« Home

Home » Sociology » Bryman: Social Research Methods: 3e » Student resources » Web links » Chapter 18

Bryman: Social Research Methods: 3e

Chapter 18

http://www.public.asu.edu/~kroel/www500/Interview%20Fri.pdf
A very pleasant slide show is available in this link, covering all aspects of qualitative interviewing in an easy to assimilate format. The presentation was created by Dapzury Valenzuela and Pallavi Shrivastava, as an assignment for their course in research methods, and concludes with a select bibliography. Michael Kroelinger, of the College of Architecture and Environmental Design at Arizona State University, was responsible for the course (and for making it and others) available as online resources.

http://www.leeds.ac.uk/educol/documents/000001172.htm
Here is an example of a study that used qualitative interviews to explore the experiences of Hong Kong Chinese students at an independent school in the UK. The author, Rita Y. S. Berry, provides an insightful account of the techniques of questioning and building rapport that she used to obtain rich, detailed and meaningful data about these young people's experiences. This is a useful resource to study if you want to see how methodological principles translate into practice!

http://www.socresonline.org.uk/2/1/4.html
This is an extremely interesting article that provides a new angle on the debate about qualitative interviewing as a 'feminist method'. The author, Nirmal Puwar, conducted semi-structured interviews with thirty-five women MPs in the UK, and here she discusses the extent to which it is possible to reconcile the egalitarian, sisterly model of feminist interviewing with the power dimensions involved in interviewing 'elite' social groups. This is both an insightful scholarly paper and a highly entertaining account, so it is well worth a read!

http://www.socresonline.org.uk/2/4/question.html
Here is an example of the kind of schedule or guide you might use for a semi-structured interview. It was used in Terje Gronning's research into large corporations in Japan, and shows how even qualitative, open questions can be arranged into a logical order and structure; this has the advantage of making it easier for the researcher to compare the answers given by different interviewees about the same topics.  The main article makes interesting reading and can be found in volume 2, issue 4 (1997) of Sociological Research Online.

http://www.oralhistory.org.uk
For those who are interested in this particular form of qualitative interview, the Oral History Journal is available to study online. This major journal is published twice a year by the UK Oral History Society, and you can browse through the abstracts of current and past editions from this page.