1. Community Development PLAN 6573
Interviewing
Community Development
PLAN 6573

2. 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?

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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

9. 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

10. 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

11. 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?

12. 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

13. 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

14. 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

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