Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Particular strategies or techniques can also enhance the quality of an inter-
view. The most effective strategy is, paradoxically, no strategy. Being natural
is much more convincing than any performance. Acting like an adolescent
does not win the confidence of adolescents, it only makes them suspicious.
Similarly, acting like the consummate lawyer is useless during an interview
with lawyers for obvious reasons. First, ethnographic training emphasizes hon-
esty in fieldwork, including interviews. Deceptive games have no place in the
interview setting or elsewhere. Second, in any data-gathering interview, the
objective is to learn from the interviewee and not to impress the person with
how much the questioner already knows about the area. Third, even a con-
summate actor is bound to slip during a lengthy interview and thus undermine
all credibility. Being natural is the best protection.
More experienced ethnographers learn when it is appropriate or possible to
test their knowledge of the system by breaking a minor cultural norm, such as
sitting in someone else's chair during an official meeting to test status, hierar-
chy, and grouping patterns. This knowledge development strategy, however,
requires a great deal of experience and a very healthy rapport, usually the
product of much time spent with the group under study. Being cavalier about
even minor cultural norms can be quite costly in hurt feelings, damaged rap-
port, and severely distorted lines of communication—all resulting in bad data.
A degree of manipulation takes place in any interview. The interviewer is
trying to learn
some
thing about an individual's life—not
every
thing about it.
Achieving this goal requires some conscious or subconscious shaping of the
verbal exchange—through either explicit or implicit cues borrowed from the
cues in natural conversation. For example, to borrow a strategy from court-
room proceedings, asking the same question in several different ways within
one session checks both the interviewer's understanding of the response and
the individual's sincerity—that is, whether the answer is what the person
believes or what he or she wants the ethnographer to hear (or thinks the ethnog-
rapher wants to hear). This strategy usually provides the ethnographer with
a slightly modified, refined understanding of the initial response. Often,
repeated questions or variations of the same question draw responses that shed
a completely new light on the topic. The interviewer should scatter these types
of questions throughout the interview. One right after another, repeated ques-
tions can be insulting and fruitless. Some interviews reach the point of dimin-
ishing returns more quickly than others. The interviewer must recognize when
to linger and when to move on.
A similar strategy involves asking for repetition of the participant's ques-
tions. A person's questions are as informative as his or her answers. In repeat-
ing a question, the interviewee provides a broader perspective on the topic and
on relevant concerns. Similarly, the interviewer can ask the interviewee to
