Senior Sequence

Interviews

Interview Presentation (interviews ppt)

Tips on Conducting Interviews: http://courses.cit.cornell.edu/practicestories/CP_I.htm
by John Forester (Professor, Department of City and Regional Planning) and colleagues at Cornell University

Using Interview data in your proposal or thesis.

Here is an example (from Charlene Bredder, TA from several years ago) of how to use your interviews or field notes.

Start writing memos on themes you see or trends or ideas you have. Once you have a usable stock of trends or ideas you can supplement them (put meat on their conceptual bones) with the data or evidence you’ve collected. So for example, Jane Smith is Chief Environmental Officer and you interviewed her on 2.3.06. Here is an example of how you can use her interview:

Sample SRP text

Several officials mentioned the political climate of SD influences the city’s ability to meet a certain target.  Jane Smith, CEO ... stated “It has been really hard for us to try to get legislation through because the city council doesn’t like to impose mandates. Instead, they like to go for voluntary compliance” (interview by author, 2.3.06). While voluntary compliance is one way of reducing waste, without the city’s weight behind changing behaviors, businesses continued to produce the same amount. The city’s participation and support can be an integral part to reducing waste, as was the case in LA, where they imposed fines on business…....

so: here is an analysis of what I (Charlene) just did: I had an idea, introduced the idea, had a quote to back it up and then said what that quote meant for the theme. This type of thing is how you want to use your data. You can also have longer quotes, which you indent like you do quotes from a book, and then analyze them. You can also use observations, memos, etc. whatever your data is.

How to Format reference to an Interview:

“Unpublished interviews are best cited in text ..., though occasionally appear in ... reference lists.”(Chicago Manual of Style, sec. 17.210-17.237). See the example above.

If you have a lot of interviews, you may want to include a table, in an appendix, that lists the interviews categorically. This format is appropriate:

Rudolph, Frederick. 2001. Interview by author.  Williamstown, MA, May, 15.

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Most of the files listed below were compiled by Sam Popkin in Political Science for a workshop on field research (focused on interviewing). I include copies of the pdf files here for educational use only. They will be removed from the web site at the end of class. Thank you to Susan Shaler for alerting us to this list of files. I added a few. The graduate students taking the workshop on interviewing and field research were instructed to start with the two Dexter articles, then Whyte, then Schwarz. 

*Dexter Elite & Specialized Interviewing.pdf

*Dexter Goodwill of Important people.pdf

New Intro to Dexter’s classic book on interviewing

Whyte What Kind of Truth Do You Get.pdf

Schwarz Logic of Conversation.pdf

Goldstein Getting in the Door.pdf

Leech Techniques for Unstructured Interviews.pdf

Peabody Elite Interviewing.pdf

Rivera Interviewing ELites — Russia.pdf

Woliver Ethical DIlemmas.pdf

Zuckerman Interviwing Ultra-Elite.pdf

Berry Validity & Reliability.pdf

Learning to Interview in the Social Sciences