INTERVIEW

INTERVIEW

Interviewing as a data collection technique is very popular and is extensively used in every field of social research. The interview is, in a sense, an oral questionnaire. Instead of writing the response, the interviewee or subject gives the needed information verbally in a face-to-face relationship. The dynamics of interviewing, however, involve much more than an oral questionnaire. The interview is a relatively more flexible tool than any written inquiry form and permits explanation, adjustment and variation according to the situation.

According to P. V.  Young, “interview may be regarded as a systematic method by which a person enters more or less imaginatively into the life of a comparative stranger.”

Advantages/Merit of Interview

Interview as a data collection tool has certain merits and shortcomings or limitations. These are described as follows:

1. Advantage over observation: Advantage over observation: Interviews reveal events only the interviewee knows about. Interviews are the finest way to explore these phenomena in social science because most human behaviour is like this.

2. Effective for studying past and future activities: Observational approaches are primarily limited to nonverbal acts. Thus, they are ineffective in revealing a person's past and future actions, private affairs, attitudes, faiths, beliefs, motivations, etc. For observation, the event must occur in front of the observer. It’s not necessary for the interview. In an interaction, the interviewer can ask questions about the interviewee’s past, present, and future.

3. Advantages over questionnaire: Interviews are better than questionnaires in many ways. Questionnaires rarely give a complete picture of the respondent's life or any incident involving him. Interviews allow for additional detail. They allow the investigator to follow a promising topic, ask for elaboration, and clarify topics the respondent didn't understand. Interviews also help build rapport and encourage more full and accurate responses.

4. Applicable to all: The questionnaire method is only applicable to literate people. Illiterate people cannot read and write any information through the questionnaire method. However, interviews can be used for everybody, particularly for those with language difficulties, the illiterate, young children, and those with limited intelligence.

5. Command over situation: The questionnaire is out of the investigator's hands the minute it is mailed. However, the interview allows the investigator to maintain command over the interview situation throughout the study. Because of the established rapport, the respondents do not behave funny with the investigator. They cooperate with the interviewer and try their best to make the interview a great success.

6. Higher percentage of coverage: An interview is a social engagement. Establishing a primary, intimate, and personal relationship is used to acquire valuable information from interviewees in a comfortable environment. Because of this, respondents don’t refuse to give the interviewer information about the interview's goal. Thus, interviews usually cover more subjects.

7. Proper encouragement: This strategy improves interviewer-interviewee rapport. Thus, the interviewer encourages more detailed and valid responses. The interviewer always clarifies the respondent's thoughts. The skilled interviewer may organize the field setting and point out contemporaneous occurrences to help the responder remember. Encouragement improves responses.

8. Bias can be minimized: While conducting an interview, the field worker presents himself in the field to remove any doubt or problem regarding the interview. Therefore, the answers given in this process are not biased.

9. The problem of response is less: In an interview, poor response, bad handwriting, questions left by the respondents, etc., can be avoided because the interviewer himself remains present in the field. He can influence the respondent's behaviour through his personality and fill out all the answers himself only.

10. Facility for verification: In this method, the sincerity, frankness, truthfulness and insight of the interviewee can be better judged through cross-questioning.

11. Important for diagnosis: This technique is indispensable for diagnosis and is often called very effective when it deals with abnormal persons.

12. Convenient for respondents: People are usually more willing and less hesitant to talk than write, especially on delicate, intimate and confidential topics.

To a great extent, the interview method is superior to many other tools. Only in studying human beings can a scientist talk to his subjects and directly investigate their feelings and thinking processes. Social scientists can ensure that the object of their study is a degree of intimate and personal knowledge that is denied to natural scientists. The latter cannot communicate with the subject despite all the precision instruments. Therefore, it has been rightly remarked that interview is “a tool par excellence.”

Limitation/Demerit of Interview

Despite its many advantages, interview also has many limitations which limits its scope and value. These limitations are:

1. Subjective bias: The interviewer’s partiality is its main flaw. In many circumstances, interviewers gather data that supports their beliefs. The interviewer’s presence affects responses. He may affect responses by projecting his personality onto the circumstance. Thus, numerous biases may invalidate the acquired data.

2. Costly affair: Interviewing is comparatively costly. The cost for a single respondent is much higher in this method than in any other data collection device. When research covers a wide geographical area, interviewing is going to be expensive and also costly in terms of time and effort since the interviewer faces the interviewee's ‘non-availability’ or ‘not at home’, etc., during the interview process.

3. Difficult task: It is difficult to make a person agreeable to an interview. A busy person may prefer to fill out a questionnaire at his leisure rather than submit to a longer interview. Again, if an interview topic is about common matters of life, people may give their consent. But when it is related to the private or personal aspect, viz., sexual relationships, divorce, etc., then they hesitate to give information about it.

4. It requires specialized knowledge: Interviews demand technological expertise. The interviewer must understand human psychology to evaluate respondents. Field interviewers rarely have these skills, so they collect a lot of incorrect and invalid data. Field workers may need data gathering training for appropriate coverage. This requires a lot of money, making it difficult for a researcher with little funds to use.

5. Incompetence of respondents: The respondents suffer from four limitations. These are –

a. His experience as an interviewee

b. His judgement about himself

c. His accessibility and readiness to pass the information and

d. His ability to express himself clearly.

6. Difficulties of recording: Recording data in an interview has many difficulties. If one writes during the interview, the rapport is weakened, and recording interferes with the smooth and natural conduct of the interview. Writing up from memory after the end of the interview also has its own demerits. It may lead to a wayward, whimsical, preferential, and conscious selection of the materials.

7. Problem with tape recording: Recording the entire interview on tape is likely to be expensive and time-consuming. Moreover, the use of the tape recorder may make the interviewee cautious and prevent him from sharing secrets.

8. Not applicable to all: The interview is not applicable for infants, shy people, the deaf and the insane.

9. Less facility for verification: The interview puts the researcher at the complete mercy of the interviewee. There is no source of direct observation or verification of what the respondent says.

10. Misleading information: Certain matters can be written in privacy, but they cannot be spoken before others. If these matters are to be revealed in an interview, then only a pseudo version will be presented by the interviewee. There are people who cannot even express their true feelings in an interview or in front of a stranger.

11. Differences between the interviewer and interviewee: If there is a wide gap in the thinking and outlook of the interviewer and interviewee, then one will fail to understand what the other says, making the discussion in the interview fruitless.

So overall the limitations of interviews help us to support the explanation of the interview which would be sufficient to obtain all the information that is needed.