Interview Participant Contributions to (Re)Shaping Qualitative Interviews

• In Event: Roundtable Session 24
  In Roundtable Session: Rethinking the Interview

Abstract

This paper presents analyses of how interview-participants play an important role in (re)designing research and signaling theoretical perspectives needed to understand what they choose to share in the interview situation. By providing evidence from an open-ended interview project I will show the consequential nature of following participant leads to understand not only what they say but also how they construct meanings. In analyzing one teacher’s actions to begin the interview, to use the past in describing her work, and to position the researcher as an insider, I demonstrate how an interviewee signals to the researcher the relevant theoretical perspectives and research processes needed to represent participant meanings.

Author

• Audra Skukauskaite, University of the Incarnate Word