Online Interviewing
Yesterday I read a fantastic paper presented by Nicole Shepherd at the AQR conference in 2003. She discusses her experience of online interviewing as part of her PhD research.
Shepherd interviewed participants face to face, via telephone, via email and through private chat rooms. She allowed participants to choose their preferred interview mode.
Online interviews all took far longer than other interviews.
Online communication allows participants a feeling of “control over their self-presentation” (p. 10). Physical characteristics do not influence the communication.
It is difficult for the researcher to remember all the details of the various participants because he or she doesn’t see them physically. This means that large amounts of text must be reread over and over again in order to place participants.
E-mail:
- useful in obtaining “rich” responses
- sending 1-2 questions at a time stimulates fuller answers
- more “intimate feeling” (p. 9)
- “Most of the participants I interviewed via e-mail give rich and full answers to my questions, equivalent to, and in some cases more in-depth than voice-based interviews” (p. 10)
- Interview process which is spread over a longer period allows the researcher to see more of the participant’s life.
- people were willing to share private thoughts and stories “It seemed as though communicating via e-mail lent itself to personal disclosure” (p. 10).
- time to reflect and compose an answer.
- at times it is hard to identify the mental state of the writer
- sometimes the researcher can miss the emotions going on at the time of writing.
Chat room:
- graphic tools help the writer convey emotions as in speech
- technical problems hinder the drawing out of narratives
- “slow and frustrating” (p. 7)
- Reader must wait for the writer to press “send” before they can begin reading
- overlapping of responses
- It is hard to know what to make of the waiting period between responses .
- Text boxes are limited in their content – narratives must be broken up and sent in pieces
- Need to type quickly
Issues to consider:
- “The digital divide” – issues of access and also the fact that not everyone can communicate efficiently and easily with ICT
- “Communicating online does enhance the ability of participants to lie about their embodied identities” (p. 14).
Shepherd, N. (2003). Interviewing online: Qualitative research in the network(ed) society. Proceedings of the Association of Qualitative research Conference, Sydney, Australia, July 17-19, 2003. Retrieved January 13, 2008, from http://eprint.uq.edu.au/archive/00001436/01/ns_qrc_03.pdf
