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The Qualitative Interviewing – experts course equips you with an in-depth understanding, critical knowledge and advanced skills for interviewing experts as key actors of knowledge generation in political and social research. A unique feature of the course is its emphasis on critical application of knowledge through practical training and hands-on experience in designing and conducting expert interviews in various contexts. It teaches you how to enhance data generation, practice reflexivity and address ethical and legal issues in interview research. Based on interpretivist epistemology, the course guides you through key phases of qualitative interviewing. We begin with essential knowledge for designing interview research, including philosophical, methodological and theoretical underpinnings and definitions of ‘experts’. We then discuss and practice fieldwork preparation strategies, ranging from the participant selection and gaining access to interviewing techniques, designing interview questions and ethics forms. From there, we focus on navigating interviewer-interviewee relationships, interactions, positionality, technology and other factors of influence integral to the method. We critically examine them through practical experience of conducting interviews with experts and peers. We outline approaches to data management and engage in initial stages of analysis in relation to both ‘by hand’ and computer assisted qualitative data analysis.
The course concludes with discussions on reflexivity, critical self-assessment and scientific criteria in relation to your own interview experience. The course is designed to give you specialist knowledge, skills and expertise for conducting advanced interviews with experts to generate valuable knowledge and mitigate the risks of biased data generation, misrepresentation and under-theorisation of data.
