ABSTRACT
The research interview is a data collection method in which participants provide information about their behavior, thoughts, or feelings in response to questions posed by an interviewer. Unlike most of the observational methods discussed in chapter 11, interviews always involve some form of interaction between the investigator and the respondent, and this factor distinguishes the technique from self-administered questionnaire methods (see chap. 15) in which respondents sometimes never see, much less interact with, a researcher. The interactive nature of the interview, and its dependence on verbal or linguistic responses, constitutes at one and the same time its major strength and its major drawback as a method of social research.
