"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 book provides extensive discussions of the conceptual and methodological issues surrounding interview practice" -- Family Therapy
"The book is a really useful and innovative approach to the quite large issue of what interviewing is and where it can be used as well as the cautions that need to be considered when interviewing in various settings. The selections offer a shrewd and sensitive overview to the problem of placing the interviewer in the setting and allowing for the interaction between the informant and the interviewer as part of the analysis. I think the book would be EXCELLENT for graduate classes." --Arlene Kaplan Daniels, Sociology emeritus, Northwestern University
"A sourcebook that any researcher should have in her/his reference library. The chapters cover virtually every conceivable interviewing situation as well as discuss larger "meta-issues" that face the survey researcher. The volume also tells a story. The editors have created a volume that tries to link each chapter by threading a theme through each chapter. That theme is the argument that interview situations are social situations and should be viewed as such. This is an important way to contextualize what would otherwise be merely guidelines for technique and methodological points." --Jeffrey Chin, Professor and Chair of Sociology, LeMoyne College
"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.
