Building Relationship before Doing Interviews

As discussed a little bit with Yi on yesterday's class, I would like to share this interesting question with all of you. The key point is whether interviewees will perform differently or disguise the truth when they know the interview will be recorded.

To be honest, I had little experiences in doing interviews. But Yi told me his experience yesterday that when he had several interviews with Chinese people in China. He finds that interviewees will hide or disguise the truth. Instead, they fabricate some fake information to make short shrift of interviewer. I think there are many reasons for Chinese interviewees to behave this way. First, they may be afraid to leak some confidential information during the conversion. Second, they may feel uncomfortable if they know that they will be recorded. Thus, they may be intentionally some information. Third, they may try to avoid some negative effect on them in case their recodings is used by others to act against them. Fourth, they will respnd negatively if they know they are going to be recorded. The worst situation is that they will not give the researchers even an interview opportunity if they know that the interview is to be recorded.

As disussed above, the questions then I have is whether we have to do tape recordings when we conduct interviews? Or, there may exist a way to overcome this issue?

One solution I am thinking about is to build relationships with interviwees before interviewing them. This may specially useful in doing interviews for Chinese people. In China, building relationships with people and develop personal social networks are extremely importnat both for personal development and dealing business. There are many ways to build such relationships such as introduction by mutual friends, relatives, governments, professors and colleagues.

The introduction letter is far less enough to build relatinoships with interviewees. There are many things you could to develop your relationship with interviewees to a deep stage. For example, inviting them to have a relaxed meal, trying to watch and play sports with them if they have such interest and introducing friends who maybe helpful to them. 

After the attempt to develop relatinoships with interviewees, they may deem you as a good friend on who they can trust. This may wide up their baseline to sensitive questions and may allow you to do intervoew recordings. 

These are my thinking and some tips in doing interviews, specially for Chinese interviewees. Hope this can help.     

Case Study vs Field Study

Case study is a qualitative research method where a or multiple cases with specific context are investigated. Case study foucses on studying organizations, events and activities with its specific context, aiming to link theory to practice. In this way, it provides practical evidence to test, support or refute existing theory, as well as to develop a new theory. Therefore, case study is particularly useful in answering "how" and "why' questions, as well as identifying problems and best practices in the particular context. Schon (1983, p.50) argues that case study is vauable to the "entire process of reflection-in-action, which is central to the 'art' by whcih practitioners sometimes deal well with situations of uncertainty, instability, uniqueness and value conflict". 

Case study may take researchers either a short or long time to complete, depending on the research question. Data collection for conducting a case study may be in the form of interviews, archival documents and experiments.

Field research is about studying phenomena in their nature setting (Atkinson and Shaffir, 1998). Researchers who advocate field research contend that natural behaviour can not be captured from the outside. Field research is particularly useful when researchers want to study the natural habit of their target observations, standing from the point of view of those who are observed.

In order to collect data in field research, researchers have to pick up a particular site and stay in that site for a long period. Further, researhcers have to get used to the "local cultural" of the research site and get recognized by "local people" in the research site. Shaffir and Stebbins (1991) describes field research as a continuous process including getting in, learning the reopes, maintaining relatinoships, and leaving.

Nevertheless, whenever doing case study or field research, it is always important to pick up case(s) or research site that a) is helpful in answering research problems/questions and b) is closely related to the theoretical framework in the research paper.

Building a theory

Shirley classifies the structual of theory into five types: theory for analyzing, theory for explaining, theory for predicting, theory for explaining and predicting, and theory for design and action. Although there may be different types of theories, i am thinking how these different types of theories are derived through the well-designed process of theorizing.

There are various well-recognized theories in various disciplines (e.g. agency theory, actor-network theory, and institutional theory), whcih are used extensively used by researchers. However, it is possible to have a good 'anonymous theory' as long as it is well-theorized. One way to build a theory is to use well-recognized theories as basis and transform them to suit a specific context. Another way is to create a new theory where we have to link and bridge two or more constucts by developing a sensable process between constrcuts. Either way, a good theory 'makes a significant original contribution to knowledge'.

   

Qualitative Research and Quantitive Research, which ine is better?

Generally speaking, quantitive research aims to derive a relationship between two variables which is out there indepent of human beings while qualitative research attempts to investigate the processes in a particualr phenomena. I think there is no 'the best research approach' as qualitative research and quantitive research are based on different views. Quantitive research generates a constant relationship, which seems to create new knowledge. However, this may be too general and the 'golden rule' may not be suitable for all situations. Qualitative research focus contextual factors, which enables researhcers to gaint insight knowledge. However, complexity is introduced since each context will have a specific rule.

Really, both quantitive and qualitative research have pros and cons. Researchers could apply either one of the two research mehtod, depending on their believes and research questions. Maybe the mix use of quantitive research and qualitative research will bring a suprising result.