Reflective Interviewing
A Guide to Theory and Practice
- Kathryn Roulston - University of Georgia, USA
Qualitative researchers have long made use of many different interview forms. Yet, for novice researchers, making the connections between "theory" and "method" is not always easy. Reflective Interviewing provides a theoretically-informed guide for researchers learning how to interview in the social sciences.
In order to undertake high quality research using qualitative interviews, a researcher must be able to theorize the application of interviews to investigate research problems in social science research. As part of this process, researchers examine their subject positions in relation to participants, and examine their interview interactions systematically to inform research design. This book provides a practical approach to interviewing, helping researchers to learn about themselves as interviewers in ways that will inform the design, conduct, analysis, and representation of interview data.
The author takes the reader through the practicalities of designing and conducting an interview study, and relates various forms of interview to different underlying epistemological assumptions about how knowledge is produced. The book concludes with practical advice and perspectives from experienced researchers who use interviews as a method of data generation.
Reflective Interviewing is written for a multidisciplinary audience of students of qualitative research methods.
Interviews are a key element of many research projects but are rarely considered in depth by researchers this excellent book by Kathryn Roulston is a well written easy to read guide to everything a researcher needs to know about the theory and practice of employing interviews in their research. Everyone who intends to use interviews in their research will benefit from this book.
The book is aimed at researchers who are interviewing for the first time. The author has three aims: firstly to explain the theoretical choices available for interviews; secondly, to encourage reflexivity when interviewing and thirdly to analyse interviews using a methodological approach. The book achieves these aims in part: the majority of the book describes interviewing approaches, conventions and practice. Chapter 6 on “The Reflective Researcher” is excellent, although the only section that explicitly addresses reflexivity, although the book is title “Reflective Interviewing.”
The weaknesses of the book include a clunky writing style. Also, the theories introduced in the first chapter are not applied to the interview analysis in subsequent chapters, making the overall thesis rather disconnected.
The strengths of the book include exercises at the end of each chapter, which would be useful for both an individual or for a class. The recommended reading is comprehensive, particularly as the book covers many theories and methods.
There are no diagrams or suggested processes for how to theorise, design, conduct, transcribe and analyse interviews. This is not a how-to guide in the traditional sense. It works better for a postgraduate researcher who has some experience in interviewing, but who wishes to take a more nuanced approach. The use of the transcription convention described in Appendix One throughout the book was initially offputting for someone unfamiliar with the notation, but ended up being an excellent way to understand transcription annotations. The book is oriented, as the title would suggest, towards qualitative and non-positivist approaches.
The real value of this book was in its overview of a wide range of interesting interviewing styles, including dialogic interviewing, and interviewing approaches, including romantic, decolonizing and transformative theories. I would not recommend it as a first read for those wishing to learn more about the role of interviewing in research, but as a supplementary text for a postgraduate student, needing a more nuanced understanding of interviewing.
An extremely helpful guide to conducting interviews for social researchers.
This is a very useful text, and nicely structured for easy reading.
use it to provide additional guidance to master students once their research proposal is accepted. this gives them deeper instruction on interviewing technique. is helpful with this student's research on project managers.
For many of my MA HRM/D students, they are engaged in reflective interviewing, often few realise it! This is a help book which guides students through theory and practice.
I could use this as a valued supplementary text and have listed it us in my qualitative research syllabus, but it could not serve as a primary text based on my reading of it.
Great text, neatly structured. The author charts the way from considering the options for gathering qualitative narratively based data right through to thinking about evaluation and quality appraisal issues. Particularly helpful resource for masters and doctoral level students.
This is a good more specialist book for students doing qualitative research. Would be particularly helpful for those at Masters level. It is clearly written and structured and provides helpful advice to students wanting to improve their approach to interviewing.
This is a very useful textbook for postgraduate courses and research students. There are now many good books on interviewing, but Kathryn Roulston's stands out in terms of its in-depth treatment of this method.
Sage College Publishing
