Briefing your interviewee

It is important your research participant is at easy, and comfortable about the purpose and nature of the interview. It can be good practice to have a short script which reiterates the purposes of the activity, and reminds the respondent that they do not need to answer any questions they are not comfortable answering, and can ask to stop or have a break at any time.

You should keep in mind that being interviewed makes demands on your participant - demands of concentration, recall, expression...and in some cases questions may seem sensitive or even threatening.

Cannell et al., (1981) suggest:

“To improve the validity of the survey interview, new techniques and new standards of measurement are required. To translate these objectives into operations, one can say that the questionnaire and interviewing techniques should:

1. 1.Teach the respondent what is expected of him or her in general in order to perform the task properly.
   

2. 2.Inform the respondent and provide cues as to how to be most efficient in answering specific questions.
   

3. 3.Encourage the respondent to work diligently to recall and organize information and to report even potentially embarrassing material.
   

4. 4. Ensure standard techniques for greater comparability among interviews." (Cannell et al.,1981: 405)
   

Cannell, C. F., Miller, P. V., & Oksenberg, L. (1981). Research on Interviewing Techniques. Sociological Methodology, 12, 389-437.

These suggestions seem more in keeping with interviewing in positivistic rather than interpretive studies.

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