Interview

A couple of weeks ago I conducted a pilot interview with one of my professional peers. I initially tried to conduct this over the phone and because it is not possible to record on my phone I made notes on the interview. This proved to be an extremely difficult process and the information I collected ended up being paraphrased and sketchy. I also felt that not being able to see the person limited my appreciation of the nuances of their responses. I therefore decided to conduct the interview again in person.

The second time around I recorded the whole interview so that I could transcribe it and revisit it whenever I wanted. I did still makes notes however in case something went wrong with the recording. I also tried to create what Judith Bell describes as a 'draft schedule'. This is where I had a sequence of numbers for each question that signified a range of responses. I would circle which number was closest to the answer of the interviewee.

This process gave me an indication of the area in which the interviewees thoughts lay but I think because of my inexperience the sound recording was much more useful because it gave the detail. During future interviews I will always try to record the process because it makes analysis much easier and more accurate (there is no risk of paraphrasing to suit you purpose). I must admit though that I hadn't realised how time consuming transcribing would be. I found my transcript vital but I am slow at typing so in future I need to set aside at least five hours to transcribe a one hour interview.

I decided to make my interview semi-structured, again at the advice of Judith Bell. She writes,

The advantage of a focused interview is that a framework is established beforehand and so recording and analysis are greatly simplified. This is important for any research, but particularly so for limited-time studies (2005).

I didn't want to make my interview completely structured as I felt I needed the possibility of following where the interviewee might lead. I also didn't want to make my interview completely unstructured as I am constantly aware of my limited time scale and knew that there was certain information I needed to collect in a certain amount of time.

I think ultimately this proved the best idea because it meant I could decide what information I needed before the interview started and make sure I had it before the interview ended. It also meant that a couple of times I could ask spontaneous questions that gave me information and insight on an area that I hadn't previously considered.

I spent along time before the interview preparing my questions in much the same way as I did for my survey. Generally I tried to use open ended questions that would encourage the interviewee to give expansive, explanatory responses rather than one word answers.

Even after this careful preparation there were however times when the interviewee asked what I meant by a particular question. I think this proved to be one of the positive aspects of the interview process. I was able to clarify and explain what I meant so that the interviewee answered the question I thought I was asking. If I had been conducting other interviews this would also have been useful because I could have ensured all participants understood the question in the same way.

I did however find a problem with explaining what I meant by a particular question. I occasionally found myself saying, "The reason I'm asking 'A' is because I want to know if 'B' or 'C' happens." I think my clarification sometimes lead the interviewee to give an answer they may not have given without prompting. Now I am aware of this I will try not to do it in future.

The interview itself was very illuminating. I used it specifically to discover my professional peer's experience of their vocational training, what has been required of them in their profession, and how they think their training has impacted this.

One of the interesting discoveries was that even though the interviewee trained on a musical theatre course, the course itself was very much taught from an acting perspective and this was the reason for their choice.

By going to 'School A' I knew I was going somewhere more weighted in acting, so it wasn't really a surprise that the majority of classes included voice, voice and text, playtext, acting theory, stage combat and neutral mask. Things like the voice and playtext classes would have about three classes timetabled in the week compared to maybe one or two of each style of dance.

It was also interesting that the interviewee believes they are an actor who just happens to work in musical theatre and that the majority of work they have done has been in character driven shows such as Les Miserables and Woman in White.

The interviewee still believes in the importance of versatility however,

I think it is vital to be versatile, especially given the competition and lack of work within the industry. I think it is important to know you strengths but in order to be open to the maximum amount of work I think you need to be versatile.

The analysis of interviews is difficult and I intend do a lot of reading over the next few months on how to effectively draw conclusions from the qualitative statements of expert individuals. Regarding this interview, I found it difficult to draw extensive conclusions because I had nothing to compare it to. It sits as a lone opinion. Judith Bell writes, 'So, we must be wise and vigilant, critical of out interpretation of the data, regularly question our practice and wherever possible triangulate' (2005).

For my professional inquiry I intend to use interviews as the primary data collection tool because I think they uncover such depth of information. They don't just tell what happens but give you the reasons why as well. I am however going to make sure I select a wide enough range of people to give a rounded view of the questions being asked so as to eliminate any possible bias.