SOC 220 - November 3
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Overview
Jeff Brassard explains practical qualitative interview methods, from designing a flexible interview guide and asking open questions to protecting participants, recording consent, taking field notes, and reflecting on interviewer influence. He compares manual transcription, which can take 3 to 6 hours per audio hour, with AI tools such as Otter.ai, emphasizing that automated transcripts still require checking and raise privacy concerns, especially for focus groups.
Key takeaways
- A useful interview guide is a loose plan, not a questionnaire to administer in order: Brassard recommends about 10 to 15 questions for an hour and 15 to 20 for two hours.
- Indirect questions ask what participants believe other people think, and follow-up questions can establish whether the participant personally shares that view.
- Informed consent requires advance notice of sensitive topics and clear agreement about recording; comments shared off the record cannot be assumed usable.
- AI transcription tools such as Otter.ai can return an hour of audio in about 30 minutes to an hour, but researchers still need to verify accuracy and speaker attribution.
- Focus groups are especially challenging for AI transcription because cross-talk and multiple voices make speaker identification unreliable.
- Field notes should capture not only interview content but also setting, interruptions, current events, and the interviewer's own conduct, all of which may influence responses.
Chapters
- The final exam is scheduled for Saturday, December 12, at 5:30 p.m.
- The location is the Computer Science Center, in a basement room tucked behind work areas near the Student Union Building and Agriculture/Forestry Building.
- Brassard advises finding the room before exam day and dressing in layers because the room may be very cold or hot.
- Students with scheduling conflicts should contact Brassard, but formal deferrals require faculty approval and illness procedures must be followed on exam day.
- An interview guide, also called a script or interview schedule, is a loose sequence of questions rather than a fixed script.
- For a one-hour interview, plan roughly 10 to 15 questions; for a two-hour interview, about 15 to 20.
- Use broad, open-ended questions tied to the research issue, avoiding narrow questions that invite only yes-or-no answers.
- Choose language for the participants: specialist terms may suit experts, while everyday wording is better for general participants.
- Research participants' backgrounds and the topic before meeting so they do not have to explain basic field knowledge.
- Test recording equipment in advance; Brassard notes that his lecture microphone failed to charge because it was not properly connected.
- Avoid interviewing at either person's home; use a public but reasonably private location, such as a library room with windows, a cafe, phone, or Zoom.
- Use active listening through brief acknowledgments and clarifying prompts, and stay present instead of planning the next question while someone answers.
- Interviewers should research the subject and approach participants gently, sensitively, and openly.
- Write brief shorthand notes, such as a reminder about private land, instead of interrupting a participant's story to ask every question immediately.
- Keep the focus on participants rather than repeatedly inserting personal anecdotes or making the interview about the interviewer.
- Allow relevant detours, but return to the guide tactfully by checking the question list and explaining that you want to respect the participant's time.
- An introducing question opens a topic or invites a story, such as asking how someone moved from British television work to a job in Moscow.
- Follow-up questions rephrase a participant's answer and invite elaboration, for example asking what they meant by saying they felt motivated.
- Probing questions seek depth or examples with prompts such as “How so?” or “Can you give me an example?”
- Specifying questions establish factual sequence and detail, including “What did you do then?” and “What happened next?”
- Direct questions ask participants about their own experiences or views, such as whether they like their boss or find customer service difficult.
- Indirect questions ask what participants think other people believe, such as how coworkers view management's treatment of staff.
- Asking how a group is perceived can reveal a participant's own perspective, but Brassard recommends following up to check whether they share that view.
- Interviewing guides often suggest saving direct questions until the middle because they can feel leading, although Brassard says he does not rigidly follow that advice.
- Structuring questions signal a shift in topic, such as telling a participant that you want to move on to another area of the interview guide.
- A short silence can give participants time to reflect and expand an answer, especially in focus groups, but excessive silence can make them uncomfortable.
- Interpreting questions check that the interviewer understood correctly by restating a possible meaning and asking the participant to confirm or clarify it.
- Brassard identifies these question forms as skills students can practice in mini-assignment number five.
- The interviewer's main job is to listen and prompt, not dominate the conversation with information the interviewer already knows.
- Sensitive topics, including clerical sexual abuse, require informed consent and advance notice rather than being unexpectedly introduced during an interview or focus group.
- Ease into difficult subjects and pull back if a participant becomes uncomfortable; participants should know what topics to expect.
- Vignette questions use a short scenario to elicit likely responses, such as asking what someone would do after encountering a professor who repeatedly jokes about furries.
- After each interview, document how it went, the participant's reactions, and the interviewer's own impressions.
- Record setting details such as interruptions in a library room, cafe noise, or cold air from a frequently opening door.
- Note current events that might shape responses, such as conducting an interview the day before or after an election or referendum.
- Interview topics can include values, beliefs, work and family roles, relationships, places, feelings, encounters, and stories passed down by relatives.
- Interviews are commonly recorded on phones with clip-on or stand-mounted microphones, making later transcription easier.
- Include recording plans in the information and consent letter, then ask again before turning the device on and tell the participant when recording stops.
- Clarify what is on the record and off the record; information shared outside the recording must not be treated as publishable without permission.
- If a participant shares something valuable after recording stops, ask whether it can be included and take notes only if they agree.
- Manual transcription can take 5 to 6 hours for one hour of audio, or around 3 hours for a practiced transcriber; transcription pedals help control playback.
- Tools such as Otter.ai can produce a transcript in roughly 30 minutes to an hour, greatly reducing turnaround time.
- AI transcription commonly mishears speech and marks unclear passages as inaudible, so researchers must listen back and correct the transcript.
- Focus-group transcripts are particularly difficult because cross-talk and multiple participants make it hard for AI to identify who said what.
- Researchers should verify AI-generated transcripts against the audio and fill in passages marked inaudible when careful listening makes them recoverable.
- AI transcription can compress large projects from years of transcription work to months, but it has already reduced work for professional transcribers.
- Uploading sensitive interviews to external AI services raises data-security concerns; Brassard contrasts relatively permissive Canadian practice with stricter expectations in Denmark.
- Some industry researchers limit exposure by submitting only one or two sentences at a time when checking confidential company documents.
- Treat the interview guide as flexible: change question order, cross off completed topics, and follow up on inconsistencies as a natural conversation develops.
- Prepare for equipment failures by bringing a backup device or rescheduling; if recording is refused, take written jottings when rescheduling is not possible.
- Write field notes immediately after the interview and seek permission before using anything a participant says after recording ends.
- During analysis, reflect on how your tone, posture, mood, or impatience may have shaped what participants said or chose not to say.
Transcript excerpt
0:02 Excuse me. What's this here? What are those there? What is it? What is it? What is it? What is it over here?
0:57 What is this up here? What is it? What is it over >> Okay.
2:33 Feel like I'm losing my voice there, so I see how long this lasts. All right. So, we were going to get started in a second here. Um First of all, I don't know which of you did something mean to these scheduling robots. Um But, uh the final exam for the course, the date and location have both been announced, and on both counts, it's a doozy. Um so, the exam is on December 12th at 5:30 p.m. By the way, that's a Saturday. That's just how I wanted to use my Saturday, and I know you did, too. Uh right? Come to campus for 5:30 p.m. Um
3:20 Okay. So, that is the date and time of the exam, and again, I will email or remind as we go forward. The location is CSC, which I believe is the Computer Science Center. Which Yeah, it's like between Athabasca Hall and behind it, between that and like and yeah, the engineering building. I will say, as someone who had a class scheduled there last year, it sucks. Um it's honestly a terrible, awful, no-good building. It's super cold in that room, so dress warmly. Um or maybe wear layers because it might also be boiling hot, you never know.
4:08 It's a really brutal room. I'm sorry, they didn't give me a choice. Oh, yeah, it is, too. Yeah, it's but getting it to it through at the basque area is weirdly complicated. So, I would say, um you know, as you're planning your final exam season, maybe take a walk on over and find it. Um cuz
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Related notes
Summary, takeaways, and chapters were generated by AI from the video's transcript and may contain errors. The video belongs to its creator, Jeff Brassard.