Re-Evaluation of my Pilot Interview

After talking with Stephanie via comments on my blog I realized I hadn't really focused my pilot interview post on the outcomes of the experience but I instead only concentrated on the data collected; maybe I should have explained more what I considered of this tool of practice, so I'm going to do that now.

As I mentioned in my previous post I overall found that the tool of interviewing was proficient and I will definitely use it for my plan of inquiry, what I should have said also is that the email interview is probably not the best way to interview someone for several reasons I will explain.

First of all you can't really interact in real time with the person interviewed so the answers are most likely going to be topic related to the the questions without the freedom for the interviewee of exploring further what has been asked with a great opportunity to change path completely finding new interesting information.

What an interview by email can't do compared to interviewing someone over the phone/Skype or in person, is that it gives you the opportunity to observe the body language and listen to the voice tone of who you are talking to ( also linked to the interesting discoveries I found in my previous post ), this can give you a better analysis and understanding of the answers given, giving you the opportunity to interpret more what has been said.

Here I summed up the pros and cons of an interview undertaken via email and the evaluations I made.

Pros:

-Via email I can express in words what’s the project about and therefore the interviewee can re-read the presentation as many time as they need to fully understand the purpose of it all.

-It’s a quick way to get a response. The interviewee may not have time to travel and spend part of the day with me in person.

-It’s also less stressful for me. Having to listen to everything said trying not to loose any important statements along the way can be a hard task for the researcher. 

-In person an interview requires an enormous focus by the interviewer as everything said and everything seen can be source for analysis. I consider video typing an helpful tool to use when interviewing but not always you are in the appropriate environment or are allowed to set a camera and record. With an email this isn't an issue.

Cons:

-It’s not very productive when you don’t actually get a response back. It has to be considered that the person interviewed may not find the time or the importance to write back, and not having to respond in person he/she can take the decision of not replaying at all. I experienced not getting a response back or simply a replay for only part of my set questions. That is half of the information needed and can cause complication to complete a good analysis.

-In my case one of the people I interviewed was Japanese and she encountered some difficulties on understanding the questions. That put me in a delicate situation as I wasn’t sure I was crossing an ethical issue or if I wasn't expressing myself properly and I had to re-consider writing the questions simplifying them specifically for her. Turned out that in this particular case it was more beneficial for me interviewing her in person (Pilot Focus Group post).

-Body language and personality are two of the main things important to focus on when interviewing, this obviously combined with the actual data received. Therefore another down side of interviewing when emailing. 

Hope this give a better explanation of how useful I considered this interview experience and also the difficulties that it can generate. Any thoughts and suggestions are more than welcome!!!