10.1 Interview Research

Interviewing is a qualitative research technique and a valuable skill. Interviews are used by market researchers to learn how to sell their products; journalists use interviews to get information from a whole host of people, from VIPs to random people on the street. From the social scientific perspective, interviews are a method of data collection that involves two or more people exchanging information through a series of questions and answers. The questions are designed by a researcher to elicit information from interview participant(s) on a specific topic or set of topics. Typically interviews involve an in-person meeting between two people, an interviewer and an interviewee. But as you will discover in this chapter, interviews need not be limited to two people, nor must they occur in person.