Handbook of Interview Research: Context and Method

"While the book certainly contains many useful pointers on practical methodological issues, this book casts practical methods within a nuanced theoretical framework. These chapters help locate aspects of interviewing within their theoretical, phenomenological, interactional, and organizational contexts. Even those with extensive experience as interviewers, interview subjects, or interview consumers are likely to learn from these thoughtful essays."

--Joel Best, Professor and Chair of Sociology, University of Delaware

Interviewing has become the leading window on the world of experience for both researchers and professionals. But as familiar as interviewing is now, its seemingly straightforward methodology raises more questions than ever. What is the interviewer′s image of those who are being interviewed? Who is the interviewer in the eyes of the respondent? From where do interviewers obtain questions and respondents get the answers that they communicate in interviews? How do the institutional auspices of interviewing shape interview data?

Drawing upon leading experts from a wide range of disciplines to address these and related questions, The Handbook of Interview Research offers a comprehensive examination of the interview at the cutting edge of information technology in the context of a challenging postmodern environment. Encyclopedic in its breadth, The Handbook provides extensive discussions of the conceptual and methodological issues surrounding interview practice in relation to forms of interviewing, new technology, diverse data gathering and analytic strategies, and the various ways interviewing relates to distinctive respondents. The Handbook is also a story that spins a particular tale that moves from the commonly recognized individual interview as an instrument for gathering data to reflections on the interview as an integral part of the information we gather about individuals and society.