Reflecting on my first Interview

Interview Reflections:

With making a decision to focus on interviews, and cutting data collection through questionnaires and surveys, I spent some time researching how to make the most of them. Although it is sometimes suggested that interviews can be very time consuming, whilst reading the weekly ‘LOOK’ magazine recently, I thought about how these journalists and interviewees must have found a way to collect the data they need fairly quickly to meet the demands of the weekly criteria. So, if efficiently prepared, surely interviews need not be hugely time consuming. I found an idea from a book I am reviewing that suggested that the time spend organising and undertaking interviews tends to be time well in vested, most of it goes into the effort to ‘understanding the issues of the research’ (R S. Weiss, 1995), which is primarily the underlying foundations of my inquiry anyway.

I thought about WHY I am interviewing:

-to gain deeper insight of personal experiences

-how these experiences affected thoughts and feelings

-developing an awareness of what Dance means to someone other than myself, trying to develop a way of reflecting on a familiar activity almost as unfamiliar

-gaining depth and a greater coherence of the material each respondent provides

- to develop my interviewing skills for future use – personal development

I thought about choosing respondents appropriately:

-Two main categories of potential respondents, firstly, those who are uniquely able to be informative because they are experts in their field. Secondly, people who represent and display what happens within a certain community or populations. I wanted to focus on looking at gathering data that could potentially contrast in dynamics and content, but, with Ludus Dance being a relatively small community, I am already constricted to a certain extent.

My chosen respondents were firstly Ludus Dance’s Artistic Director, and secondly, a Ludus user who is a trained professional dancer, and a weekly attendee to various classes offered at Ludus. She is also branching out and establishing herself as Freelance Artist in her own right.

Yesterday I took an interview with the professional dancer. Although we are already familiar through meeting at ‘Pro Class’, we have not developed a relationship that could affect the data collected. If I had had a well established friendship with the respondent already, there would be the possibility of not taking into account critical analysis. I could risk avoiding any interpretation of a negative nature. I felt in the best position to be able to interview with no pre – conceptions, but comfortable in my adequate knowledge of the subject we were discussing.

Reflections after the interview:

-Straight away I gave a brief overview of the project outlines, and the potentially confidentially issues were addressed straight away. (Use of pseudonyms) I also used this as an opportunity to clarify anything on the consent form that wasn’t clear.

-I felt it was important to set a friendly but business like tone. This way I felt comfortable when and when not to contribute in order to probe a bit deeper into her thoughts and ideas.

-Respondent said she had commitments later that day, so would only be able to offer 45mins for the interview. Although this panicked me slightly, I feel I was lucky she mentioned this at the start rather than having to cut interview short half way through. I had to be decisive over which questions were of less importance should we run out of time to discuss them all.

-Being ‘adaptable’ was a key factor throughout, I did tend to follow the semi – structured approach of my questions, but often answers provoked new questions not previously thought about. On one occasion I was asked if I could re-phrase a question so it could be understood better. Also, I decided to re-phrase a question after the respondent answered in a way which didn’t answer what I was trying to ask. Finally, I did have to cut some questions, partly due to time constrains, but also because sometimes when an answer went in one direction, the question I had planned next seemed in appropriate and wouldn’t be logically flowing with where the conversation was flowing.

Because the respondent spoke so freely, and was very happy to share fairly sensitive personal insight, I was glad of the semi – structured approach I had taken. I felt if I had kept to a more informal approach, without any format of structured questions previously prepared, it would have been very easy to drift off at different tangents. The questions I had prepared, all though they were adapted a bit here and there, kept a sense of focus of the real purpose of the interview.

-Interview lasted approx 45 mins, on reflection, this was fairly ideal. We are working individuals, so finding time to fit the interview in with work and other commitments, as well as being able to find a quiet place where you can concentrate fully on the other person in the conversations can sometimes be difficult.

-This interview was over the phone, as due to the distance between us, we were unable to meet face to face. I had some pre- conceptions I would struggle without being able to make eye contact, would this result in a lack of mutual respect for one another?! It was pleasantly surprising to feel comfortable to just ask for clarification on anything to ensure my understanding of responses was absolutely accurate. Perhaps the need for face to face interactions isn’t always 100% necessary when you and the respondent have already met. This may be different if you were speaking for the first time however.

-The main difficulty I experienced was juggling scribing notes whilst the respondent was talking. Had the interview have been recorded, I could have re-played the audio if I missed anything. The pace of her speech was much faster than what I managed to document, so perhaps thinking about being more efficient in taking note would have helped me here.

My next interview is planned for next week; I am interested to see how much the experience is different.