The Dynamics of Information Interviewing

Author(s): Theodore Caplow

Source: American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 62, No. 2, Of Sociology and the Interview (Sep.,
1956), pp. 165-171
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
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THE DYNAMICS OF INFORMATION INTERVIEWING

THEODORE CAPLOW

ABSTRACT
Information interviews and therapeutic interviews are distinct but related. Most interviewers are stil
inadequately trainecl. Rules of interviewing are designed either to conserve the neutrality of the questioner or
to facilitate the self-expression of the respondent. Being interviewed is ordinarily gratifying to the respondent, because of specific devices which facilitate his role. Under ideal coniditions, the interviewer's role
becomes highly attenuated, yet never without effect.

The interview may be defined as a twopersonconversation,conductedby one of the

participants in accordance with a definite
program.'Because it resembles many situations which arise spontaneouslyand without
any commitment to a technique, the interview is often regarded as simpler and more
"natural"than it really is. The theme of this
paper is that the situation is governed by a
number of principles almost independent of
the content of the conversation.
In general, there seem to be two types of
interview. Both involve an interviewerwith
a plan for asking questions and a respondent
whose statements are the content of the
interview. If the conversation is held in
orderto modify the behavior of the respondent, it is a therapeuticinterview.2If the purpose is to inform the interrogator on particular matters, it is an information interview.3
In the last decade there has been a great
deal of work on the technique of the information interview by the half-dozen leading
1
Cf. definitions of the interview in: Pauline
Young, Scientific Social Surveys and Research (New
York: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1949), p. 243; F. J.
Roethlisberger and W. J. Dickson, Management and
thleWorker (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1950), p. 271; Sidney and Beatrice Webb, Methods of
Social Stludy (London, New York, and Toronto:
Longnians, Green & Co., 1932); Eleanor E. Maccoby
and Nathan Maccoby, "The Interview: A Tool of
Social Science," in Gardner Lindzey, Handbook of
Social Psychology (Cambridge: Addison-Wesley
Publishing Co., 1954), Vol. I, chap. xii; R. K.
Merton, M. Fiske, and P. Kendall, The Focussed
Interview (New York: Bureau of Applied Social
Research, Columbia University, 1952), p. 2; Anne
F. Fenlason, Essentials in Interviewing (New York:
Harper & Bros., 1952), p. 3.

agencies of public opinion and market research. Many of their results came into the
public domainfor the first time in 1954, with
the publication of two authoritative accounts, one by IHyman4and his associates,
the other by the Maccobys.5 These document a very thorough exploration of question-wording and questionnaire design, of
distortions in recording and coding responses, and of biases introduced by the interviewer's perception of the respondent or
the respondent's perception of the interviewer.
There has been, however, remarkably
little experimenting with variations in the
interview or the comnportmentof the interviewer. The National Opinion Research
Center, which conductedmost of the studies
on interviewer affect reported by Hyman,
2 Clear descriptions of current practice may be
found in Harrington V. Ingham and Leonore R.
Love, The Process of Psychotherapy (New York:
McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1954), and Felix Deutsch,
Applied Psychoanalysis (New York: Grune &
Stratton, 1949). The most thorough consideration
of the therapeutic interview as a procedure may be
found in Merton Gill, Richard Newman, and Frederick C. Redlich, The Initial Interview in Psychiatric
Practice (with accompanying phonograph records)
(New York: International Universities Press, Inc.,
1954).
3 A similar division into "situation" and "egocentric" interviews was proposed by Ralph Berdie
more than a decade ago (Journal of Social Psycizology,XVIII, First Half (August, 1943), 3-3 1.
4Herbert H. lIyman, with William J. Cobb,
Jacob J. Feld-nan, Clyde W. Hart, and Charles H1.
Stember, Interviewing in Social Research (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1954).
6

Maccoby and Maccoby, op. cit.

165

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166

THE AMERlCAN JOURNAL OF SOC1OLOGY

and the other agencies were committed to a

fairly rigid operation, using a staff of parttime, low-paid interviewers, mostly female,
white, college-educated, and urban,6 who
seldomhad had long or intensive experience
in interviewing. NORC interviewers are reported to average about eight assignments
a year, each of which can be completed in
two or three days. Contact with field staffs
is maintainedby letters and written instructions. The training is necessarily short, and
the turnover of interviewers is high. Under
these conditions, highly standardized, simple methods of interrogation and note-taking are almost the only choice.7 Bettertrained interviewers could achieve better
results.8
Interviewing performed personally by a
fully professionalanalyst is by no means uncommon.9It occurs in many small-scale investigations, includinga large proportion of
theses and dissertations. Moreover, in a few
projects an entire staff of professional persons engages in the interviewing of a large
population.10In the experience of these investigators, generalizationsabout the interviewer affect and the reliability and validity
of interview data, based on studies of relatively untrained interviewers, can probably
not be applied to the work of highly trained
interviewers, and there is as yet no reliable
body of knowledge about the technique of
interviewing by experts. Many of the tech6See Hyman et al., op. cit., Table 28, p. 153,
"Composition of National Field Staffs."
7For a quantitative account of interviewer
error under controlled conditions see Lester Guest,
"A Study of Interviewer Competence,"International
Journal of Opinion and Attitude Research, Vol. I,
No. 4 (December, 1947). In that study fifteen halftrained interviewers reported the responses of a
"planted" respondent. The interviews, also recorded
by a concealed machine, contained a total of 279
"cseriouserrors." More recent material on interview
error is summarized by Harper W. Boyd, Jr., and
Ralph Westfall, "Interviewers as a Source of Error
in Surveys," Journal of Marketing, Vol. XIX, No. 4
(April, 1955).
8 Hyman

et al., op. cit., p. 191.

For a recent instance see George C. Homans,

"The Cash Posters," American Sociological Review,
Vol. XIX, No. 6 (December, 1954).
10For cxample, the Strategic Bombing Surveys.

niques of interviewing await systematic

test. Among these are the group interview,
the conferenceinterview, the participant interview, the repeated interview and respondent training, etc.
We are thus in the curious position of
knowing a great deal about the reliability
and validity of interview data under mediocre conditions and almost nothing about
reliability and validity under optimum conditions. The latter might involve the following: (a) highly qualifiedinterviewers, familiar with the purpose of the study; (b) extensive training, including several hundred
hours of field experience; (c) continuous experimentation-briefing, quality control,
and schedule revision in the early phases of
data collection; (d) intensive and continuous
discussion in the interviewing staff of intuitive impressionsand of preliminaryanalysis, so that the interviewer develops the
highest possible awareness of the situation
in which he meets the respondent; (e) the
use of both mechanical recording (for completeness and verification) and notes (for
interpretation and continuity); and (f) rigorous control of sampling, with no selection
of respondents by the interviewer.
Despite the unsolved problems of quality
control in current interviewing practice,
there is surprising agreement among specialists in various fields on the fundamental
principles of the method." Generallyspeaking, interviewing proceeds in four stages:
first, the preparation of the schedule or
guide by which the interview will be con"1Authoritative statements, although with quite
different emphases, may be found in Roethlisberger
and Dickson, op. cit., chap. xiii, "The Interviewing
Method"; Alfred D. Kinsey, Wardell B. Pomeroy,
and Clyde E. Martin, Sexual Behavior in the Human
Male (Philadelphia and London: W. B. Saunders
Co., 1948), chap. ii, "Interviewing"; Young, op. cit.,
chap. xiii, "The Interview"; William J. Goode and
Paul K. Hatt, Methods in Social Research (New
York, London, and Toronto: McGraw-Hill Book
Co., Inc., 1952), chap. xi, "The Interview as a
Tool in Field Exploration"; W. V. Bingham and
B. V. Moore, How To Interview (3d rev. ed.; New
York and London: Harper & Bros., 1941), chap. ii,
"Learning How To Interview"; and R. C. Oldfield,
The Psychology of the Interview (3d ed.; London:
Methuen & Co., Ltd., 1947), esp. chap. v, "The
Conduct of the Interview."

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THE DYNAMICS OF INFORMATIONINTERVIEWING

ducted; second, the development of an approach or self-introductionwhich will minimize the refusal rate and launch the interview without confusion;third, the questioning and listening, or what may be called the
"conversation,' spontaneous on one side
only; fourth, the recordingof data, whether
during the interview or by subsequent
recall.
The principles of interviewing most generally agreed on are these:
1. The interviewershouldnot interjecthis
own attitude or experiencesinto the conversation or express value judgments. When he
is forced to offer attitudes or experiences as
a means of preserving the illusion of conversation, they should be assumed and neutral:
the skilled interviewer makes an extraordinary effort not to display any reaction
which is capable of modifying the respondent's self-image and the direction of his expression.

2. Because any sequence of questions

structures the subject matter, the interview
schedule should have the minimum number
of questions in the simplest form adaptable
to the problem. A model interview might
consist only of the announcementof a topic,
followed by a series of questions in the form,
"What about... ?" The program of the
interview should not be discussed in detail
with the respondent and should not be emphasized as the interview proceeds.
3. The responsewhich can be anticipated
from a question is often quite differentfrom
the logical complement of the question.
The question "How many baseball games
have you attended during the past month?"
formally anticipates a numericalanswer and
will usually involve the naming of particular
occasions.12
12 Empirical expectation often involves far more
subtle considerations than this. Thus the Kinsey interviews involved the deliberate loading of questions
toward the uncommon behavior, in order to facilitate disclosure of sensitive material. The review
committee of the American Statistical Association,
which evaluated the methods of the study, was
somewhat uncertain about the validity of this procedure (W. G. Cochran, Frederick Mosteller, and
John W. Tukey, "Statistical Problems of the Kinsey
Report," Journal of the American Statistical Association, Vol. XLVIII, No. 264 [December, 1953]).

167

4. All interview schedules and questions

entail certain unpredictable effects. In the
present state of knowledge it is not possible
to predict with assurance which questions
will work best with a given population and
which will be unintelligibleor unproductive.
Questions which produce the greatest yield
of informationwith the least effort are often
enigmatic: they may contain pointed ambiguities or happy phrasings which cannot
possibly be recognized in advance or ideas
which correspond to something in the subject's world of which the investigator is not
even aware.
5. The attitude of the interviewertoward
the respondent should always be extremely
attentive and concentrated.Practice in verbatim recall gives the intervieweran extraordinary sensitivity to the words and gestures
of the respondent. This in itself seems to
have an influenceupon the respondent'sbehavior, sometimes producing a kind of uninhibited communication quite different
from the unstructuredconversation of ordinary life. There is some resemblance to the
interaction of hypnotist and subject, an element of suggestibility being always present
in the successful interview.
6. The expert interviewer is much more
than a recordingdevice. No matter what the
form of the interview, he should pursue his
questioningto the point where no significant
ambiguities exist for him.
Although the question has not been fully
explored, it is generally believed in research
agencies that the rate of refusal is more or
less subject to control. In a notable study,
Heneman and Paterson'3 have reported
their ability to reduce an initial refusal rate
of 18 per cent in a sampling study of the St.
Paul labor market to an eventual figure of
about 1 per cent. There is somewhat scattered and fragmentary evidence that interview-seeking procedurebased upon preliminary experiment and flexibleenough to meet
unusual circumstances will ordinarily lead
13 Herbert G. Heneman, Jr., and Donald G.
Paterson, "Refusal Rates and Interviewer Quality,"
International Journal of Opinion and Attitude Research, III, No. 3 (fall, 1949), 392-98. The improvement was effected by systematic improvement
of interviewer selection, training, and supervision.

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168

THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

to the acceptance of the interview by all but

a tiny fraction of those approached.
There have been very few attempts to
study the motivation of the respondent. In
Merton's study of Craftown,14interviewers
asked each of the 617 respondents a final
question: "The interview is over now, and
I'd like your frank opinion. How did you
really feel about being interviewed all this
time?" The free responses to this question
were classified as six distinct reactions or
definitions of the situation. The interview
was experienced(1) as a democratic channel
for the expression of opinion, (2) as an intellectually demanding experience, (3) as a
moral inventory, (4) as part of an institutionalized pattern of social surveys, (5) as
having an ego- and status-buildingfunction,
(6) as catharsis. The 617 interviews represented a considerable range of situations,
and the answers obtained might not have
been strictly comparable. It is equally notable, however, that different images of the
interviewer combined with different definitions of the meaning of the interview did not
result in immediately ascertainable differences in response.
The two most important interview
studies which have been reported (excluding
the Censusand other routine enumerations),
namely, the Western Electric study of employee morale and the Indiana studies of
sexual behavior, drew very heavily upon
voluntary respondents. The first, to insure
that the research would not be interpreted
as a managementprogram, used 21,126 volunteers. The second, because the subject of
deviant sexual behavior is taboo, has already enlisted 20,000 subjects and proposes
eventually to interview 100,000 voluntary
respondents.
In the Western Electric studies the interview was offered to workers in the Hawthorne plant as a personnel service. The research staff seems to have been surprisedat
the extent to which the offer was accepted15
and at the interest in being interviewed in
connection with a programwhich might not
14 Robert K. Merton, "Selected Problems of
Field Work in the Planned Community," American
Sociological Review,XII, No. 3 (June, 1947), 304-12.

lead to an improvement of working conditions or to any other practical result. Roethlisbergerand Dickson suggest a quasi-therapeutic explanation.16
The Kinsey Report poses the question of
ulterior goals even more sharply. Unlike the
Western Electric situation, where the worker was at least offered a short respite from
his work and a chance of influencingthe environment of the plant, the Kinsey study
offers no obvious inducements to its participants ;17 the interviewers believe that emotional catharsis is not an important factor
in the typical pattern of response. They do
not credit themselves with many cures of
sexual neuroses and do not believe that
many of their subjects were seeking therapy
in the interview.18
In the ordinary survey interview the respondent often has solid motives for refusing. The interviewer interrupts the harried
housewife or the busy executive for his own
purposes.Yet, if the request for an interview
is appropriately phrased and his manner
reasonablypolite and self-confident,he may
count on getting effective co-operationfrom
the vast majority of those approached.This
occurs whether or not the respondent is told
that he will benefit from the findings of the
research and even when the situation itself
is somewhat frustrating.19Indeed, the question of how to carry the interview, once be1 They refer to "the unexpected response which
the program received from both employers and
supervisors" (Roethlisberger and Dickson, op. cit.,
pp. 194 and 199).
"6Ibid., pp. 227-28.
17
With the minor exceptions of certain professionals paid for their time and of institutional
inmates who welcome a conversation with an outsider.
18 Personal communication from Drs. Pomeroy
and Martin, March, 1954.
19Professor Ren6 Koenig, in a public lecture,
reports a training exercise in which students in his
seminar in Zurich devised a public opinion questionnaire which violated all the usual rules for
maintaining rapport and in which every question
was designed to embarrass or confuse the respondent. The purpose of this exercise was to acquaint students with the circumstances under which
refusal takes place. But, as it turned out, they were
circumvented by the patient co-operationl of most
subjects.

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THE DYNAMICS OF INFORMATION INTERVTEWING

gun, to its conclusionhardly ever arises for

the experienced interviewer unless something has gone extraordinarilywrong in the
design of the study or in the episodes of a
particular interview. The momentum of the
situation is such that even very long interviews are seldom halted by the respondent
unless the interviewer himnselfshows strain
or confusion.20
The hypothesis here proposed is that being interviewed is an inherently satisfying
experienceand ordinarilyconstitutes its own
goal. The respondentdoes not need a special
motive for his part in the conversation:
whether or not any practical inducement is
offered hardly matters. The quality and
quantity of the information secured probably depend far more upon the competenceof
the interviewer than upon the respondent.
The foregoing notions refer, of course, to
the informationinterview conducted in connection with social research under the general rules previously described. Elements of
coercionor of ritual, as in the taking of testimoonyunder oath or the catechism, may
alter the situation beyond recognition.21
If being interviewed is its own reward,
the explanation might be sought in interaction. It has come to be increasinglyclear
that much social activity cannot be explained in terms of ulterior goals but is selfmotivating.22Somewhere in the course of
socialization, interaction comes to be as
"natural," as spontaneous, and as essential
to the maintenance of the psyche as is the
continuation of metabolism to the maintenance of the organism.
Verbal interaction, or conversation,when
it occurs between two people speaking the
same language and having a sufficiently
20
A recent study reports the use of eight-hour
interviews! (Neal Gross and Ward S. Mason, "Some
Methodological Problems of Eight-Hour Interviews," American Journal of Sociology, LIX, No. 3
[November, 1953], 197-204).
21
The catechism is a special case of the interview
in which the responses as well as the questions are
prescribed but with the assumption of freedom in
the giving orwithholding of the appropriate answers.

22 See the excellent discussion of the forms of

interaction in Kingsley Davis, Human Society (New
York: Macmillan Co., 1949), pp. 147-69.

169

common frame of reference to be mutually

intelligible, may be visualized as a play of
invitation and resistances.23Each party to
it serves the purpose of the other overtly, in
that he provides a stimulus, acts as an audience, and permits the conversation to continue, with whatever symbolic or practical
gain may be in view. He simultaneouslyrepresents a problem for the other in so far as
he may forestall these gratifications. Such
may be the case if the discussion leads to
frustration rather than clarification, if a
plan of action is blocked, or if disapproval
of attitudes is expressed. The two participants in a conversation are both means and
barriersfor each other.24
There is a parallel contradiction in the
form of a conversation, considered apart
from its content. In the nature of the situation, only one of the participantsmay speak
at one time (except for minor overlapping),
and his speaking places the other under an
obligation to listen. Neither speaking nor
listening is unequivocally advantageous.
The participant who gains his principal satisfactions from his own speaking encounters
a resistance in the unstructured conversation to the extent that his partner also
wishes to be heard. On the other hand, the
participant whose chief aimnis to hear information or expressionswhich can be provided
by the other is frustrated when he must
speak instead.
23 This is not always literally applicable to "functional" conversations, i.e., those which have overt
consequences. The description given here assumes
that the subject of the conversation does not lead
to immediate action by either party.

24 This emerges very clearly in another special

case of the interview situation-cross-examination.
Cross-examination differs from the interview
chiefly in the emphasis placed on the few selected
statements crucial to the case at issue. These
are usually known or surmised in advance. The
strategy of aggressive questioning is intended
to break down the defenses established by the
witness around the crucial statements. One eminent lawyer avers that "a lawyer should never
ask a witness on cross-examination a question
unless, in the first place, he knew what the answer
would be, or, in the second place, he didn't care"
(David Graham, quoted in Francis L. Wellman,
The Art of Cross-examination [New York: Macmillan Co., 1927], p. 23).

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170

THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

Whether or not any given conversation

will continue depends, of course, upon the
balance of satisfaction and deprivations
which occur in the course of it. It depends
on other things as well-for example, the
reciprocalroles of the participants, their inclination to habitual conversation, the presence or absence of immediate alternatives,
the expectation that an unsatisfactory conversation will improve, etc. A pair of rational conversationalists whose conversational
goal had been adequately definedwould theoretically be able to find satisfying strategy.
To some extent this is what actually occurs
between familiars, and it accounts for the
relative facility with which conversation
proceeds in the intimate circle of the family
or between fellow-workersin long association. In such cases progressive adjustment
has made each participant able to predict
both the content and the organization of
what the other will say. As we move away
from the familiar and intimate situation,
such adjustment becomes more difficult and
less probable. Thus we develop a degree of
tolerance toward unsatisfactory, boring, or
confusingconversationsand a willingness to
continue them if only mildly frustrating.
This polite tolerancebecomes a conspicuous
feature of verbal interaction as social distance increases, and conversations between
strangers are usually unsuccessful.
The interview, considered as a type of
conversation, benefits from the system of
expectations developed in it. The normal
respondent has endured innumerable conversations with strangersand semistrangers.
He has learned to expect that they will be
more or less threatening, frustrating, and
confusing. The formal interview, however,
represents a sharp departurefrom these conditions, and the satisfaction it gives the respondent may be very great.
The formal interview is gratifying because both participants enter the conversation with explicit expectations, the one to
talk and the other to listen, which are satisfied to an extent unusual in ordinary life.
Moreover, the expression of opinion, the
narrationof fact, and the playing of roles by

the respondent are systematically encouraged. Resistances ordinarily encountered in

spontaneous conversation are suppressed.
The formal interview, for example, offers a
rare opportunity to express political opinions at length and in detail without contradiction. Finally, because the interview has a
schedule, the conversationappears from the
respondent'spoint of view to be self-sustaining. The problem of organization is understood to be a responsibilityof the interviewer. The respondent is assuredthe immediate
satisfactions of conversation without the
necessity of making adjustments himself.
This often creates an illusion of facile communication which makes prolonged sessions
seem short.
On the other hand, certain elements in
the interview limit the yield of information
undereven the most favorableconditions.In
general, the less said or done by the interviewer, the more effective the interview, a
precept almost caricatured in non-directive
It follows that, as the yield of
interviewing.25
informationapproachesa maximum, the interviewer, as perceived by the respondent,
has scarcely any characteristics left for ordinary identification.The interviewerseems
a kind of verbal mirror reflecting the subject's expression back to him. Persons skilfully interviewed frequently report that
they cannot rememberor describethe interviewer. In a certain sense the respondent
may be said to interview himself, since the
interviewer is invested with his characteristics by the respondent in the course of the
conversation. One danger is that the interviewer, because his own role is so understressed, may come to believe that he really
has none at all and that the respondent is
actually talking "as he would to himself."
This is false, as was shown by a dramatic
and crucial example of distortion in each of
the two great studies mentioned before.
In the Western Electric research it was
25 Carl R. Rogers, Counseling and Psychotherapy:
Newer Concepts in Practice (Boston: Houghton
Mifflin Co., 1942), p. 195: "The primary technique
which leads to insight on the part of the client is
one which demands the utmost in self-restraint on
the counselor's part").

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THE DYNAMICS OF INFORMATION INTERVIEWING

noted that employees' comments on the
company's employee relations were almost
unanimously favorable in tone. The research
staff were evidently skeptical about this
finding, but unable to reject it:
Of course, there is a question of whether the
satisfactory reactions to these activities were
spontaneous and real convictions or merely
polite responses. Did the workers really think
the company's employee relations were good,
or were they merely registering attitudes of
approval which they thought management
wishes to hear and which they thought it
politic to manifest? That some of the employees
were doing the latter is very probable, but that
most of the employees would adopt the same
attitude would be curious.26
The respondent presumably reacted to the
real role of the interviewer as an employeerelations functionary. Accustomed as they
were to self-effacement, the interviewers apparently never thought of this. Yet it seems
that it happened hundreds of times.
In the Kinsey study, respondents mnade
fewer admissions of incest than court and
clinical records would lead one to expect.
The researchers have chosen to interpret
this as fact because of their experience with
other questions to which the answers are
uninhibited:
Heterosexual incest occurs more frequently
in the thinking of clinicians and social workers
than it does in actual performance.... Because
the cases are so few, it would be misleading to
suggest where the highest incidences lie. The
most frequent incestuous contacts are between
preadolescent children, but the number of such
cases among adolescent or older males is very
small.27

This is very much like the previous case:

the respondent shrinks from making
shocking admissions, because to him the
interviewer is still a person, no matter
how great the latter's effort to be unobtrusive. This is a matter of degree. The interviewer may convince a respondent of his indifference to practices which enjoy only lim26 Roethlisberger
27 Kinsey,

and Dickson, op. cit., p. 249.

Pomeroy, and Martin, op. cit., p. 555.

171

ited group approval, but, in the case of behavior condemned by all members of the
society, there is systemnaticmisreportingand
suppressionof facts.
Certain other theoretical limitations are
also inherent in the interview.
If the interview is to function as a highly
facilitated conversation, the respondent
must perceive it as a conversation, without
being much aware of the structure of the
interrogation,the order of questions, or the
objectives of the interviewer.The interviewer may take notes, use recordingdevices, or
in other ways signalize the situation as an
interview, but he must preserve the illusion
of spontaneity and of free response on either
side. The attempt to make respondents
aware of the significanceof questions or to
employ them in the judgment and analysis
of their own responses defeats inquiry.
Like any conversation, the information
interview must develop from a common
frame of reference so that participants will
be mutually intelligible. Unlike most conversations, it involves the predefinition of
this frame of referencethrough the device of
the schedule. As an elementary precaution,
interview schedulesare often built up on the
basis of pilot interviews, conducted for the
purpose of ascertaining the language habits
and pertinent viewpoints of the population.
However, this process can never be perfect.
The subjectspre-interviewedfor the purpose
of establishinga schedule are not likely to be
a perfect sample of the population finally
interviewed. Even if they were, every group
studied will include some individuals whose
reactions are highly individual and not adequately expressed in the predetermined
categories.The interview does not ordinarily
permit the exploratory trial-and-error exchange of viewpoints which would allow a
new frame of reference to be improvised
where necessary. Even the unstructuredand
non-directive interview always involves
some forcingof categoriesupon the respondent. This limitation can seldom be overcome
within the boundaries of a single investigation.
UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA

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