the information school of the university of washington interviews: analyzing interviews/practicing...

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The Information School of the University of Washington Interviews: Analyzing interviews/practicing interviewing

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Interviews:

Analyzing interviews/practicing

interviewing

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Open-ended Questions—

The In-Person Interview• Provides face-to-face social interaction

between the interviewer and the respondent.

• Helps us see things from the respondent's point of view

• The best way to find out the respondent’s perceptions

Examples of interviews in which you took part?

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Types of Interviews• Informal conversation: Spontaneous

generation of questions• General interview guide: The interview is

guided by a checklist of issues to be addressed

• Standardized open-ended interview: The interview follows a list of questions, all are worded the same way for all participants (Interview Schedule)

Each team decides which type to employ

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Interview—Class Workout

Think about your team project and find one good reason for conducting an in-person

interview

Write down this reason in one phrase (2 min.)

Turn to your neighbor and find out if she or he agrees with you ( 3 min.)

Present your reason to class

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Pitfalls in Conducting an Interview

• Questions are not truly open-ended: Let respondents talk in their language as much as possible

• No dichotomous questions: No questions that require “yes” or “no”

• Singular questions: One question = one idea

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Pitfalls in Conducting an Interview

• Clear questions: Making sure the respondent understands the questions right away

• Neutral questions: The interviewer is completely neutral, no matter what the respondent says

• Rapport: Ability to convey empathy and understanding without judgment

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Interview Pitfalls—Class Workout

Identify at least one problem with each of the eight questions on the list

In your deliberations, think about difficulties respondents might have in:

• answering a question• answering it truthfully

Time: 5 minutes

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Conducting an Interview the Right Way—A Class Workout

Now that you know the problems with each question, fix each one of them to overcome the problems we have

identified

Team size: Work together with your neighbor

Time: 10 minutes

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Conducting an Interview the Right Way—

an Individual WorkoutReview the questions you wrote for the questionnaire and the interview

• Identify the problems they have• Fix the problem and write them the

right way

Time: 5 minutes

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Stages in the Interview Process

• Introduction

• Questions: Warm-up and general question

• Questions: Critical event

• Question: General patterns

• Wrap-up

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Introduction

• Introduce yourself and explain:– The purpose of your project – The purpose of the interview– How long the interview will take– What type of questions you will ask– Who will see the data you collect– How will the data be presented

• Ask if the person has any questions

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Warm-up questions

• Questions that are easy to answer and that don’t require much reflection

• Are usually general, factual and background questions

• Examples:– How long have you been interested in … ?– How often do you do something about … ?– Did you get any training is using …?– With whom do you …?

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Critical Event• Ask the participant to describe a recent event

when they were involved in the information behavior in which you are interested

• Make sure that they tell you the whole story (remember Assignment #1). For example:– When they initiated– What were they doing at that time– Why they did it at that time– What was their goal– What they did, step by step– Why they stopped– Did they achieve their goal

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General Patterns

• Based on the critical event, you ask the participant questions to find out how “typical” the event was.

• Examples of questions:– How often do you have such situations?– What do you do in other situations?– What is your favorite way to go about

solving such a situation?– Do you normally solve the problem this

way?

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Wrap-up

• Give the participant another opportunity to express thoughts and ideas:

“Is there anything more you’d like to add?”

• Thank the participant

• Explain that you know how busy the person is and that you appreciate the time she or he took to talk to you.

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Analyzing Interviews

Steps in analyzing interviews:

1. Tape the interviews2. Transcribe them 3. Read the transcript and find statements

that indicate a certain information behavior

4. Create a general description of the information behavior of the interviewed participant

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Taping the Interview

Practical tips:• Use a relatively small tape recorder• Make sure the tape recorder is not the

center of attention• Use a tape recorder of good quality• Use tapes of 90 minutes• Use a microphone• Practice using the tape recorder so you

have no surprises during the interview

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InterviewsPractical tips:• Transcribe word for word, no summaries

or shortcuts• You may eliminate expressions that have

no particular meaning. For example: you saying “OK” after every sentence

• Add in parentheses comments that might be important. For example: (pointing to the wall)

• Leave wide margins to write comments

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Reading the Transcript

• Read each sentence and note on the margins what information behavior it indicates

• If a paragraph, or another part of the text, indicates a special attribute, write it down as well

• Write down your reflections and thoughts about the information behavior of the participant

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Reading the Transcript—

Class Workout

Read the text of the hypothetical transcript and analyze it

Time: 5 minutes

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The Transcript—I My sister wants to buy a Camellia tree and she

asked me to find some information about it. And frankly speaking, I don’t know much about

plants, apart from the sources in general. I think the only sources I know about gardening

and plants, is the Sunset book, which is sort of the Bible of the gardeners, especially on the West Coast.

And I don’t know much about the information that’s available on the Web.

I will just go and do a search in one of the search engines, on camellia, and see what I can find from there.

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The Transcript—II Since I know, I usually like Alta Vista, I will go

straight there. I put + [“plus”] camellia because that guarantees

that a term is included in the document in Alta Vista. And I will add botany and horticulture and gardening and see what will come out.

Okay we’ve got here some lists [looking at the results], 4-H, horticulture, contest, camellia.

4-H, I would imagine this refers to the youth clubs, probably something to do with a horticulture contest for youth clubs, with camellias.

A standard periodical directory, just browsing now to see... [scanning results] what do we have here. And looking at the descriptions…

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The Transcript—IIIActually, I usually like to browse before opening one of the links. I prefer to do that, rather, so I will check one or two pages (of results), and then decide what I want to do next. [scanning results] So I’m looking again at the titles, and [scanning results] I’m looking at the content descriptions that are available.

And I will go on to the next page to see the next ten references from Alta Vista. [scanning results]

I think I will ... well, there’s a good one. Camellias. I’ll have a quick look at that one, even though I can share the thought with you that just before spotting this particular one I was going to reformulate the search.

But since I spotted this one, I’m going to have a quick look at that, since it’s about camellias only. And see what it says.

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The Transcript—IV

[Reading text] This gives an explanation about camellias in Virginia ... describes ... here’s some information about the types of camellias that will grow.

Again concentrated only on camellias in the climate zones where Virginia is.

So since we are not in the same climate zone, I go back, and reformulate the search.

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General Description of HIB

How would you describe the HIB of the person who was looking for

Camellias?