Ethnographic Interviews and Writing Research: A Critical Examination of the Methodology (Chin)

We may not be able to see how interviewing is problematic because there is still a tendency to read interview data as true reflections of people's thoughts and practices. (248)

There are two types of interviews typically used in social scientific research: structured and semistructured or unstructured interviews.

• Structured Interviews: used most often in survey research, may involve f2f interaction or communication that occurs at a distance. The questions are fully formulated in advance and interviewers are trained to follow the exact wording and sequencing of the questions.
• Semistructured/Unstructured Interviews: sometimes called open-ended or nondirective may be guided by a set of questions developed in advance, but topics discussed are generally negotiated between the interviewer and interviewee.
• Discourse/Text-based Interview: for an example, see Doheny-Farina, 1989. (270)

Analyzing interview data is more akin to the interpretation required in analyzing a literary text; we imbue statements with a special significance, determined in large part by the particular theoretical frame we impose upon our projects. (252)

...the common thread in ethnographic interviews is that the questions asked reflect the researcher's growing understanding of how the culture under study is organized and how people of that culture make sense of their experiences (253-54)