listening to other interviewers: Buetler example
Here are some short audioclips from an interview that John Forester conducted with Lisa Buetler at the Center for Collaborative Policy. They are arranged, with commentary, to help you notice some of the ways that interviewers can help the interviewee tell a good story.
Segment #1: starting the conversation
This clip captures the beginning of an interview. Notice John's practice of making sure to have record the time and place of the interview at the beginning of the tape. This is followed by a few seconds of what interviewee Lisa Buetler later called "ragged time." This time, which may last from several seconds to several minutes, is the period in which interviewer and interviewee are transitioning from what came before, getting comfortable with each other, and preparing themselves to begin an interview.
John helps shift into the interview itself by reminding Lisa of the consent and confidentiality documents he sent earlier. Not only does he make sure he has her understanding and approval, but he uses this as an opportunity to remind her about the purpose of what they are doing together.
Notice how he then helps Lisa focus on a single case. He reminds her that he asked her “to pick a case that you have found interesting, that you think reflects your practice and the challenges of your work.” He then provides a one-sentence overview of the ground they will cover in the intervie and checks to see if she has picked a specific case.
In this example, Lisa is struggling to choose among several cases. Notice how John helps her focus, asking “Do you have a favorite of the four?” When she continues to struggle to choose, he helps her by checking to see that one of her examples has reached a definite outcome. When she responds positively, he says definitively, “let’s do that” and moves on to an opening interview question that will help him get a quick overview of the story: “Just generally, what was the problem and where did you end up?… and then we can fill in.”
[Tip: When feasible, a telephone pre-interview to review whether your interviewee has selected a case or to help an interviewee select between several cases can save time in the interview and help both you and the interviewee come into the interview with some idea about what’s to come.]
Segment #2: Probing for details -- finding the actors
This segment shows how to ask questions that will help interviewees move from vague generalizations to specific actors and action.
John helps Lisa to begin her story with a question that will provide an overall view of what’s to be covered: “Just generally, what was the problem and where did you end up?… and then we can fill in.” Notice that as the story begins, Lisa is talking in the passive voice, one with no specific actors (e.g., “There was a great deal of contention…”) or vague, collective actors (e.g., “an advisory committee”). After listening for only a minute, John interrupts the narrative to begin to probe for specific details, and in particular, to try to learn about the actors or characters in the story. When Lisa mentions “it was all of the expected perspectives [in the conflict], he asks, “So who were the stakeholders?” When she talks about “a whole bunch of staff,” he interrupts to ask, “Which agencies were these?” When she pauses, he moves to establish the time frame: “what years?” Notice that these questions take place within the first three minutes of the narrative.
Segment #3: Probing for details -- asking "how?"
In this segment, you will hear Lisa a few minutes into her narrative. She says: “This deputy director had a vision …” and goes on to describe what he hoped to do. When she finishes the thought – and before she moves on with her story, John interrupts to ask a “how” question that will help bring out part of the practice embedded in the story: “He had a visitation one night? How did he get this idea?” As the story continues, he continues to interrupt and probe for the details about how the event came about: “He called you? … or he put out a bid?” Notice how this makes what would have been a very general reference about someone getting an idea for a meeting into a richer description of how things actually happened, or in other words, of practice. Notice also, that after John prompts Lisa to provide this level of detail (in essence, slowing the story down), she continues in that vein unprompted for quite some time (even beyond the length of this segment), providing a story with actors, action, and even dialogue. At this point, John mostly encourages her with “um-hum” and “cool,” while still probing for clarification when necessary.
Segment #4: Moving an interview along
This segment comes about ten minutes into the narrative. Lisa, after some early prompting, is providing a story full of detailed action. But now an interviewer might worry about how relevant all this detail is to the practice story, whether the interviewee is heading off on a tangent, or whether there will be enough time to get to the end of the story before the interview time runs out. In this interview, the end of the story – where the case ended up – isn’t yet clear. Notice how John interrupts to get a better picture of where things are handed: “Let’s come back to this moment [in the story plot] in a minute. Give us just a sketch of where you … what some of the agreements are that came out, and then we can fill in how you got there.”
Segment #5: Focusing on interviewee's work
In this segment, you will hear John shift the focus of the narrative from a story about another person’s work to the work of the interviewee. Lisa has been talking about the actions and skills of another person who was the catalyst for the case at hand. This provides an important context for the story, but it is important now to shift the focus to Lisa and her practice. John says, “So he had this intuition, but now you walked in … What did you do? What was that like for you?”
Then he continues to probe for specific action: “How did you do that?”
Segment #6: Probing for meaning; dealing with the "visual"
In this segment, you will see how John handles two common issues: (1) having interviewees refer to techniques or ideas that may be familiar to the interviewer, but not to future readers and (2) having an interviewee try to communicate important ideas through gestures or written diagrams.
The interviewee (Lisa) refers to “a mind map.” Notice that one of the interviewers interrupts to ask her “What’s a mind map?” This need not be because the interviewer was unfamiliar with the term, but rather, because she (a) didn’t want to assume that her understanding was the same as Lisa’s and/or (b) wanted Lisa to explain the term for future readers. Similarly, both interviewers ask for an explanation of the technique of “multi-voting” later in the segment.
Notice also that Lisa starts to draw a diagram of a mind map, the easiest way to explain the concept, but one that can’t be captured on a voice recorder. So John interrupts her, saying “No, no, no; we can’t get it on the tape. Just tell us.”