Interview as a Method and its Application in Journalism

questions (verbal stimuli) designed to elicit response. Interview in sociology may be both a quantitative and qualitative method.

The objective of sociological interview is to obtain information from a person representing a wider category of people relevant to the research. They should be selected through some selection criteria. The gathered verbal data collected in the interview can be considered as an adequate substitute for observation of the object over a long period of time. The foundations of interviewing lie in the assumption that individuals can report adequately about social aspects of their lives (subjective states (attitudes, beliefs), relationships with others, etc.).

The most common criterion for classifying interviews is in terms of their degree of standardization (concerning the content and order of the questions). Thus in the structured interview all the respondents have to go along the same lines to ensure that possible variations in replies do not depend on order in which questions were put, as the question asked early in the interview may affect answers to subsequent questions. It is also necessary to ensure that all respondents understand questions in the same way.

In the unstructured (non-standardized) interview questions may be put in whatever way interviewers think appropriate in the circumstances. It may almost amount to conversation and can be useful where highly sensitive issues are covered and long and informal responses are required to understand the matters. It also allows testing different lines of questioning. Thus Merton and Kendall conclude that the structured interview differs from unstructured mainly in the degree in which the interview is controlled by the interviewer.

Between the two extremes is a large category of semi-structured interviews, which combine the advantages of both. Here the interviewer is required to put specific questions but is free to probe beyond them. The use of the standardized format for ‘face sheet’ information and the unstandardized sections to elicit more qualitative information seems to be a popular practice.

Each type of an interview is designed with a particular task in mind. The non-standardized type is most suitably used in exploratory studies where little is known about the topic. This

way a small group may be interviewed quite informally with an intention of gaining useful guidance for the construction of more profound interviews. But there is a limit to which such interviews can be used with larger samples, since they may consume much time and money. Therefore, where large samples are necessary in sociology, the structured interviews provide a number of advantages, as they are cheaper in money and time and easier to process. The potentially quantitative form of standardized interviews makes them useful in hypothesis testing, (that is, checking the validity of initial assumptions in journalism).

In sociology interviews may be used in surveys. For instance, the ‘factual survey’ aims at collecting facts about population conditions and the ‘attitude survey’ seeks to assess people’s attitudes as a guide to their likely behavior (attitude questionnaires). For these purposes respondents are selected according to some sampling procedure to be representative of, inter alias, some group or attribute. Each of the sample members will then be interviewed and the results compared for differences, if any, in the replies from each of the sample collections.

Generally, survey research is a systematic gathering of information about individuals and collectivities and interpreting the results by means of statistical analysis, therefore it is rather quantitative in nature. There are some obvious benefits in the use of interviews in surveys: they are quite economical in obtaining data related to the behavior and attitudes of large and scattered populations.

Self-administered questionnaires may be used as an alternative to interviews, as they are quicker, cheaper in terms of time and money and offer more anonymity in tackling sensitive issues. But interviews produce fuller information and are more effective in dealing with complicated issues. If respondents were provided with self-administered questionnaires only, the information then could be too unreliable, imprecise and rigid. Therefore interview is an indispensable tool for both journalism and sociology.

Interviewing usually involves questions being put orally and record of respondent’s answers in a face-to-face encounter. But the telephone interview also becomes quite popular as life gets more complex and people are often too busy for a physical encounter. But the shortcoming of telephone interviewing may be represented by the easiness with which people

can hang up. Besides, respondents may be more honest in giving the socially disapproved answers over the phone; on the other hand they also may get more suspicious if they don’t see the interviewer.

I submit that the interviewing as a method of data collection has to be evaluated in terms of

the general social conditions as well as adequacy for tackling the research issue. Knowledge about society, culture and variations among members are essential for evaluation of the ‘best way’ to go about an interview. Its success may depend upon particular cultural conventions prevalent in a given social system. My personal experience in Ukraine suggests that culturally Ukrainians are much more open but sometimes reluctant to be reveal their attitudes (which in my view is a remnant from the Soviet times). In Germany, on the other hand, there is an opposite problem: a wider range of issues may be covered (though with some restraints of political correctness) but many are reluctant to devote much of their time to answering questions. In fact a successful interviewing presupposes a stable political and social order, where respondents do not feel strained by either accepting or declining to give responses or don’t have to filter their speech out of fear of manipulation, condemnation or persecution. I was reported that in Ukraine, given the brutality of authorities in dealing with deviant political views, the respondents feel restrained, when invited to comment on political issues. According to the latest survey (19 March 2001) carried out by the National Institute of Political Studies, 4 7% of respondents would vote against the President, although it is reasonable to assume that the actual number of such people is much greater, given the revelations of the current political crisis.

All the conventions of interviewing and questionnaire design are developed to ensure that the received information is accurate. So called ‘interviewer effects’ may encourage or discourage a respondent to be cooperative in telling the truth. It should not be assumed that a particular interviewing style would work with all respondents alike. Responses appearing as inconsistent to the interviewer can be quite consistent for the interviewee. Respondents in their dealing with questions are sometimes reluctant to provide true information due to different reasons. This issue was quite good illustrated by Hyman: Fifteen people with little or no experience of interviewing were hired for a particular study. Each was then sent to interview people, which