This three-day hands-on course helps participants move from a research question to a feasible, ethical and analytically useful qualitative interview strategy, including recruitment, topic guides, interview practice and first steps of analysis.
What Is This Course About?
This three-day in-person compact course provides participants with the practical skills needed to design, conduct, and begin analysing qualitative interviews in social science research. It is aimed especially at PhD researchers and advanced Master’s students preparing for fieldwork, and is built around participants’ own projects: from identifying interviewees and negotiating access to writing topic guides, conducting interviews, and reflecting on ethics, positionality and data quality. The course covers semi-structured, expert, elite, narrative and interpretive interviews, with strong emphasis on hands-on exercises, peer feedback and short daily assignments.
Learning Goals
- Understand what qualitative interviews can and cannot do in social science research and be able to choose an appropriate form of interviewing for your research question.
- Develop an interview strategy that connects research design, sampling, recruitment, access and ethics.
- Design and revise an interview/topic guide with open questions, probes and follow-ups.
- Practise conducting interviews and recognise the role of positionality, power relations, and reflexivity in producing interview data.
- Plan the first steps of documenting, managing and analysing interview material, including field notes, transcription, anonymisation, and coding.
Recommended Readings for the Course
- Knott, Eleanor, Aliya Rao, Kate Summers, and Chana Teeger. “Interviews in the Social Sciences.” Nature Reviews Methods Primer 2, no. 1 (2022): 73.
- Harvey, William S. “Strategies for Conducting Elite Interviews.” Qualitative Research 11, no. 4 (2011): 431–41. https://doi.org/10.1177/1468794111404329.
- Lee Ann, Fujii. Interviewing in Social Science Research: A Relational Approach. 1st ed. Routledge, 2017. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203756065. Chapter 1
Assignments for the Course
- Attendance (80%)
- 3 in-class asignments (not graded)
o Before the course: short paragraph on your research project and 5-7 preliminary interview questions;
o After day 1: mapping your interview strategy, drafting and revising a topic guide
o After day 2: practising interviews in pairs/small groups/with friends
Schedule
The schedule is indicative and may be adjusted closer to the course dates. In addition, students should plan for sufficient time to do the assigned daily homework and read the assigned literature in advance.
Day 1: Designing interview research
9:00-10:30 Session 1: What qualitative interviews are for; interviewing as data generation; types of interviews; matching interview methods to research questions.
10:30-11:00 Break
11:00-12:30 Session 2: Sampling, recruitment, access and fieldwork planning; identifying suitable respondents and anticipating practical challenges.
12:30-13:30 Lunch break
13:30-14:30 Session 3: Ethics, consent, positionality and fieldwork risks; formative exercise on designing an interview strategy for participants’ own projects.
Day 2: Conducting interviews
9:00-10:30 Session 1: Designing interview/topic guides; question wording; open questions, probes, follow-ups, sequencing and avoiding leading questions.
10:30-11:00 Break
11:00-12:30 Session 2: Rapport, listening, silence, difficult interviews, sensitive topics, vulnerable groups and expert interviews; in-class role-play interview practice.
12:30-13:30 Lunch break
13:30-14:30 Session 3: Debrief and peer feedback on interview practice; revising topic guides and adapting interviews during fieldwork.
Day 3: From interview to analysis
9:00-10:30 Session 1: After the interview; field notes, interview protocols, recording, transcription, translation, anonymisation, data protection and responsible use of AI transcription tools.
10:30-11:00 Break
11:00-12:30 Session 2: First steps of analysis; coding, memoing, comparing interview accounts, working with contradictions and using interview evidence in dissertations and articles.
12:30-13:30 Lunch break
13:30-14:30 Session 3: Final project workshop; participants present their revised interview strategy and next steps for fieldwork.
Who Is Your Instructor?
Dr Mariusz Bogacki is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Department of Politics and Public Administration at the University of Konstanz, where he works on nationalism and qualitative research on identity, memory, and political change. His methods expertise lies in qualitative and interpretive social science research, including semi-structured and expert interviews, focus groups, and political ethnography. He has conducted fieldwork research in Hong Kong, Singapore, Scotland, Poland, and Palestine, interviewing a wide variety of interlocutors within diverse socio-political and cultural contexts. He has taught qualitative methods and fieldwork design to MA and PhD students at the European University Institute (EUI), Technical University Darmstadt, and the EUI’s School of Transnational Governance. www.mariuszbogacki.com
Dr Mariusz Bogacki
Lecturer komex
