Qualitative Interviews Overview

Abstract

This chapter takes a wide-angle view of the interview, recognising that interviews take place in many forms and are very much part of our everyday experience. Through providing an overview of different perspectives of interview and research interviews, we can contemplate the ways in which we experience interviews in everyday life. Even if we have not conducted a research interview, we are likely to have been interviewed and certainly to have watched/listened to a range of interviews on television/radio. Interviews are both mundane and memorable, both ubiquitous and unique, and it is worth considering their range in terms of genre. This chapter assembles a collection of texts and perspectives on interviews that I hope will stimulate thinking about the nature and purpose of research interviews.