Listening in interviews

It is east to do too much of the talking in an interview. Inexperienced interviewers may even lead the respondent, and complete their responses for them!

“An interview may be viewed as a conversation with a student or with a group of students in order to listen and to find out what they are thinking.  A characteristic of the interview is that the students are doing most of the talking and the [researcher] most of the listening...

Bell, Beverley (1995) Interviewing: a technique for assessing science knowledge, Chapter 15 of Glynn, Shawn M. & Duit, Reinders (Eds.) (1995) Learning Science in the Schools: Research Reforming Practice, Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, pp.347-364.

Bell seems to be stating the obvious when she pints out that:

“The interview is a teaching situation only in that we are listening to the student; it is not an opportunity to guide students by careful questioning to the “right answer”” (Bell, 1995, p.353.)

However, interviewers, especially interviewers who are experienced teachers, are tempted to offer their own evaluations of responses, or even to add their own views and ideas. (That may be more appropriate in research undertaken from a social constructivist perspective than from a personal constructivist perspective).

"In our experience, nearly all interviewers [p.414//p.415] …proceed through the interview too quickly; they ask questions at a rapid rate, permit no pause between response and the next question, and jump into the interaction with fast feedback. The atmosphere created is hasty and casual. The interviewer's major goal seems to be to finish the interview.."  (Cannell, Miller & Oksenberg,  1981: 414-5).

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

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