literally, writing about the people.

Of course, I ignore the many intricacies of the term with such an intro. In 2019, ethnography is a methodology (think: practice that involves combining multiple research methods in order to best answer a question or questions), and it is the primary practice of social scientists who are interested in better understanding humans in the present.

By far the most popular methods in ethnographic research are participant observation ( see here ) and unstructured interviewing (see below).

Nevertheless, technology shifts mean that ethnographers are continually expanding how they search for data, utilizing new audio-visual and other, still often considered “experimental” methods as these get designed/invented. Simultaneously, shifts in disciplinary thinking today motivate the development of, for example, ever more child-friendly methods. This trend follows the (relatively recent, though with many exceptions) identification of children as agents―as individuals who have their own meaningful understandings and values and practices and things to say.

Drawing, sculpting, building things out of legos (yes, really ), group work and games, scripting and the enacting of skits, mapping, participatory video and film projects, participatory audio recording, conversation analysis (using high quality audio equipment that is ever more affordable and portable), and many, many other methods are now employed by ethnographers from and working around the globe in their attempts to understand human beings in all of their complexities. And so, you see:

Ethnography is not only “writing about the people,” but it is all of the steps one takes, from asking questions of humanity and human social relations to observing, interacting with, interviewing, and in other ways documenting humans as they live their daily lives. It is the jotting of notes on everything one notices, the expanding of these notes each night into thicker descriptions and accounts, and it even includes the analyzing and writing up of one’s findings.

In short: ethnography is a multi-method, start-to-finish, human -conducted examination of what humans do and say and think and believe, what they mean by what they do and say and think and believe, and then, why any of this might matter. In the words of anthropologist Sherry Ortner, ethnography “has always meant the attempt to understand another life world using the self — as much of it as possible — as the instrument of knowing” (2006, in McGranahan 2012).

If you are growing up to do ethnography and want to see a much more precise unpacking of the word, here is what one Savage Minds (a popular anthro blog) writer had to say in 2012. Or if, instead, you want the video game designer explanation of ethnographic research, the how and why even non-scientists use ethnographic methods today, click here for a three minute video.

What is an ethnographic interview?

“Oftentimes we can’t do as much observation as we would like, so we have to turn to unstructured interviews,” (1:49) says the narrator in the YouTube clip linked just above. But in fact, we do not interview because we run out of time to observe . (Clarification: I really do like the rest of that video.)

Instead: IF anthropology is the study of what we (humans) do and say and think and mean, and IF we cannot read minds… THEN the most ethically correct (and also effective, efficient, etc.) way to get at the thoughts and beliefs and understandings of other human beings is by asking them, in addition to observing them, thereby allowing real human beings to have real voices and a real say in what and why and how they do and say and think as they do. Let me demonstrate:

“Man, art students are a unique bunch,” I think to myself. And I’ve been working at US schools of art and design since 2011, so I’ve done a solid amount of participant observing among these students on campuses. I can even arrive at conclusions based on my observing:

“It seems to me that their decisions to attend art school are decisions to pursue their passions, despite the economic risks in art today. I mean, they talk about the importance of doing what you love and stuff all the time.”

I continue thinking: “And yet… it seems to me that they share a strong sense of uncertainty (uncertainty of their own future economic stability, in particular), and this uncertainty, it seems to me, mitigates (or even eradicates) their excitement for their work and their confidence in themselves. Not always. But often. And they seem particularly pessimistic when discussing society and culture in their liberal arts classes.”

All of this leaves me considering: “Is there a paradox here? Going to college to study art and circulating DWYL mantras while exuding pessismism and doubt?” I mean, “Why go to art school if there is no future in art?” Or: “Is their pessimism learned at art school? Is it just a front, used by a secretly hopeful bunch of individuals? Is hope (or aspiration) seen as egoism in art school?” Etc. etc.

Okay, maybe I am being obvious and unprofound. Or: maybe my thinking is wrong-headed. Regardless, I have just described a series of thoughts I induced based solely on my in-class experiences with students and conversations with colleagues on art school campuses.

Now: you’re an art student. Do you feel voiceless and/or annoyed? Like, “Why is she inducing instead of asking me? Just because she hangs out on our campuses…” This is what being observed without being asked feels like.

Also, don’t I seem stuck in my questioning and like I might advance much faster to some answers if I sit down and talk to you, several of you, already?

De hecho , I must, necessarily , talk to you (the art students, at least some of you) in contexts and spaces which allow YOU to tell me how YOU think about and understand yourselves, your futures, and more, if I really want to trust my findings related to YOU. Depending on what YOU tell ME, I can then strengthen or refute my initial hypothesizing and then add further lines of questioning to my research. See how that works?

Let’s go back to science is a practice

Ask, investigate, analyze, find … do it all over again … remember that loop?

In all that one asks, as a scientist, one aspires to collect multiple lines of evidence (shout out to Dr. Tim Earle of Northwestern University who said this in every archy class I ever had with him). Observation, obviously, provides various lines of evidence. But so, too, does the ethnographic interview. The interview allows you to check your observations and interpretations with the very individuals you are observing.

Okay, okay, so what does one ask?

The 5 W’s, sure, just as the video gamer/narrator in the video linked above says, but famous Americanist sociologist Howard Becker said, “scratch the ‘why’ questions and focus on the ‘how’ questions” (my own paraphrase). Let me show you why he said this:

Pretend I ask you, “Why do you go to College?”

Think about that.

Do you feel like I just put you on the defensive? Maybe? Like I just asked you to explain your decisions to me, as if I (who does she think she is?!) deserve an explanation from you, and also, maybe, am I coming off as a self-important asshole-interlocutor (is she implying college is stupid in that question?).

Does it seem as if I might be wasting your time when you have little to no time to give (because duh, everybody knows it’s college or bust), and so now you have no intention of providing me with lengthy or “thick” or even sincere answers? Perhaps you are more forgiving than this, but others will not be.

Next: what if I had asked, instead, “Can you tell me about how you got to MCAD?”

Reread the why question. Now the how. And now the why again.

Can you see how, in this latter case, I am a different person? A different (more likable, more relatable, perhaps) kind of interviewer? Assuming I chose the right tone, I am asking you for information in a way that:

a) does not put you on the defensive, and

b) makes me appear as if I respect you and your time and sincerely value your answers and want to know more about you and your lived experiences and your thoughts, etc, etc.

Further, by asking how, I am giving you a chance to give me especially concrete feedback. I mean, that “Why college?” question: “To get to the other side,” many are likely to say. Versus: “How did you get to MCAD?” Here each of my interlocutors is likely to have their/her/his own story to tell.

All of THIS is why Becker said drop the “why?” questions; rewrite them as “how?” questions.

Here’s another example, directly related to our exercise this week: “Why do artists use the word ritual?”

How would you and those around you respond?

What if you were asked, instead: “How is ‘ritual’ used in the arts world, and/or by artists, today? Can you think of any examples?”

Which question invites you in? Which encourages you to open up, and to speak most concretely (provided you have something to say), borrowing from your real experiences and understandings? Which question will get me (the interviewer) the better, more concrete answers? The latter question does these.

Finally, there is something else going on within how-and-not-why questions that I want to discuss with you here, and this relates to:

Building rapport while asking questions

In short, you want your interlocutors to like you.

Sure, go to your friends. This is one way to get good, thoughtful answers (and it’s particularly okay when we are trying on a method for the first time, as we are this week). Your friends trust and like you, and they are likely to assume that if you are asking them questions, your motives for doing so are worthy rather than egoistic and a waste of their time. Further, they are likely to trust that whatever you do with their answers will reflect the respect you hold for them.

However, you/I/we already know that in good science we can’t just interview our friends. I mean, yes, totally, I try out my interview questions on my friends: to make sure the questions are clear; to see what kinds of answers I get, and to help me predict what kinds of answers I might get in the field later… I had four Mexico City friends take the introductory survey I designed for you all at W1, for example, two months before you saw that survey. (This doesn’t mean that survey was perfect by the time you took it, but it did get tighter.) My point is, this is pre-research in the real world, the vetting of your method, and not its application “in the field.”

In the end, the kinds of data that reflect communities or societies most accurately need to be representative of the individuals within those communities or societies. This is why we do things like randomize our sample sets, use snowball sampling when there is not a reliable alternative, etc.

And building rapport from within the interview, my theme here, becomes especially important within those contexts in which we are speaking with strangers or near-strangers. Thus (even if you are choosing to interview your friends for class this week), let’s talk about how one does this.

On an individual by individual basis, think about what you know about your interlocutor, and what you believe will make that person most comfortable. What do you need in order to achieve this level of comfort for that individual?

1. Consider the time and place of your interview.

2. Think about your own presentation of self: your dress, posture, tone and voice (including your emotive performances as well as your word choices), non-verbal gestures, and more. Think about the *vibes* you want to send and how you will achieve this.

In my fieldwork in southern Oaxaca (2007–2011), for example, I adopted a formal discourse and highly structured line of questioning when speaking with politicians and investors who made it clear (via their dress, speech, spending habits, and more) that they privileged efficiency and professionalism. I ran these interviews in their office spaces, brought them coffee (bourgie signifier reaffirming the link between one’s lack of sleep and one’s importance to the world), and I smiled and told them not to worry, no hurry, each time we were interrupted by a coworker or secretary. I made clear that my interest in their lives was a professional, scientistic interest.

With poor, single mothers who lived in rural regions and worked in the informal economy, in contrast, I tried as hard as I could, to come off as empathic, excited to be in conversation, personally interested/invested, and casual/relaxed: as opposed to overly rigid or academic. (To be clear, these performances of mine were always sincere.) I ran these interviews in women’s homes, or in public plazas, and often offered to (and later did, in several cases) babysit their children (an attempt at reciprocity that was more meaningful than gifting coffee to these women). Just like in my more formal interviews, I told the women not to worry whenever we were interrupted — by clients/customers or neighbors or kin and fictive kin in these cases.

Even when “interviewing” via email, building rapport remains key. Before you begin, obviously, you must decide who is and isn’t comfortable using email as a medium of communication. Or who checks email rarely and thus will miss your request. Who hates typing? Who doesn’t read? If you only use emailed interviews, whose voices are you excluding from your study?

Once you’ve decided to use email, you must show your emailed interviewee you care about his/her/their replies. You can do this by choosing a tone that is friendly/warm. Also by adapting your style to your interlocutor, as I just modeled above.

Are you interviewing the President of France? Perform smart and formal with a *cool* edge. President Emmanuel Macron is 39yo, studied philosophy in college, and is waaaay cool (also married his high school teacher, so probably don’t bring that up).

Are you interviewing D. Trump? Put on your best “just-one-of-the-dudes-and-if-you’re-not-with-me-you’re-against-me” face. Bring cherry-vanilla ice cream or See’s candies. Say something positive about Citizen Kane . Not kidding .

My point: you must know, be able to empathize with, and probably even respect (you figure out how / for what reasons) your audience if you want them to take you and your interview, email-based or not, seriously.

En fin To every ethnographic interview, you arrive with a plan, a list of questions, sure, but you adapt that plan as the interview evolves. Your interlocutors’ positions, practices, and expectations shape your rapport building strategies. So, too, do the contexts in which you are interviewing. Are children present? Snoopy neighbors? A secretary or boss? You might modify your tone and voice within an interview. And you will continually accommodate to make more comfortable your interviewees.

In the end, the strongest ethnographic interviews are those that are appropriate and inviting. They are dynamic, changing in an instant as the context in which you interview changes, rather than rigid and unwavering. “Semi-structured” we call them. Or we call them “informal.”

Are they messy (and sometimes even stressful)? Absolutely. But this is the most ethically correct and effective way to run an interview at present.

Now: good luck to each of you in your interviews this week. I am excited, already, to learn what you find.

Written by dawn pankonien

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Series: Practical guidance to qualitative research. Part 3: Sampling, data collection and analysis

Albine moser.

a Faculty of Health Care, Research Centre Autonomy and Participation of Chronically Ill People , Zuyd University of Applied Sciences , Heerlen, The Netherlands

b Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences, Department of Family Medicine , Maastricht University , Maastricht, The Netherlands

Irene Korstjens

c Faculty of Health Care, Research Centre for Midwifery Science , Zuyd University of Applied Sciences , Maastricht, The Netherlands

In the course of our supervisory work over the years, we have noticed that qualitative research tends to evoke a lot of questions and worries, so-called frequently asked questions (FAQs). This series of four articles intends to provide novice researchers with practical guidance for conducting high-quality qualitative research in primary care. By ‘novice’ we mean Master’s students and junior researchers, as well as experienced quantitative researchers who are engaging in qualitative research for the first time. This series addresses their questions and provides researchers, readers, reviewers and editors with references to criteria and tools for judging the quality of qualitative research papers. The second article focused on context, research questions and designs, and referred to publications for further reading. This third article addresses FAQs about sampling, data collection and analysis. The data collection plan needs to be broadly defined and open at first, and become flexible during data collection. Sampling strategies should be chosen in such a way that they yield rich information and are consistent with the methodological approach used. Data saturation determines sample size and will be different for each study. The most commonly used data collection methods are participant observation, face-to-face in-depth interviews and focus group discussions. Analyses in ethnographic, phenomenological, grounded theory, and content analysis studies yield different narrative findings: a detailed description of a culture, the essence of the lived experience, a theory, and a descriptive summary, respectively. The fourth and final article will focus on trustworthiness and publishing qualitative research.

Key points on sampling, data collection and analysis

• The data collection plan needs to be broadly defined and open during data collection.
• Sampling strategies should be chosen in such a way that they yield rich information and are consistent with the methodological approach used.
• Data saturation determines sample size and is different for each study.
• The most commonly used data collection methods are participant observation, face-to-face in-depth interviews and focus group discussions.
• Analyses of ethnographic, phenomenological, grounded theory, and content analysis studies yield different narrative findings: a detailed description of a culture, the essence of the lived experience, a theory or a descriptive summary, respectively.

Introduction

This article is the third paper in a series of four articles aiming to provide practical guidance to qualitative research. In an introductory paper, we have described the objective, nature and outline of the Series [ 1 ]. Part 2 of the series focused on context, research questions and design of qualitative research [ 2 ]. In this paper, Part 3, we address frequently asked questions (FAQs) about sampling, data collection and analysis.

What is a sampling plan?

A sampling plan is a formal plan specifying a sampling method, a sample size, and procedure for recruiting participants ( Box 1 ) [ 3 ]. A qualitative sampling plan describes how many observations, interviews, focus-group discussions or cases are needed to ensure that the findings will contribute rich data. In quantitative studies, the sampling plan, including sample size, is determined in detail in beforehand but qualitative research projects start with a broadly defined sampling plan. This plan enables you to include a variety of settings and situations and a variety of participants, including negative cases or extreme cases to obtain rich data. The key features of a qualitative sampling plan are as follows. First, participants are always sampled deliberately. Second, sample size differs for each study and is small. Third, the sample will emerge during the study: based on further questions raised in the process of data collection and analysis, inclusion and exclusion criteria might be altered, or the sampling sites might be changed. Finally, the sample is determined by conceptual requirements and not primarily by representativeness. You, therefore, need to provide a description of and rationale for your choices in the sampling plan. The sampling plan is appropriate when the selected participants and settings are sufficient to provide the information needed for a full understanding of the phenomenon under study.

Sampling strategies in qualitative research. Based on Polit & Beck [ 3 ].

Some practicalities: a critical first step is to select settings and situations where you have access to potential participants. Subsequently, the best strategy to apply is to recruit participants who can provide the richest information. Such participants have to be knowledgeable on the phenomenon and can articulate and reflect, and are motivated to communicate at length and in depth with you. Finally, you should review the sampling plan regularly and adapt when necessary.

What sampling strategies can I use?

Sampling is the process of selecting or searching for situations, context and/or participants who provide rich data of the phenomenon of interest [ 3 ]. In qualitative research, you sample deliberately, not at random. The most commonly used deliberate sampling strategies are purposive sampling, criterion sampling, theoretical sampling, convenience sampling and snowball sampling. Occasionally, the ‘maximum variation,’ ‘typical cases’ and ‘confirming and disconfirming’ sampling strategies are used. Key informants need to be carefully chosen. Key informants hold special and expert knowledge about the phenomenon to be studied and are willing to share information and insights with you as the researcher [ 3 ]. They also help to gain access to participants, especially when groups are studied. In addition, as researcher, you can validate your ideas and perceptions with those of the key informants.

What is the connection between sampling types and qualitative designs?

The ‘big three’ approaches of ethnography, phenomenology, and grounded theory use different types of sampling.

In ethnography, the main strategy is purposive sampling of a variety of key informants, who are most knowledgeable about a culture and are able and willing to act as representatives in revealing and interpreting the culture. For example, an ethnographic study on the cultural influences of communication in maternity care will recruit key informants from among a variety of parents-to-be, midwives and obstetricians in midwifery care practices and hospitals.

Phenomenology uses criterion sampling, in which participants meet predefined criteria. The most prominent criterion is the participant’s experience with the phenomenon under study. The researchers look for participants who have shared an experience, but vary in characteristics and in their individual experiences. For example, a phenomenological study on the lived experiences of pregnant women with psychosocial support from primary care midwives will recruit pregnant women varying in age, parity and educational level in primary midwifery practices.

Grounded theory usually starts with purposive sampling and later uses theoretical sampling to select participants who can best contribute to the developing theory. As theory construction takes place concurrently with data collection and analyses, the theoretical sampling of new participants also occurs along with the emerging theoretical concepts. For example, one grounded theory study tested several theoretical constructs to build a theory on autonomy in diabetes patients [ 4 ]. In developing the theory, the researchers started by purposefully sampling participants with diabetes differing in age, onset of diabetes and social roles, for example, employees, housewives, and retired people. After the first analysis, researchers continued with theoretically sampling, for example, participants who differed in the treatment they received, with different degrees of care dependency, and participants who receive care from a general practitioner (GP), at a hospital or from a specialist nurse, etc.

In addition to the ‘big three’ approaches, content analysis is frequently applied in primary care research, and very often uses purposive, convenience, or snowball sampling. For instance, a study on peoples’ choice of a hospital for elective orthopaedic surgery used snowball sampling [ 5 ]. One elderly person in the private network of one researcher personally approached potential respondents in her social network by means of personal invitations (including letters). In turn, respondents were asked to pass on the invitation to other eligible candidates.

Sampling is also dependent on the characteristics of the setting, e.g., access, time, vulnerability of participants, and different types of stakeholders. The setting, where sampling is carried out, is described in detail to provide thick description of the context, thereby, enabling the reader to make a transferability judgement (see Part 3: transferability). Sampling also affects the data analysis, where you continue decision-making about whom or what situations to sample next. This is based on what you consider as still missing to get the necessary information for rich findings (see Part 1: emergent design). Another point of attention is the sampling of ‘invisible groups’ or vulnerable people. Sampling of these participants would require applying multiple sampling strategies, and more time calculated in the project planning stage for sampling and recruitment [ 6 ].

How do sample size and data saturation interact?

A guiding principle in qualitative research is to sample only until data saturation has been achieved. Data saturation means the collection of qualitative data to the point where a sense of closure is attained because new data yield redundant information [ 3 ].

Data saturation is reached when no new analytical information arises anymore, and the study provides maximum information on the phenomenon. In quantitative research, by contrast, the sample size is determined by a power calculation. The usually small sample size in qualitative research depends on the information richness of the data, the variety of participants (or other units), the broadness of the research question and the phenomenon, the data collection method (e.g., individual or group interviews) and the type of sampling strategy. Mostly, you and your research team will jointly decide when data saturation has been reached, and hence whether the sampling can be ended and the sample size is sufficient. The most important criterion is the availability of enough in-depth data showing the patterns, categories and variety of the phenomenon under study. You review the analysis, findings, and the quality of the participant quotes you have collected, and then decide whether sampling might be ended because of data saturation. In many cases, you will choose to carry out two or three more observations or interviews or an additional focus group discussion to confirm that data saturation has been reached.

When designing a qualitative sampling plan, we (the authors) work with estimates. We estimate that ethnographic research should require 25–50 interviews and observations, including about four-to-six focus group discussions, while phenomenological studies require fewer than 10 interviews, grounded theory studies 20–30 interviews and content analysis 15–20 interviews or three-to-four focus group discussions. However, these numbers are very tentative and should be very carefully considered before using them. Furthermore, qualitative designs do not always mean small sample numbers. Bigger sample sizes might occur, for example, in content analysis, employing rapid qualitative approaches, and in large or longitudinal qualitative studies.

Data collection

What methods of data collection are appropriate.

The most frequently used data collection methods are participant observation, interviews, and focus group discussions. Participant observation is a method of data collection through the participation in and observation of a group or individuals over an extended period of time [ 3 ]. Interviews are another data collection method in which an interviewer asks the respondents questions [ 6 ], face-to-face, by telephone or online. The qualitative research interview seeks to describe the meanings of central themes in the life world of the participants. The main task in interviewing is to understand the meaning of what participants say [ 5 ]. Focus group discussions are a data collection method with a small group of people to discuss a given topic, usually guided by a moderator using a questioning-route [ 8 ]. It is common in qualitative research to combine more than one data collection method in one study. You should always choose your data collection method wisely. Data collection in qualitative research is unstructured and flexible. You often make decisions on data collection while engaging in fieldwork, the guiding questions being with whom, what, when, where and how. The most basic or ‘light’ version of qualitative data collection is that of open questions in surveys. Box 2 provides an overview of the ‘big three’ qualitative approaches and their most commonly used data collection methods.

Qualitative data collection methods.

What role should I adopt when conducting participant observations?

What is important is to immerse yourself in the research setting, to enable you to study it from the inside. There are four types of researcher involvement in observations, and in your qualitative study, you may apply all four. In the first type, as ‘complete participant’, you become part of the setting and play an insider role, just as you do in your own work setting. This role might be appropriate when studying persons who are difficult to access. The second type is ‘active participation’. You have gained access to a particular setting and observed the group under study. You can move around at will and can observe in detail and depth and in different situations. The third role is ‘moderate participation’. You do not actually work in the setting you wish to study but are located there as a researcher. You might adopt this role when you are not affiliated to the care setting you wish to study. The fourth role is that of the ‘complete observer’, in which you merely observe (bystander role) and do not participate in the setting at all. However, you cannot perform any observations without access to the care setting. Such access might be easily obtained when you collect data by observations in your own primary care setting. In some cases, you might observe other care settings, which are relevant to primary care, for instance observing the discharge procedure for vulnerable elderly people from hospital to primary care.

How do I perform observations?

It is important to decide what to focus on in each individual observation. The focus of observations is important because you can never observe everything, and you can only observe each situation once. Your focus might differ between observations. Each observation should provide you with answers regarding ‘Who do you observe?’, ‘What do you observe’, ‘Where does the observation take place?’, ‘When does it take place?’, ‘How does it happen?’, and ‘Why does it happen as it happens?’ Observations are not static but proceed in three stages: descriptive, focused, and selective. Descriptive means that you observe, on the basis of general questions, everything that goes on in the setting. Focused observation means that you observe certain situations for some time, with some areas becoming more prominent. Selective means that you observe highly specific issues only. For example, if you want to observe the discharge procedure for vulnerable elderly people from hospitals to general practice, you might begin with broad observations to get to know the general procedure. This might involve observing several different patient situations. You might find that the involvement of primary care nurses deserves special attention, so you might then focus on the roles of hospital staff and primary care nurses, and their interactions. Finally, you might want to observe only the specific situations where hospital staff and primary care nurses exchange information. You take field notes from all these observations and add your own reflections on the situations you observed. You jot down words, whole sentences or parts of situations, and your reflections on a piece of paper. After the observations, the field notes need to be worked out and transcribed immediately to be able to include detailed descriptions.

Further reading on interviews and focus group discussion.

Qualitative data analysis.

What are the general features of an interview?

Interviews involve interactions between the interviewer(s) and the respondent(s) based on interview questions. Individual, or face-to-face, interviews should be distinguished from focus group discussions. The interview questions are written down in an interview guide [ 7 ] for individual interviews or a questioning route [ 8 ] for focus group discussions, with questions focusing on the phenomenon under study. The sequence of the questions is pre-determined. In individual interviews, the sequence depends on the respondents and how the interviews unfold. During the interview, as the conversation evolves, you go back and forth through the sequence of questions. It should be a dialogue, not a strict question–answer interview. In a focus group discussion, the sequence is intended to facilitate the interaction between the participants, and you might adapt the sequence depending on how their discussion evolves. Working with an interview guide or questioning route enables you to collect information on specific topics from all participants. You are in control in the sense that you give direction to the interview, while the participants are in control of their answers. However, you need to be open-minded to recognize that some relevant topics for participants may not have been covered in your interview guide or questioning route, and need to be added. During the data collection process, you develop the interview guide or questioning route further and revise it based on the analysis.

The interview guide and questioning route might include open and general as well as subordinate or detailed questions, probes and prompts. Probes are exploratory questions, for example, ‘Can you tell me more about this?’ or ‘Then what happened?’ Prompts are words and signs to encourage participants to tell more. Examples of stimulating prompts are eye contact, leaning forward and open body language.

Further reading on qualitative analysis.

What is a face-to-face interview?

A face-to-face interview is an individual interview, that is, a conversation between participant and interviewer. Interviews can focus on past or present situations, and on personal issues. Most qualitative studies start with open interviews to get a broad ‘picture’ of what is going on. You should not provide a great deal of guidance and avoid influencing the answers to fit ‘your’ point of view, as you want to obtain the participant’s own experiences, perceptions, thoughts, and feelings. You should encourage the participants to speak freely. As the interview evolves, your subsequent major and subordinate questions become more focused. A face-to-face or individual interview might last between 30 and 90 min.

Most interviews are semi-structured [ 3 ]. To prepare an interview guide to enhance that a set of topics will be covered by every participant, you might use a framework for constructing a semi-structured interview guide [ 10 ]: (1) identify the prerequisites to use a semi-structured interview and evaluate if a semi-structured interview is the appropriate data collection method; (2) retrieve and utilize previous knowledge to gain a comprehensive and adequate understanding of the phenomenon under study; (3) formulate a preliminary interview guide by operationalizing the previous knowledge; (4) pilot-test the preliminary interview guide to confirm the coverage and relevance of the content and to identify the need for reformulation of questions; (5) complete the interview guide to collect rich data with a clear and logical guide.

The first few minutes of an interview are decisive. The participant wants to feel at ease before sharing his or her experiences. In a semi-structured interview, you would start with open questions related to the topic, which invite the participant to talk freely. The questions aim to encourage participants to tell their personal experiences, including feelings and emotions and often focus on a particular experience or specific events. As you want to get as much detail as possible, you also ask follow-up questions or encourage telling more details by using probes and prompts or keeping a short period of silence [ 6 ]. You first ask what and why questions and then how questions.

You need to be prepared for handling problems you might encounter, such as gaining access, dealing with multiple formal and informal gatekeepers, negotiating space and privacy for recording data, socially desirable answers from participants, reluctance of participants to tell their story, deciding on the appropriate role (emotional involvement), and exiting from fieldwork prematurely.

What is a focus group discussion and when can I use it?

A focus group discussion is a way to gather together people to discuss a specific topic of interest. The people participating in the focus group discussion share certain characteristics, e.g., professional background, or share similar experiences, e.g., having diabetes. You use their interaction to collect the information you need on a particular topic. To what depth of information the discussion goes depends on the extent to which focus group participants can stimulate each other in discussing and sharing their views and experiences. Focus group participants respond to you and to each other. Focus group discussions are often used to explore patients’ experiences of their condition and interactions with health professionals, to evaluate programmes and treatment, to gain an understanding of health professionals’ roles and identities, to examine the perception of professional education, or to obtain perspectives on primary care issues. A focus group discussion usually lasts 90–120 mins.

You might use guidelines for developing a questioning route [ 9 ]: (1) brainstorm about possible topics you want to cover; (2) sequence the questioning: arrange general questions first, and then, more specific questions, and ask positive questions before negative questions; (3) phrase the questions: use open-ended questions, ask participants to think back and reflect on their personal experiences, avoid asking ‘why’ questions, keep questions simple and make your questions sound conversational, be careful about giving examples; (4) estimate the time for each question and consider: the complexity of the question, the category of the question, level of participant’s expertise, the size of the focus group discussion, and the amount of discussion you want related to the question; (5) obtain feedback from others (peers); (6) revise the questions based on the feedback; and (7) test the questions by doing a mock focus group discussion. All questions need to provide an answer to the phenomenon under study.

You need to be prepared to manage difficulties as they arise, for example, dominant participants during the discussion, little or no interaction and discussion between participants, participants who have difficulties sharing their real feelings about sensitive topics with others, and participants who behave differently when they are observed.

How should I compose a focus group and how many participants are needed?

The purpose of the focus group discussion determines the composition. Smaller groups might be more suitable for complex (and sometimes controversial) topics. Also, smaller focus groups give the participants more time to voice their views and provide more detailed information, while participants in larger focus groups might generate greater variety of information. In composing a smaller or larger focus group, you need to ensure that the participants are likely to have different viewpoints that stimulate the discussion. For example, if you want to discuss the management of obesity in a primary care district, you might want to have a group composed of professionals who work with these patients but also have a variety of backgrounds, e.g. GPs, community nurses, practice nurses in general practice, school nurses, midwives or dieticians.

Focus groups generally consist of 6–12 participants. Careful time management is important, since you have to determine how much time you want to devote to answering each question, and how much time is available for each individual participant. For example, if you have planned a focus group discussion lasting 90 min. with eight participants, you might need 15 min. for the introduction and the concluding summary. This means you have 75 min. for asking questions, and if you have four questions, this allows a total of 18 min. of speaking time for each question. If all eight respondents participate in the discussion, this boils down to about two minutes of speaking time per respondent per question.

How can I use new media to collect qualitative data?

New media are increasingly used for collecting qualitative data, for example, through online observations, online interviews and focus group discussions, and in analysis of online sources. Data can be collected synchronously or asynchronously, with text messaging, video conferences, video calls or immersive virtual worlds or games, etcetera. Qualitative research moves from ‘virtual’ to ‘digital’. Virtual means those approaches that import traditional data collection methods into the online environment and digital means those approaches take advantage of the unique characteristics and capabilities of the Internet for research [ 10 ]. New media can also be applied. See Box 3 for further reading on interview and focus group discussion.

Can I wait with my analysis until all data have been collected?

You cannot wait with the analysis, because an iterative approach and emerging design are at the heart of qualitative research. This involves a process whereby you move back and forth between sampling, data collection and data analysis to accumulate rich data and interesting findings. The principle is that what emerges from data analysis will shape subsequent sampling decisions. Immediately after the very first observation, interview or focus group discussion, you have to start the analysis and prepare your field notes.

Why is a good transcript so important?

First, transcripts of audiotaped interviews and focus group discussions and your field notes constitute your major data sources. Trained and well-instructed transcribers preferably make transcripts. Usually, e.g., in ethnography, phenomenology, grounded theory, and content analysis, data are transcribed verbatim, which means that recordings are fully typed out, and the transcripts are accurate and reflect the interview or focus group discussion experience. Most important aspects of transcribing are the focus on the participants’ words, transcribing all parts of the audiotape, and carefully revisiting the tape and rereading the transcript. In conversation analysis non-verbal actions such as coughing, the lengths of pausing and emphasizing, tone of voice need to be described in detail using a formal transcription system (best known are G. Jefferson’s symbols).

To facilitate analysis, it is essential that you ensure and check that transcripts are accurate and reflect the totality of the interview, including pauses, punctuation and non-verbal data. To be able to make sense of qualitative data, you need to immerse yourself in the data and ‘live’ the data. In this process of incubation, you search the transcripts for meaning and essential patterns, and you try to collect legitimate and insightful findings. You familiarize yourself with the data by reading and rereading transcripts carefully and conscientiously, in search for deeper understanding.

Are there differences between the analyses in ethnography, phenomenology, grounded theory, and content analysis?

Ethnography, phenomenology, and grounded theory each have different analytical approaches, and you should be aware that each of these approaches has different schools of thought, which may also have integrated the analytical methods from other schools ( Box 4 ). When you opt for a particular approach, it is best to use a handbook describing its analytical methods, as it is better to use one approach consistently than to ‘mix up’ different schools.

In general, qualitative analysis begins with organizing data. Large amounts of data need to be stored in smaller and manageable units, which can be retrieved and reviewed easily. To obtain a sense of the whole, analysis starts with reading and rereading the data, looking at themes, emotions and the unexpected, taking into account the overall picture. You immerse yourself in the data. The most widely used procedure is to develop an inductive coding scheme based on actual data [ 11 ]. This is a process of open coding, creating categories and abstraction. In most cases, you do not start with a predefined coding scheme. You describe what is going on in the data. You ask yourself, what is this? What does it stand for? What else is like this? What is this distinct from? Based on this close examination of what emerges from the data you make as many labels as needed. Then, you make a coding sheet, in which you collect the labels and, based on your interpretation, cluster them in preliminary categories. The next step is to order similar or dissimilar categories into broader higher order categories. Each category is named using content-characteristic words. Then, you use abstraction by formulating a general description of the phenomenon under study: subcategories with similar events and information are grouped together as categories and categories are grouped as main categories. During the analysis process, you identify ‘missing analytical information’ and you continue data collection. You reread, recode, re-analyse and re-collect data until your findings provide breadth and depth.

Throughout the qualitative study, you reflect on what you see or do not see in the data. It is common to write ‘analytic memos’ [ 3 ], write-ups or mini-analyses about what you think you are learning during the course of your study, from designing to publishing. They can be a few sentences or pages, whatever is needed to reflect upon: open codes, categories, concepts, and patterns that might be emerging in the data. Memos can contain summaries of major findings and comments and reflections on particular aspects.

In ethnography, analysis begins from the moment that the researcher sets foot in the field. The analysis involves continually looking for patterns in the behaviours and thoughts of the participants in everyday life, in order to obtain an understanding of the culture under study. When comparing one pattern with another and analysing many patterns simultaneously, you may use maps, flow charts, organizational charts and matrices to illustrate the comparisons graphically. The outcome of an ethnographic study is a narrative description of a culture.

In phenomenology, analysis aims to describe and interpret the meaning of an experience, often by identifying essential subordinate and major themes. You search for common themes featuring within an interview and across interviews, sometimes involving the study participants or other experts in the analysis process. The outcome of a phenomenological study is a detailed description of themes that capture the essential meaning of a ‘lived’ experience.

Grounded theory generates a theory that explains how a basic social problem that emerged from the data is processed in a social setting. Grounded theory uses the ‘constant comparison’ method, which involves comparing elements that are present in one data source (e.g., an interview) with elements in another source, to identify commonalities. The steps in the analysis are known as open, axial and selective coding. Throughout the analysis, you document your ideas about the data in methodological and theoretical memos. The outcome of a grounded theory study is a theory.

Descriptive generic qualitative research is defined as research designed to produce a low inference description of a phenomenon [ 12 ]. Although Sandelowski maintains that all research involves interpretation, she has also suggested that qualitative description attempts to minimize inferences made in order to remain ‘closer’ to the original data [ 12 ]. Descriptive generic qualitative research often applies content analysis. Descriptive content analysis studies are not based on a specific qualitative tradition and are varied in their methods of analysis. The analysis of the content aims to identify themes, and patterns within and among these themes. An inductive content analysis [ 11 ] involves breaking down the data into smaller units, coding and naming the units according to the content they present, and grouping the coded material based on shared concepts. They can be represented by clustering in treelike diagrams. A deductive content analysis [ 11 ] uses a theory, theoretical framework or conceptual model to analyse the data by operationalizing them in a coding matrix. An inductive content analysis might use several techniques from grounded theory, such as open and axial coding and constant comparison. However, note that your findings are merely a summary of categories, not a grounded theory.

Analysis software can support you to manage your data, for example by helping to store, annotate and retrieve texts, to locate words, phrases and segments of data, to name and label, to sort and organize, to identify data units, to prepare diagrams and to extract quotes. Still, as a researcher you would do the analytical work by looking at what is in the data, and making decisions about assigning codes, and identifying categories, concepts and patterns. The computer assisted qualitative data analysis (CAQDAS) website provides support to make informed choices between analytical software and courses: http://www.surrey.ac.uk/sociology/research/researchcentres/caqdas/support/choosing . See Box 5 for further reading on qualitative analysis.

The next and final article in this series, Part 4, will focus on trustworthiness and publishing qualitative research [ 13 ].

Acknowledgements

The authors thank the following junior researchers who have been participating for the last few years in the so-called ‘Think tank on qualitative research’ project, a collaborative project between Zuyd University of Applied Sciences and Maastricht University, for their pertinent questions: Erica Baarends, Jerome van Dongen, Jolanda Friesen-Storms, Steffy Lenzen, Ankie Hoefnagels, Barbara Piskur, Claudia van Putten-Gamel, Wilma Savelberg, Steffy Stans, and Anita Stevens. The authors are grateful to Isabel van Helmond, Joyce Molenaar and Darcy Ummels for proofreading our manuscripts and providing valuable feedback from the ‘novice perspective’.

Disclosure statement

The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.

• DOI: 10.4324/9781315675824-12
• Corpus ID: 142143306

The ethnographic interview

• Anna De Fina
• Published in The Routledge Handbook of… 30 August 2019
• Linguistics, Sociology
• The Routledge Handbook of Linguistic Ethnography

9,500 Citations

Reading and interpreting ethnography, stimulated recall interviews in ethnography, analysis of native and nonnative ethnographic interviews power relations between the researcher and the researched: an, how they see me vs. how i see them: the ethnographic self and the personal self, negotiating positionality in ethnographic investigations of workplace settings: student, consultant or confidante, the use of ethnographic interviewing to inform questionnaire construction, participant observation, ethnography, and their use in educational evaluation: a review of selected works., virtual ethnography: interactive interviewing online as method, introducing 'ethnography and self-exploration', spradley's ethnographic questioning: an invitation for healing, related papers.

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Conducting Research Interviews

• Preparation
• Conducting the Interview
• Writing the Interview (In APA styling)

What is an interview paper?

Apa format for an interview paper, example of in-text citation in an interview paper.

Important Note on Personal Interviews:

• A personal interview should NOT be included in a reference list in APA. They are not considered recoverable data (they cannot be found by a researcher). You should reference personal interviews as in-text citations instead.
• Example: (J. Doe, personal communication, December 12, 2024)

That being said, there is a general structure if you want to cite a personal interview as part of your APA works cited list:

Author, A. (Year, Month Date). Interview type.

APA format example:

Marino, B. (2024, October 18). Personal Interview.

An interview paper is a research-based essay based on information gathered in interviews with various people. While other research papers primarily cite published print sources, interview papers draw their evidence from unpublished conversations—in person, by phone or by email. The interviewees are usually individuals with expertise in the topic being discussed or participants in a study or survey. Aside from academic reports or essays, interview papers are prevalent in journalism, as spoken responses to questions form much of the basis of many newspaper or magazine articles. The nature of interview papers allows for the potential to include unique insights in your writing. Two people can interview the same person about the same subject but receive somewhat different sets of information depending on the questions they ask. Personal factors, too, can influence the outcome of an interview, as the interviewee's level of comfort and emotional condition at the time of the conversation may render them or less communicative.

An APA-formatted paper typically consists of four major sections:

• Title page: The title page informs the reader about the subject of the paper and the details of who you are and who you are writing it for.
• Abstract: Introduce the subject of your interview in-text, describing her qualifications, background and why she is suitable to answer your questions. 
• Main body: The main body comprises the content of the paper itself—an essay or a report. APA-style reports typically separate the contents by section—namely, the introduction, titled sections for each question or subject area that groups of questions fall into, and the response as a block of quoted text. Present the question you asked the interviewee when explaining her response in the text of your paper. This is important to provide the context in which the interviewee presented fact or opinion. Be clear whether the question was open-ended or close-ended. Use quotes, rather than paraphrasing, when citing specific information and facts given by the interviewee. A quote longer than 40 words should be set aside as a block quote, according to APA style.
• References: The references section is a list of the published sources used to support the points in the paper. For interview reporting where no published works exist that were referenced, no citation is necessary. Personal and research-participant interviews are unpublished, so you can omit them from the references section, but make sure to include published interviews.

When using American Psychological Association (APA) style, your interview should either be cited as personal communication or recorded in detail in your text. The APA interview writing format has specific rules for how to write an interview paper. 

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• Open access
• Published: 16 September 2024

Gaps in communication theory paradigms when conducting implementation science research: qualitative observations from interviews with administrators, implementors, and evaluators of rural health programs

• Nicole L. Johnson   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-5686-2062 1 , 2 ,
• Jennifer Van Tiem 1 , 2 ,
• Erin Balkenende 1 , 3 ,
• DeShauna Jones 1 , 4 ,
• Julia E. Friberg 1 , 2 ,
• Emily E. Chasco 1 , 4 ,
• Jane Moeckli 1 , 2 ,
• Kenda S. Steffensmeier 1 , 2 ,
• Melissa J. A. Steffen 1 , 2 ,
• Kanika Arora 5 ,
• Borsika A. Rabin 6 , 7 &
• Heather Schacht Reisinger 1 , 3 , 4  

Implementation Science volume  19 , Article number:  66 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

Metrics details

Communication is considered an inherent element of nearly every implementation strategy. Often it is seen as a means for imparting new information between stakeholders, representing a Transaction orientation to communication. From a Process orientation, communication is more than information-exchange and is acknowledged as being shaped by (and shaping) the individuals involved and their relationships with one another. As the field of Implementation Science (IS) works to strengthen theoretical integration, we encourage an interdisciplinary approach that engages communication theory to develop richer understanding of strategies and determinants of practice.

We interviewed 28 evaluators, 12 implementors, and 12 administrators from 21 Enterprise-Wide Initiatives funded by the Department of Veteran Affairs Office of Rural Health. Semi-structured interviews focused on experiences with implementation and evaluation strategies. We analyzed the interviews using thematic analysis identifying a range of IS constructs. Then we deductively classified those segments based on a Transaction or Process orientation to communication.

We organized findings using the two IS constructs most commonly discussed in interviews: Collaboration and Leadership Buy-in. The majority of segments coded as Collaboration ( n  = 34, 74%) and Leadership Buy-in ( n  = 31, 70%) discussed communication from a Transaction orientation and referred to communication as synonymous with information exchange, which emphasizes the task over the relationships between the individuals performing the tasks. Conversely, when participants discussed Collaboration and Leadership Buy-in from a Process orientation, they acknowledged both constructs as the result of long-term efforts to develop positive relationships based on trust and respect, and emphasized the time costliness of such strategies. Our findings demonstrate that participants who discussed communication from a Process orientation recognized the nuance and complexity of interpersonal interactions, particularly in the context of IS.

Conclusions

Efficient, reliable information exchange is a critical but often overemphasized element of implementation. Practitioners and researchers must recognize and incorporate the larger role of communication in IS. Two suggestions for engaging a Process orientation to communication are to: (a) use interview probes to learn how communication is enacted, and (b) use process-oriented communication theories to develop interventions and evaluation tools.

Peer Review reports

Contributions to the literature

Communication is a vital part of implementation. Yet, predominant discussions about implementation strategies are limited to a Transactional orientation. Conversely, the Process orientation to communication acknowledges the multiple moving elements in an implementation context that influences collaboration and leadership buy-in.

Exemplars of interview segments about communication engaging a Process orientation were identified to demonstrate ways interviewers can probe to gain a deeper understanding of communication as a process.

We provide examples and suggestions for qualitatively examining communication processes to better understand the impact of implementation strategies.

Several theories with a Process orientation are identified for consideration in future research and implementation planning and evaluation.

Most implementation strategies include a communication component, particularly when evidence-based interventions are introduced and promoted throughout an organization. When implementing new programming, it is common to consider communication as simply a means through which information is imparted [ 1 , 2 ]. Implementation Science (IS) researchers have an imperative to understand the role of communication as more than a means for information exchange [ 3 ]. Yet, even as a means for information exchange, Manojlovich and colleagues recognized the lack of attention on communication in implementation research [ 1 ].

Broadly, the study of communication focuses on how messages are used to generate meanings [ 4 ], and provides perspective for moving beyond an emphasis on information exchange, thus moving beyond the task dimension and recognizing the value of the relational dimension. Despite its relatively young development both academically and professionally, the communication discipline offers valuable insight to IS research [ 5 ]. There are two predominant ways to characterize communication: (1) communication as Transaction, and (2) communication as Process. When communication is viewed as a Transaction, it is discussed as a linear one-way flow of information [ 3 ]. The materiality – the element of substantive value – of communication is found in accurate, efficient information transfer, thus putting emphasis on the task dimension and channel (e.g., phone, handout) through which information is exchanged. When practitioners focus their efforts on preparing thoughtful and detailed educational sessions intended to increase program adoption, but do not allow time for interactive questions or develop opportunities for building relationships between key personnel responsible for successful adoption, then we see a reliance on the Transaction orientation to communication. When communication is conceptualized as a Process, we emphasize its constitutive nature wherein our environments – social, organizational, political, etc. – shape and are shaped through communication [ 3 ]. From a Process orientation, the transformative properties of communication emphasize its relational dimension and bring about a materiality from the intangible elements of the process (e.g., tone of voice, relational history, contextual exigency), and concepts such as psychological safety, mutual respect, and trust foreground the mechanics of information exchange. For example, someone may schedule multiple options for the same information session to ensure real-time interactivity for questions and build in opportunities for small group breakouts and post-presentation networking for relationship-building. When understanding of communication shifts to encompass more than information exchange, we begin to recognize the role of communication in building relationships and influencing long term cultural shifts, which is often the goal for implementation scientists [ 3 ]. If the Process orientation is overlooked in favor of a Transaction orientation, we may miss opportunities for identifying evidence-based communication strategies to support implementation.

The majority of subsequent work engaging Manojlovich et al.’s assertions agree on the imperative to engage a Process orientation to communication, but they make no strides in designing approaches for exploring the characteristics of communication surrounding effective implementation strategies (e.g., [ 6 , 7 , 8 ]). As the conversation initiated by Manojlovich and colleagues about the role of communication in implementation science has progressed, recognition of communication has grown, but emphasis continues to focus on formal contexts (e.g., trainings and webinars) [ 1 ]. Further, quantitative measures that assess information accuracy like the one used in Zhao and colleagues’ work overlook the importance of informal communication (e.g., rapport-building before meetings, impromptu connections) and the nuanced influence of the relational dimension that contributes to effective implementation. Bustos et al.’s (2021) analysis acknowledges both the formal and informal strategies through which communication might occur, but the communication they refer to is discussed from a Transaction orientation (i.e., “how information… was communicated to program staff” (p. 10)) [ 9 ].

For this study, we draw on interviews with employees of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) who evaluated, implemented, and administered interventions focused on improving the health and well-being of rural Veterans or the clinical staff who serve them. These interviews were exploratory and wide-ranging; for the purposes of this manuscript, we treat the interviews as akin to direct observations of intervention stakeholders discussing their real-world experiences operationalizing implementation strategies. Instead of focusing on what we could learn from the communication described in the interviews, we directed our attention to what lessons could be missing because of the way participants discussed communication. In this manuscript, we provide examples of how Transaction and Process orientations to communication appear in the data when individuals described their experiences, as well as their relationships that supported IS strategies and facilitated intervention goals. We also suggest interview strategies to elicit detail about communication from a Process orientation to support ongoing learning of these informal communication processes. Though these interviews were not focused on communication, we use data from the interviews to argue that noticing communication helps us discover how to do implementation science better. Specifically, a Process orientation emphasizes the space between IS strategies and outcomes, and advances understanding of implementation challenges and solutions.

Study setting and context

The VA’s Office of Rural Health (ORH) supports the creation of Enterprise-Wide Initiatives (EWIs) to address issues facing rural Veterans from mental health and primary care access to training and education of VA staff who serve rural Veterans. As a part of the funding cycle, EWI teams must conduct annual evaluations. The Center for the Evaluation of Enterprise-Wide Initiatives (CEEWI) was created through a 2019 partnership between ORH and the VA’s Quality Enhancement Research Initiative to support EWI evaluation and disseminate best practices. The CEEWI team, consisting of implementation science experts and qualitative data analysts, reviews the annual reports and provides feedback to EWI teams on reporting standards.

Data collection

As part of the initial CEEWI project, EWI evaluators, implementors, and administrators were interviewed about effectiveness of IS strategies they used and why, in part, to assist the CEEWI team in understanding key aspects of EWI implementation and evaluation. The interview guide included questions about the participant’s role on the EWI, the core components of the EWI, implementation strategies and their impact on desired outcomes, outcome measures used for evaluation, and the evaluation process. CEEWI team members and EWI leadership identified the evaluators, implementors, and administrators to recruit for the study. While recruitment sought a purposive sample of roles from each EWI, ultimately the sample was a convenience sample based on availability and willingness to participate during the first nine months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Additional details about recruitment and data collection can be found in an earlier manuscript from this larger project [ 10 ]. We conducted 43 semi-structured interviews, which averaged 51 min (range 20–77 min), from April – December 2020 with evaluators, implementors, and administrators from 21 EWIs. While most interviews were conducted one-on-one, 8 were group interviews ranging from 2 to 4 participants [ 10 ]. This study uses these interviews as an example on how communication is described when discussing implementation strategies.

Data analysis

Audio-recordings were transcribed, reviewed for accuracy, and uploaded into MAXQDA, a qualitative data management software [ 11 ]. Two doctorally trained qualitative analysts (NJ & JVT) leveraged their previous IS knowledge and conducted primary-cycle inductive coding to identify IS constructs and trends in the data [ 12 ]. The analysts initially coded all transcripts together in real-time and resolved discrepancies immediately. During this first round of coding, several IS constructs were identified in participants’ discussion of their implementation strategies, including Staff Buy-in, Tailoring, Rapport, Fidelity, and Mentorship. Collaboration and Leadership Buy-in emerged as the two most discussed IS constructs among participants. For secondary-cycle deductive coding to interpret how communication was conceptualized in discussions of Collaboration and Leadership Buy-in, the lead author, a Health Communication scholar, used an iterative process to develop a codebook to identify the language representing a Process or Transaction orientation for each construct (i.e., Collaboration and Leadership Buy-in) [ 3 , 12 ]. The analysis focused on the how communication was discussed, not about the form of communication that took place.

Collaboration, a term often characterizing various levels of formal and informal partnerships between individuals, departments or organizations, is defined as a mutually beneficial and well-defined relationship between two or more parties to achieve common goals [ 13 ]. An example of discussing Collaboration from a Transaction orientation to communication would be using the term Collaboration to describe monthly meetings where the parties update one another about the status of their tasks and goals. From a Process orientation, Collaboration would be discussed in relational terms, describing the trust and rapport the team members have among one another.

Leadership Buy-in represents the role of support from individuals in leadership positions for a program’s adoption and sustainability, particularly when competing clinical and administrative demands are at play [ 7 ]. An example of discussing Leadership Buy-in using a Transaction orientation to communication would be a description of strategies for adoption that only focused on leadership education. However, someone who engaged a Process orientation to communication might: (1) discuss tailored persuasive strategies for demonstrating value to specific decision-makers, or (2) acknowledge the necessity for long-term relationships with individuals in leadership roles for sustainment.

We conducted 43 interviews with 28 evaluators, 12 implementors, and 12 administrators. We coded a total of 90 segments as Collaboration ( n  = 46) and Leadership Buy-in ( n  = 44) across all the interviews. Most segments coded as Collaboration ( n  = 34, 74%) and Leadership Buy-in ( n  = 31, 70%) discussed communication from a Transaction orientation. The following results present examples of the discussion of Collaboration and Leadership Buy-in from the Transaction and Process orientations to communication.

Transaction orientation to communication

When communication is treated as a transaction, it is discussed as a one-way flow of information traveling from one party to another during a discrete moment in time [ 3 ]. The materiality of communication is reduced to accurate, efficient information transfer, thus putting emphasis on the channel (e.g., Teams meeting, email) through which information is exchanged and the task dimension of the interaction.

Collaboration as transaction

Participants sometimes discussed Collaboration in a way that missed its nuance and treated communication as merely a means for transferring information that produced Collaboration. For example, one participant implied that communication, regardless of quality, is inherently good, thus the more there is, the better. They identified “communication across the team level” as an important strategy having the most impact on desired outcomes. “The more communication there is, the more people are able (…) to divide up [responsibilities].” (1A) In this instance, communication is synonymous with information exchange. While we do not have enough information to assess the quality of communication that Participant 1A is referring to, the fact they only discussed the parties involved and quantity of communication is an example of the Transaction orientation to communication.

In another example, a participant explained what they felt did not work as well in their evaluation process. “We have excellent communication with some, but not all members of the [EWI] (…) I’m not sure they’re always on the same page with each other, and then depending on who we’re having a meeting with, we might hear one thing but then that’s not what someone else was going to do (…) that’s one of the pieces that I think is hard for us.” (2A) Again, we see the Transaction orientation, and the barometer for effective communication is accuracy. The participant went on to discuss ways to improve this lack of alignment among team members, suggesting that “even if it’s just being invited to join calls (…) [for us] to answer questions about the [evaluation] data” would improve teamwork. (2A) This passage highlights an important aspect of communication – being present for an interaction and having the opportunity to answer questions enables information exchange.

One participant described the communication that occurred during a monthly videoconference:

The learning collaborative is focused on bringing people [together] to share their experiences and how various facilitators identify ways to shape their program, but also the way that our national team gives feedback about the data (…) One call a month is right after a report (…) they do a data review on the call where they go over the numbers with the entire learning collaborative, everyone in the program, giving them feedback from a national perspective and always reminding people of the milestones of the metrics that they’ve agreed to under the ORH grant. (3A)

Here, we see another example of a participant discussing communication in terms of information exchange.

Leadership buy-in as transaction

Participants also discussed Leadership Buy-in from a Transaction orientation. In the following passage, participant 4A described the benefits of the EWI leadership team visiting sites in-person:

They would do a site visit to all the hubs (…) and meet with the local leadership team and that’s where they confirmed if there were any issues that they might have. They would do like a 2–3 day site visit (…) so it helped create that structure where people knew exactly who to report to and how these programs were established and plenty of opportunities to address any concerns or any issues they might have.

There are substantial implications for local Leadership Buy-in through in-person visits, yet the only aspect of communication discussed here is information exchange and clarifying the information flow hierarchy (i.e., who to report to).

Participant 5A described their program’s efforts to obtain Leadership Buy-in:

Simple outreach and education, that was really the only things that we could do, and then as they continued, training kind of showed its usefulness. That had an impact on leadership buy-in.

Here, buy-in is attributed to education, which may account for some or even most of buy-in, but it does not recognize the relational dimension of communication.

For another EWI, leadership turnover at the facility presented a significant barrier to program sustainment, because Leadership Buy-in was perpetually reset, which exacerbated a “conflict between implementation and sustainment strategies” when the decision-maker for sustainment funding was not the same person to “sign off on it originally” (9A). Given the EWI provided seed-funding for specialty staff to implement the program, the expectation was that the facility would eventually incur the expense for sustainment, but the plan for funds was not made explicit at the time of application for the seed-funding. Participant 9A went on to explain how their program responded to the unforeseen challenge obtaining sustainment funding from sites:

Our clinical director worked really hard with the first cohort of sites prior to their funding ending to try to come up with strategies to pitch the program to leadership (…) Most sites had challenges with changing leadership priorities.

In response, the interviewer clarified their sources for funding, then changed topics: “Interviewer: Ok, alright. How about strategies that were intended to optimize the effectiveness outcomes for your EWI?” In this example, the interviewer seems to be approaching the participant’s description of Leadership Buy-in from a Transactional orientation. A Process-oriented approach that asked about the nature and details of pitching the EWI to leadership may have provided more information about implementation strategy.

Process orientation to communication

From the process perspective, no single interaction serves as the cause or proof of effective Collaboration. Rather, the Process orientation recognizes the value of communication lies in the cumulative outcomes of consistent, often routine, interactions.

Collaboration as process

Collaborations require shared responsibility, mutual authority, accountability, and sharing of resources and rewards for success [ 13 ]. Collaboration in implementation has focused on strategies to enhance partners’ ability to work together to achieve mutual benefits. We identified examples from participants discussing Collaboration with a Process orientation to communication. From these examples we see that Collaboration is seen as a product of long-term efforts to develop positive relationships and establish trust and autonomy to make one’s own decisions. Many participants recognized the uniqueness and value in reaching the point of Collaboration. For example, Participant 10A shared, “The partnerships, it’s like a very special kind of relationship–, where we have to trust them, we rely on each other, but we also need to be able to make independent decisions.” Participant 6A also recognized the importance of relationships, “I would say they’re collegial but they’re not fully collaborative (…) when they’re really more deeply integrated and their role is understood and recognized (…) they are more collaborative members.”

One participant on a different EWI echoed this sentiment that individuals’ intent and motivations for the work should extend beyond the assignment to be considered Collaboration, “It’s not just trying to check off a box (…) there truly is a passion behind it, on all of our parts, and that has been wonderful.” (7B) Recognizing others’ intent for their work allows one to acknowledge how interpersonal communication is influenced by more than information exchange.

In the following exemplars, we can see how interviewers were able to elicit detail about the interactions surrounding the implementation strategies they were discussing.

Exemplar for Probing Collaboration . In Table  1 , we share an exemplar for engaging the Process orientation to communication, which led to greater explication of the role of communication in the implementation process.

Through this example, we see a more nuanced treatment of communication as a process after the interviewer probed twice to understand the participant’s use of “facilitation” as an implementation strategy. We gained description of the collaborative atmosphere within a team and how individuals’ psychological safety is manifested through authentic interactions.

Leadership buy-in as process

It takes more than information-exchange to garner support (e.g., financial, staff) for facilitation and sustainment. One participant acknowledged the web of influence that contributes to Leadership Buy-in and effective implementation:

We reached out to all the rural sites their leadership… sort of advertising the program, so we would schedule a conference call with a director, chief of staff, emergency room chief, to sort of discuss the program (…) then we would follow up with an actual 1-day on-site visit (…) where we meet with again, leadership, but we also meet with the [staff from several departments] (…) It’s an all-day visit to further introduce our program, to the team on site, as well as learn more about their program, and how [our EWI] might incorporate itself, and what challenges (…) we might face in implementation. (2B)

Here, we see an acknowledgement of reciprocal relationship-building to learn about priorities and needs.

Several participants discussed how time costly it is to gain Leadership Buy-in to ease the burden of change on an organization and staff, particularly for a nationwide program. One participant reflected:

Ten years ago, it was a [regional] project, so the main kind of instruction came from a [regional] level down, you know. The site visit was just a medical director and the nurse manager telling you that, ‘Hey, this is what’s going to happen,’ and it happened. Now (…) it’s like a year-long process to get people familiarized (…) go live went from one day to four days long. (11B)

Despite its value, garnering Leadership Buy-in has its challenges. Sometimes identifying the right individuals who represent the relevant leadership roles is not clear cut.

Once we have identified that our program can go to that site, we ask the local (…) program manager to identify who (…) key local leaders are (…) It’s important to have the managers of those sites involved in this process from the beginning (…) We (…) set up an initial meeting (…) where we review the implementation process plan with everybody on that call, and answer questions about what we and [specialty care] services will provide as part of the training opportunity and clearly delineate what we need the site or the facility to commit to provide (…) we answer questions, alleviate concerns, things like that. (7B)

Participant 7B went on to describe the challenge of identifying the right leadership representative:

The only barrier that we’ve encountered is some challenges in getting the right leadership on the call to review this in real time and answer questions (…) whether it is due to leadership turnover at the site, even from the time that we set up the call to the time that we actually do the call, there have been some change-overs, and that has been a challenge.

Again, we see this participant engaging a strong Process orientation to communication as they emphasize the importance of relationship-building for Leadership Buy-in.

Exemplar for Probing Leadership Buy-in . In the following example, the interviewer engaged the Process orientation to communication with probes that led to greater explication of the role of communication in developing Leadership Buy-in (Table  2 ).

Results illustrate ways administrators, implementors, and evaluators characterized communication related to Collaboration and Leadership Buy-in. From the Transaction orientation, we saw that the term communication was used synonymously for information exchange. The problem of implementation lies beyond efficient and reliable information transfer, and instead centers on cooperative sensemaking and learning within and among teams situated in an organization that is influenced by its social, geographic, and political environments [ 2 , 14 , 15 ]. Communication necessary for effective implementation is based on improvisation and reciprocity and constitute relationships over time [ 2 , 15 ]. Our data indicate these processes are occurring in implementation, but we may not always be paying close enough attention to their occurrence. If most discussions about communication engage a Transaction orientation, then practitioners and evaluators will never have the insight necessary to maximize the impact of their communication efforts.

Participants often discussed Leadership Buy-in more as an outcome of education, and less as a byproduct of improvisational relationship-building, which demonstrates the predominant Transaction orientation to communication privileging rehearsed, often unidirectional, and mostly controlled interactions. Formal information exchange is undoubtedly an important element of effective implementation; the Transaction orientation aligns well with the goals of dissemination and implementation as a field [ 15 ]. However, our data point to the importance of thinking about communication from a Process orientation for improving effectiveness of implementation strategies—and show how members of implementation and evaluation teams too often focus on the transaction elements of communication. Previous work that engages the Transaction orientation and points to the benefits of reliable information exchange has paved the way for more exploratory naturalistic methods for studying IS from a Process orientation to communication [ 3 , 14 , 15 , 16 ]. As noted in our findings, the Transaction orientation overlooks the intricacies of processes that occur among individuals to build trust, cultivate buy-in, and influence team decision-making, all of which are markers of successful implementation.

Suggestions for engaging process orientation to communication

Given the purpose of IS is to promote the adoption of research and evidence-based practices, it would behoove implementation scientists to tap into the richness of interdisciplinary theorizing and engage a Process orientation to communication [ 17 ]. As thinking about communication has evolved from a Transaction orientation, scholars recognized the symbolic process that humans use to create meaning through informal, improvised interactions over a period of time [ 2 ]. Recent analysis of implementation strategies for behavioral health interventions called for explicit attention to the supportive role communication may play in most, if not all, strategies [ 15 ]. The Process orientation to communication enriches theorizing and elevates scholars’ and practitioners’ understanding of how to leverage implementation strategies to be meaningfully responsive to the relationships among the interested parties [ 18 ]. However, we warn against over-characterizing communication into a ‘nebulous, global process’ [ 2 , 19 ]. For gaining insight on communication processes, we suggest two strategies: 1) interviewers focused on understanding implementation strategies could probe their interviewees to learn more about how communication is enacted; and 2) IS practitioners could utilize process-oriented communication theories in developing interventions and evaluation tools (e.g., interview guides).

The supplementary material accompanying this article includes excerpts from our interview data as examples demonstrating hypothetical ways interviewers can elicit more nuanced understanding of communication processes (see Tables S1 and S2).

Our analysis identified examples of missed opportunities for interviewers to probe about communication from a Process orientation recognizing the relational dimension of communication. Interview probes like those recommended in Tables S1 and S2 could lead to valuable understanding of the processes of communication, allowing exploration of the relational dimension of communication and implementation, and insight to individuals’ attitudes and sensemaking about those experiences. This may contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the importance of communication in implementation strategies beyond a transactional information exchange. We also provided examples highlighting the constitutive role communication plays in relationship-building. Our goal is to help attune IS researchers to the value of the processes of communication as a critical component of many implementation strategies.

Probing for communication processes in interviews

Challenges to implementing any new program may be significantly varied and widespread. No single barrier serves as an intervention’s fatal flaw, but rather, implementation is affected by numerous factors shaped through informal interactions [ 17 , 20 ]. A recent study that aimed to identify which implementation strategies should be most closely considered for which determinants of practice reported one of its limitations was the heterogeneity of responses [ 21 ]. This variation in responses among administrators, implementors, and evaluators points to the value of a more nuanced understanding of the unique, context-dependent, and relationally based communication processes undergirding implementation strategies [ 21 ]. Further, in their ethnographic study on hand hygiene programs, Goedken and colleagues poignantly emphasized the importance of understanding how implementation strategies are used and defined in real-world settings for understanding determinants of practice [ 22 ]. By looking below the surface of implementation strategies and focusing on the interactions surrounding those strategies, we may begin to recognize the determinants of practices, the mechanisms for change, more precisely. Discussing communication from a Process orientation allows us to access what is happening below the surface that cannot be observed as an outsider. With greater insight on communication processes occurring throughout implementation, the field of IS would be poised to provide meaningful guidance for combining implementation strategies [ 22 ]. In a similar vein, IS researchers should consider the temporality of IS strategies and how this underscores the role of communication. The role of Leadership Buy-in at all stages of development and implementation on effectiveness cannot be overstated [ 23 ]. Albright suggests shifting away from the predominant focus of research on the active implementation period to explore activities occurring during design and preparation [ 15 ].

Most implementation strategies have a communication component representing the channel for education and promotion (e.g., workshops, webinars, brochures) [ 15 ]. Our proposed interview strategies interrogate communication in a way that recognizes the relational dimensions of interpersonal interactions, providing insight about what truly results in effective implementation. By understanding communication from a Process orientation, we may enrich our understanding of implementation strategies [ 24 ].

Utilize process-oriented theories

Theories that engage a Transaction orientation to communication often ascribe to the traditional knowledge-intention-behavior paradigm that proposes a stable, linear positive relationship between knowledge and behavior change (e.g., Theory of Reasoned Action, a predictive theory suggesting a strong relationship among individuals’ attitudes about a behavior, their intention, and their behavior [ 25 ]) and tends to overlook the nuance of communication processes. However, humans are more complicated and inconsistent than these theories acknowledge. The Process orientation to communication allows for more realistic approaches that privilege the constitutive nature of communication to co-create meaning socially. In a recent scoping review of 158 studies in implementation research on maternity care, effective communication was noted as a key factor for promoting change across the body of work, but the majority of research was atheoretical and ambiguous in operationalization of communication [ 26 ].

Health communication scholars are trained to be sensitive to the cooperative nature of establishing shared meaning, multiple interpretations of behaviors, and the challenges of coordinating interactions when studying implementation strategies. Several theories, including two that pay special attention to how meaning is created socially, Coordinated Management of Meaning (CMM) [ 27 ] and Structuration Theory [ 28 ], could highlight perspectives that recognize communication as a complex process and translate well to practice. CMM is a constructivist theory that provides a practical heuristic for interpreting interpersonal communication events that comprise larger conversations. As such, CMM informs practitioners’ decision-making by illuminating patterns of interactions to find ways of talking that could result in desired outcomes [ 29 ]. Structuration Theory, coined by sociologist Anthony Giddens in the late 1970s, describes the dynamic relationship between individuals and their environment that constrains and enables social practices [ 28 ]. Through its critical lens, Structuration Theory highlights the (lack of) agency individuals perceive for themselves and others, and the rules and resources perpetuated through social interactions. Lastly, Diffusion of Innovations, a framework well-entrenched in IS research and practice, also engages a process paradigm [ 30 , 31 ]. There is ample opportunity and an imperative to employ a Process orientation to better understand communication in implementation science.

Limitations

This study has multiple limitations. We did not collection demographic data to describe our participants beyond the role they held on their EWI teams. The data represents a convenience sample of administrators, implementors, and evaluators working on EWIs funded at the time of data collection, which resulted in variability in representation across EWIs and staff roles. Further, because of the diversity of foci, designs, and timelines of EWIs, we cannot draw conclusions about effectiveness of strategies discussed in this paper. Lastly, the interviews were not conducted to assess communication explicitly. Despite these limitations, our analysis facilitates concrete suggestions for improving understanding of the role of communication in implementation.

Future directions for research

Research analyzing the role of communication from a Process orientation would enrich the field of IS. Similar to Fishman et al.’s work comparing measurement and operationalization of attitude among IS studies and those grounded in psychology, our work emphasizes the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration [ 32 ]. The interviewees and interviewers in our study focused predominantly on a Transaction orientation to communication; more studies are needed that focus on this level of distinction, particularly how to adopt a Process orientation to communication for implementation strategy specification. There is great potential for a body of knowledge about communication processes that has been systematically developed to inform IS strategies supporting a range of aspects crucial to effectiveness including Leadership Buy-in and Collaboration. Future research may do well to conduct direct observation to characterize communication processes related to implementation strategies from a rich Process orientation. Dissemination Science, as one facet of Dissemination and Implementation Science, is firmly rooted in the mechanics of communication and would greatly benefit from engaging the Process orientation. A recent scoping review demonstrated that the field of Dissemination Science lacks insight to communication from the Process orientation; in their review of dissemination determinants, the Transaction orientation persists in focusing on imparting information from one party to the next [ 33 ].

This study described instances of two broadly accepted orientations to communication engaged by implementation scientists. The findings demonstrate opportunities – and strategies – for engaging in the Process orientation of communication to gain greater insight into the role communication plays in implementation outcomes. We hope this work inspires dialogue, new interdisciplinary collaboration, and innovative methods to highlight the utility of engaging the Process orientation to communication to undergird the value of communication theory to implementation science for improving health services. When communication is understood as a process, practitioners will be better able to prepare for the unpredictability and uniqueness of the relational dimensions of communication.

Availability of data and materials

The datasets presented in this article are not readily available in accordance with federal requirements and standards and guidelines for the protection of participants’ privacy and to maintain confidentiality. Requests to access the datasets should be directed to Dr. Heather Reisinger ([email protected]).

Abbreviations

Center for the Evaluation of Enterprise-Wide Initiatives

Coordinated Management of Meaning

Enterprise-Wide Initiative

Implementation Science

Office of Rural Health

Department of Veterans Affairs

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the interview participants who participated in this study for their time and insights. We would also like to acknowledge Office of Rural Health (ORH) program analysts Dr. Kelly Lora Lewis, Karyn Johnstone, Nicole Sanchez, Maura Timm, Anthony Achampong, Richard Huang, and Janice Garland for their assistance, as well as Dr. Sheila Robinson, former Deputy Director of ORH, Dr. Peter Kaboli, Executive Director of ORH, and Dr. Thomas Klobucar, former Executive Director of ORH, for their support. The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position or policy of the Department of Veterans Affairs or the United States government.

VA Office of Rural Health and QUERI Project #: PEC 19–456.

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Center for Access and Delivery Research and Evaluation, Iowa City VA Healthcare System, Iowa City, IA, USA

Nicole L. Johnson, Jennifer Van Tiem, Erin Balkenende, DeShauna Jones, Julia E. Friberg, Emily E. Chasco, Jane Moeckli, Kenda S. Steffensmeier, Melissa J. A. Steffen & Heather Schacht Reisinger

Veterans Rural Health Resource Center-Iowa City (VRHRC-Iowa City), VA Office of Rural Health, Iowa City, IA, USA

Nicole L. Johnson, Jennifer Van Tiem, Julia E. Friberg, Jane Moeckli, Kenda S. Steffensmeier & Melissa J. A. Steffen

Division of General Internal Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine, Carver College of Medicine, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA

Erin Balkenende & Heather Schacht Reisinger

Institute for Clinical and Translational Science, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA

DeShauna Jones, Emily E. Chasco & Heather Schacht Reisinger

Department of Health Management and Policy, College of Public Health, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA

Kanika Arora

Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, San Diego, USA

Borsika A. Rabin

UC San Diego ACTRI Dissemination and Implementation Science Center, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, San Diego, USA

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Contributions

HSR, EC, JVT, NJ, EB, DJ, and JF are responsible for the concept for this manuscript. NJ drafted the initial manuscript and HSR, JVT, EC, EB, DJ, KSS, and JF contributed substantially in the form of manuscript structure and revisions. HSR developed the proposal for this project and obtained funding, with input from JVT, EB, and JM. HSR, JVT, EB, JM, and MS conducted interviews. KA and BR advised on all aspects of the project including development of the standardized evaluation reporting template and manuscript revisions.

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Correspondence to Nicole L. Johnson .

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HSR is an associate editor of Implementation Science . All decisions on this paper were made by another editor. The authors declare that they have no other competing interests.

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Johnson, N.L., Van Tiem, J., Balkenende, E. et al. Gaps in communication theory paradigms when conducting implementation science research: qualitative observations from interviews with administrators, implementors, and evaluators of rural health programs. Implementation Sci 19 , 66 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13012-024-01395-3

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Received : 07 May 2024

Accepted : 03 September 2024

Published : 16 September 2024

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1186/s13012-024-01395-3

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