Considering quality in qualitative interviewing

TLDR

Qualitative inquiry has long debated how researchers demonstrate quality, and the expanding use of qualitative methods has led to diverse ways of reporting quality. This article argues that researchers using qualitative interviews must align their quality demonstrations with their theoretical assumptions about interview use. The author outlines several interview‑theorizing options and presents a typology that shows how quality can be demonstrated from each perspective, aiding novice researchers in design, conduct, and reporting decisions.

Abstract

Within the field of qualitative inquiry, there has been considerable discussion of how ‘quality’ might be demonstrated by researchers in reports of studies. With the growth in the application of qualitative methods in social research, along with the proliferation of texts available to qualitative researchers over the last four decades, there has been increasing diversity in how quality has been demonstrated in reports. In this article, I focus on the use of qualitative interviews in research studies, arguing that with a growing array of theorizations of the qualitative interview, researchers must demonstrate the quality of their work in ways that are commensurate with their assumptions about their use of interviews. I sketch a number of possibilities for how qualitative interviews might be theorized, and show the different ways in which quality might be demonstrated from each perspective. I propose this typology as one means by which novice researchers might begin to work through design decisions involved in the process of proposal writing, the conduct of interview studies, and the writing up and representation of findings.