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Qualitative Interviewing: The Art of Hearing Data, 2nd Edition explains how to obtain rich, detailed and evocative information through open-ended depth interviewing. This practical, user-friendly text takes the novice researcher through all of the steps of an interviewing project, beginning with picking a viable and absorbing topic, gaining the confidence of interviewees, preparing questions, and the final analysis and write-up. A core purpose of the book is building confidence in beginning researchers so they can begin to interview right away and experience the excitement of learning about others’ lives and stories. Examples from the authors’ own interviews and those of professional colleagues create an engaging first-hand feel. For more experienced researchers the book examines debates in the literature on what can be learned with what kind of certainty and the appropriate role of the author in the final text. The book accomplishes this without the use of academic jargon.

Qualitative Interviewing, 2nd Edition has been totally rewritten to add new examples and to better integrate the presentation of topics. Readers will see how the choice of topic influences question wording and how the questions asked influence the analysis. Authors Herbert and Irene Rubin have improved the presentation of matters that students have most trouble with, such as finding an interesting and viable topic, recognizing concepts, learning when and how aggressively to follow up, and figuring out ways to get published.

Key Features

* Assumes no prior knowledge or experience, and its light tone reads like a conversation between the reader and the authors
* Emphasizes treating interviewees as respected partners in the research process while suggesting ways of working with those who lack understanding of what qualitative research entails
* Introduces the idea of responsive interviewing by showing the continuous flow among the choice of a research problem, finding interviewees, wording questions, and data analysis
* Provides standards by which novices can judge their initial interviews so that they can grow and improve as they go along, including thoroughness of design, rich and nuanced answers, and balanced reports backed by solid evidence from the interviews
* Provides more detail on how to recognize concepts and themes in interview data and suggests ways to word follow-up questions
* Includes tips on data gathering, ranging from handling recording devices, setting up appointments, and remaining both relaxed and alert enough to carry out an interview
* Explains how to make sure that the overall set of questions asked provides the answers needed by the researcher, while at the same time working on customized sets of questions to obtain the particular knowledge each interviewee has
* Strikes a balance among some of the more extreme schools of qualitative methodology, addressing many of their concerns while focusing on the practicalities of gathering data, writing it up, and getting published

Praise for the First Edition

“An informative, needed, philosophically grounded text that clearly conveys the complexities of how qualitative senses or meanings are made from particular data of words and deeds.”
—THE JOURNAL OF HIGHER EDUCATION