Exercise 1: Evaluating an interview schedule

The best way of evaluating how successful an interview schedule will be in generating rich data is to try it out – to ‘pilot’ it. And, of course, the success of an interview schedule will also depend on the skill of the interviewer who is using it. Nonetheless, there are some basic features that need to be present, such as a clear, logical structure and good question wording.

Exercise 2: Developing an interview schedule

Develop a short interview schedule that will generate data to enable you to answer your research question.

Exercise 3: What not to do in research interviews

To get a ‘felt sense’ of how important it is for a good rapport to be created between the interviewer and the interviewee, we are now going to try to interview badly. You will need to do this with another person who is learning about interviewing (ideally a classmate) and who is aware of the premise of this exercise (that is, who knows that you are going to interview them in a way that breaks the rules). This is a fun exercise to do but it should show you what it would be like to be on the receiving end of poor interviewing practice and how that would affect the quality of the data that you would obtain.

Exercise 4: Reflecting on the interviewing process in additional interview transcripts

Read the Preface to Appendix 1 in the book where Arnie Reed contextualizes his qualitative study of ex-soldiers’ accounts of renegotiating identity after leaving the army. Then turn to the additional interview transcripts from that study in Appendix 1 of the online materials.