Community Development PLAN 6573 Interviewing Community Development PLAN 6573

Who to Interview? Key stakeholders in your community Residents Local Politicians Planners Community organizations Churches Community Development corporations Each student should try to do at least 3 interviews Who to Interview?

Qualitative Interview vs. Survey Some qualities of qualitative interviews Based on an interaction and dialogue between interview and interviewee General plan of inquiry rather than specific set of questions Relatively informal conversational style Data is being created or reconstructed rather than excavated “Facts” depend on the context or situation. The interviewer and interviewee create the data Qualitative Interview vs. Survey

When to use Qualitative Interviews You are exploring a phenomena Don’t have a good grasp of the issues Ex. How is gentrification changing your life? You believe people’s perceptions, experiences, values are important factors of social reality When to use Qualitative Interviews

Developing the Qualitative Questionnaire Start with Big Research Question How do residents feel about the future of their neighborhood? Develop subcategories How do they feel about Columbia’s expansion? What about CU’s expansion troubles them? Does it matter if they are a homeowner? Developing the Qualitative Questionnaire

Developing the Qualitative Questionairre Develop questions Interview tips Minimize the effort of the respondent Make questions clear Avoid double-barreled questions Did you graduate from college and immediately begin working? Avoid jargon Does ULURP need to be streamlined? Developing the Qualitative Questionairre

Recording Qualitative data Will get verbatim responses May inhibit frankness Write notes Respondents may be more open Forces you to summarize the data and pay attention May have to skip something Can’t focus on questions Recording Qualitative data

Analyzing Qualitative data Once you transcribe your data you will have pages of interviews and hours of tape How do you make sense of this? Reread transcripts? Rely on memory of important points? Relisten to tapes? Most qualitative researchers try to organize their data to make sense of it Aim is to look for PATTERNS in the data Analyzing Qualitative data

Coding Qualitative Data Most qualitative analysts create codes or indexes for their data The organizing principle or coding unit is typically the CONCEPT Could also code words, sentences, etc. Generally three types of coding classes Common Special theoretical Coding Qualitative Data

What do we do with the Codes? You might wish to organize them into themes If interviewing residents about Manhattanville we might have themes like Fears of biohazards Overwhelmed by students The themes can help you to generate theories to explain some phenomena What do we do with the Codes?

Credibility Checks Respondent Validation Comparative Validation Respondent can provide additional context, confirm your interpretation Comparative Validation Look for recurring themes Do the same stories and answers reappear in different cases Credibility Checks

Mechanics of Coding Manually Computers Create folders for each code Create files for each theme Computers Use spreadsheets Word processing to search Computer Aided Qualitative Data Analysis Ethnograph Nud*ist Atlas-ti Qualpro Mechanics of Coding

Credibility in Qualitative Analysis Transcribe data verbatim Provide examples of text Have someone else code some of your data in addition to your coding (Intercoder reliability) Provide a thick detailed description Credibility in Qualitative Analysis

References Qualitative Researching by Jennifer Mason, Chapters 2 & 8 On reserve in Avery library References