Monday 3 August 2009

Structuring an interview report

My research depends a lot on interview data so how do I structure an interview report? Kvale suggests:
  • Thematising
  • Method
  • Results
  • Discussion
Thematising: state the purpose, concepts and theoretical understanding, review the literature and formulate research questions.
Method: state design, interviewing transcribing and analysis. Describe methods so the reader can ascertain the relevance of the design for the topic and purpose of the investigation to evaluate the trustworthiness and to be able to replicate the investigation.
Results: state analysis and verification. Overview the main findings. Evaluate reliability, validity and generalisation.
Discussion: discuss overall implications. Discuss relevance of findings to the research questions and the theoretical and practical implication of the findings.

I guess that this is about the same as the PhD thesis structure. But do I write such a report for each interview? for each group of interviews related to the same project? or for all the interviews that I collect? The first two sections, thematising and method, should be the same for all the interviews I do, but results differ, so the discussion must differ for each interview and for each project, which is why I expect to write a chapter, for each case study, a case study being around one project. Hence, four case studies should lead to four chapters in the dissertation. Then there must be another chapter on results, and a chapter that discusses the implications from all four case studies.

And I wonder how I can fit in the information I'm getting from ad-hoc interviews with people who aren't on a particular project. Perhaps my supervisors will have a good idea - I'll ask them sometime.

Kvale, 1996, InterViews: introduction to qualitative research interviewing (page 263)

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