Interviews: Expect the Unexpected

Think carefully about your group's interviewing process. Which group member is likely to establish rapport with which informant? Will the questions you ask be the same for each informant or will the questions vary slightly? At this point your group should have agreed upon a general research question, which should help guide your efforts in interviewing. You should have also discussed who you intend to interview and why this person would make a good informant. When you conduct your interviews, remember, you are not interrogating your informants; you are trying to learn from them. Be open to things not going exactly as planned, and be interested in what your informants have to say. Don't forget to obtain a signed interview release form. Here are some last-minute tips on ethnographic interviewing techniques.