1. I failed to ask one nurse when she decided to become one. She asked me, “Don’t you want to know?” It was a fun story of when she was 9 and it made all the difference in her life.

2. I mixed up two nurses when I posted their pictures and profiles because I failed to extract something, anything, that seemed interesting enough to make me remember them.  Instead of becoming engrossed in the person and their story, I was interested in completing the task.

3. I didn’t ask for compelling stories. Instead I requested a gender, age, and experience differentiators. It’s the stories that make people interesting though, not where they went to school and how long they’ve been on the job.

Interviewing is an art and a science and interviewers can grow from each experience, thus subsequent interviews can be better. Next time I’ll do a little more research and ask more compelling questions so that when the vignettes are posted, the nurse are truly honored for their contribution to the patient care.

Lindlof & Taylor are dead-on when they talk about the fact that you can have rapport between an interviewer and an interviewee even when the two have almost nothing else in common except the fact they happen to be talking to one another at that moment. It’s relatively rare when you come across an interview subject that sabotages the interview either consciously or unconsciously. In the case Donna cited earlier in the term, Grace Slick interviewing Frank Zappa, it was a combination of “dumb questions” (as the Shel Israel reading might suggest) on Slick’s behalf but also some sly gamesmanship by Zappa. 

On occasion, the interviewer simply isn’t prepared or nimble enough to avoid pulling a Chris Farley Show. But it’s often the best interviewers (like Terry Gross and Gene Simmons or 60 Minutes‘ Mike Wallace and, well, pretty much everybody) who are able to take difficult questions, subjects and (especially) interviewees head-on and be the one left standing with fresh insight and perspective for the rest of us to enjoy.  

While I would like to live in a world where being a “professional” means the realities of human nature melt away when one goes to work, it is comforting to know that each of us is a person on the inside – equal parts vulnerability, fallibility and inspiration all at the same time. The important thing is not to lose sight of that reality — especially when you’re asking a fellow human to share their thoughts, opinions and feelings. 

I found the Hermanowicz article, The Great Interview: 25 Strategies for Studying People in Bed, particularly helpful as a guide for conducting great interviews.  While the 25 strategies were mostly based on common sense and may seem obvious on the surface, it’s easy to forget that nurturing interpersonal dynamics is crucial in order to get the most meaningful information.  When conducting an interview in the midst of a busy day, it’s tempting to fall into a mechanical, driving mode in order to get the information and get to the end of the interview.

The strategies were immensely insightful guides to conducting great interviews.  Of particular interest to me personally were the strategies around listening and probing as well as the strategies that dealt with the flow, or how best to “sequence your moves.”  A great interview will leave the interviewer with deep insights and unexpected information, and will leave the interviewee feeling respected and fulfilled the next morning.      

When reading the excerpt from Terry Gross’s book, I was surprised when she mentioned that she was more comfortable doing the interviews via telephone. Each interview I conduct is by phone and it is something that I continually struggle with. I find that it is harder to establish a relationship by phone than it is in person. I also find that interviews are the most successful when the conversations seem natural and easy, which can be a challenge when people are talking over one another, unfamiliar with one another and unable to gauge one another’s actions of the phone. There is truly and art to interviewing, and even though it is something I do everyday, I am not even close to mastering it.

But it got me thinking about the reading we did this week about the need to establish rapport in interviews. I would argue that, given what she had to work with, Gross did a mostly excellent job.

One minute in, Simmons uses sexual innuendo at Gross’ expense, but she continues with her questions about his stage makeup. When it’s clear this is leading nowhere, she moves on, and eventually gets him to speak without being quite so horrible about his childhood in Israel and then in a yeshiva in the U.S. She even manages to get a poignant moment when he describes seeing exciting aspects of American culture on TV and wishing he was part of that world instead of the very religious world he felt stuck in.

Gross does call Simmons out on his “obnoxious” attitude — repeatedly. It’s a reminder that an interview is a two-way street and that both parties ought to feel respected. Either party could have quit at a number of different moments, but neither did. This begs the question: how much disrespect is too much? At what point is the potential poignant moment no longer worth it?

Undercover Boss CEOs are what Lindoff/Taylor call “complete participants” in observing employees because the CEOs are in disguise but are being filmed and trained on the workers daily tasks. According to Lindoff/Taylor “the complete participants role thus positions us to use our empathetic and sense making capabilities to understand social action as it “naturally occurs in a setting”(p.145). The presence of the camera is not acknowledged.

Occasionally CEOs make spontaneous decisions to fire an employee or temporarily close a business. They do this when egregious situations arise, and often, they come out of disguise to immediately stop the inappropriate actions of an employee.

Lindoff/Taylor argue that contemporary fieldworkers do not embrace the role of complete participant for four reasons; lack of freedom of movement in the scene, worry about blowing their cover, losing analytic detachment, and it is an ethical challenge. On Undercover Boss Lindoff/Taylor’s concerns are part of what makes the show interesting, although the ethical challenge isn’t addressed and it isn’t considered scientific research. Ultimately, the CEOs and the employees are changed due to the information collected during the show.

This reminds me of the McCaskey case study we read for Brian’s class recently. In the article, a researcher at a market research firm in her late 20s named Martha McCaskey poses as a consultant for a start-up semiconductor manufacturer in order to obtain insider information for her client. Initially, McCaskey has reservations about resorting to deception to access trade secrets, but after pressure from her superiors and clients, she gives in against her better judgment. Brian still hasn’t shared with us what exactly happened to Martha, but it didn’t look promising. Deception simply has no place in the professional world, whether academic or corporate.

What do you all think? Is “some deception” a necessary evil or completely off limits when conducting research? When does some deception become too much?

In my mind, the delineation between the four “types” of ethnographic researchers (complete participants, complete observers, participant-as-observer and observer-as-participant) brought to mind certain hallmarks in journalism/literary nonfiction. From John Howard Griffin (Black Like Me) and Morgan Spurlock (Supersize Me) to Barbara Ehrenreich (Nickel and Dimed) and Hunter S. Thompson (Hell’s Angels), there is a pop culture totem that brings the kind of undeniable insights and uncomfortable realities that can accompany qualitative ethnography.

To what extent does a researcher’s participation influence or bias the “data” gathered through their study of individuals or groups? Could the same insights and observations be obtained without “immersion” techniques? Depending on the context, I suspect the answer is both “Yes” and “No.” However, in participatory ethnographic research, at what point do the ends ultimately stop justifying the means?

Another area to further explore to support my area of research interest is around how to conduct field research with fragile or impressionable populations such as children.  Identifying the most appropriate type and degree of participation when conducting field research, as described in the Lindlof and Taylor (2011) text, with children will be an especially interesting challenge that I look forward to exploring further.