The Problem-Centred Interview: Principles and Practice

Interviewing is among the most commonly used methods in qualitative research. It is a pragmatic and reliable tool for collecting information and can be adapted to diverse situations and purposes. The discursive-dialogic reconstruction of relevant issues in the perspective of the interview partner is one of these purposes - it is at the core of the program of the technique of the problem-centered interview (PCI).

Andreas Witzel and Herwig Reiter present the first English book about this popular and widely recognized method and introduce it to the international research community. The comprehensive and hands-on introduction to methodology, principles and practice of this particular technique is organized along the logical steps of preparing, doing and processing PCIs. The authors use many practical examples from their own problem-centered research to illustrate each stage as well as common interviewing pitfalls and errors. The book also demonstrates how to work with sensitizing prior knowledge in the context of interview research.

Novice and experienced interview researchers across the social, educational and health sciences will find this an invaluable guide.

Dr. Andreas Witzel is a senior researcher in social sciences and lecturer for interpretative methodology since 1976 at the University of Bremen, now retired. His major research interests include qualitative methodology and methods, occupational socialization, biography and the life course. In his position as director of the Bremen Archive for Life Course Research, he pioneered the institutionalization of a central data archive for digital transcripts of qualitative interviews in Germany and the development of approaches to secondary analysis of qualitative data. He did extensive research on occupational status passages of young people and published widely on related issues. His methodological and methodical publications focus on qualitative interviews, methods of analysis, qualitative longitudinal research, and the combination of quantitative and qualitative data.

Herwig Reiter, PhD, is a senior researcher in the Department of Social Monitoring and Methodology of the German Youth Institute in Munich. Before, he was a lecturer in sociology and qualitative methods at the University of Bremen and at the Bremen Graduate School of Social Sciences (BIGSSS). He studied sociology in Vienna and holds a PhD in Political and Social Sciences from the European University Institute. His main areas of research include qualitative methods and methodology as well as youth and life course sociology. He is an editorial board member of the International Journal of Social Research Methodology. His articles appeared in journals like the Journal of International Relations and Development, the Journal of Baltic Studies, Forum: Qualitative Social Research, Zeitschrift für Soziologie, Journal of Adolescence, Journal of Youth Studies, and Educational Research.