Respond to at least one of your colleagues’ posts and provide additionalinsight you gained from your interviewing. Offer suggestions to yourcolleagues as to other changes they may want to consider. $5 post

There are a number of things I would do differently to conduct a peerinterview that would improve the quality of data collected. First, Iwould practice the interview by asking someone the questions and workingon appropriate verbal responses to show that I am listening andinterested. This is much easier to do in person than on the phone, whichI did not anticipate. I would work on my verbal reactions so that theinterviewee would feel more comfortable elaborating on her responses.Also, I would work on my tone. My natural speaking voice is monotone andI often forget that I can come across as bored or tired if the person Iam talking to cannot see me and is not familiar with my voice. Nexttime, I will try to sound friendlier so that my questioning does notfeel like an interrogation, which can cause participants to getdefensive and be counterproductive to the interview (McNiff, 2017).

Something new that I learned from the telephone interview processis that assumptions about the participant are easy to make andinterviewers have to be careful about that when crafting theirquestions. Since the interview was of a peer from school taking the sameclasses as me, it seemed that we would have a lot in common and that isnot necessarily true. Making assumptions about a participant can beoffensive to them and it is best not to arrive at any conclusions aboutthe participant beforehand or even during the interview. I think thereare ways to establish rapport with an interviewee without needing toestablish things in common.

The value of interviewing as a data collection tool is evident injust this one interview. For example, one of the questions in theinterview guide asked if the school’s social change mission wasimportant to her deciding to come to Walden. She responded that socialchange is important to her, but Walden’s social change position did notinfluence her decision to choose Walden because she had no reason tobelieve at the time that the school was living up to its stated mission.This caused me to think about the assumptions we make and how noteveryone takes claims at face value. In this case, I could see thatthere may be room to add a question to my guide for futureinterviews asking if the participant viewed Walden as an agent of socialchange, rather than assume that all Walden students perceive theirschool that way. Without interviewing someone, I would not have thisinsight that social change is important to students, but that is notnecessarily why they choose Walden. Now that I have that understanding, Ican adapt my questioning to get better, more accurate data.

References

McNiff, K. (2017, April 25). Are you really listening? Tips for conducting qualitative interviews.NVIVO.https://www.qsrinternational.com/nvivo-qualitative…