ABSTRACT
Field interviews have become one of the most widely used strategies for gathering qualitative data in accounting research. Interviews are more than just information retrieval; they are conversational practices through which the researcher seeks to understand the world of the interviewees and to explore the meaning these interviewees associate with their experiences. As DiCicco-Bloom and Crabtree (2006) note, the focus of field interviews is to learn about people’s experience of and perspective on matters of interest to the research, and to use that understanding to contribute to theory and practice knowledge. In the accounting literature, interviews are used to elicit information and meaning related to accounting within a domain by exploring people’s thoughts, perceptions, attitudes, values, and experiences as they relate to particular practices and effects of accounting. Such an approach allows the accounting researcher to go beyond observable practices and measurable things to obtain information on issues and things that are not easily observable or measurable (Patton 2002).
