The Role of Interviewers in Non-Directive - Essay Example

Running Head: A Critical Review of Researching in Writing in ESL/EFL Student’s Name: Instructor: Course Code and Name: Institution: Date the Assignment is due: Article of Analysis Cohen, L et al (2000) Research Methods in Education (5th ed.). London: Routledge. Chapter 15. pp. 267 – 292 Also available at: Paper Title An Interviewer’s Role in Non-Directive and Focused Interviews in Education Research as Documented by Cohen, Morrison and Manion (2000) Outline This paper details the role of interviewers in non-directive and focused interviews from the planning stage to the execution stage during a research on writing. Most of the data used in researches on how to write better or how conventional writing is done, comes from interviews involving writers and readers alike. Cohen, Morrison and Manion (2000) have published a reliable account of how interviewers can play out that role effectively. In reviewing this book, Cohen, Morrison and Manion (2000) Chapter 15 pp. 267 – 292, the following structure has been used: a) Introduction The paper begins with an introduction, which illustrates the scope of the paper and the central thesis of exploration. The paper structure is also stated in the introduction. b) Overview of the Text In this section, the paper gives an overview of the text of analysis and illustrates what the main points the authors have written about. The overview introduces the general treatment the authors have accorded to the topic of discussion. c) Major Findings of the Text In this section, the paper highlights some of the major findings published in the text and explains the significance of these findings in the context of other publications from the assorted body of knowledge on interviewing. d) The Strengths of the Text In this section, the paper details the strengths of the findings as published on the text of analysis and why the authors have relevantly added to the available body of knowledge on interviewing during writing skills research. e) Weaknesses of the Text In this section, the paper highlights some weaknesses that the text of analysis displays in the context of other publications and findings. f) Suggested Improvements In this section, the paper expresses some suggestions that could help overcome the weaknesses cited above as found in the text of analysis. g) Conclusion This section of the paper summarizes the overview of the text of analysis, its major findings and contributions in the context of other studies and publications and then on the suggested improvements to any of the weaknesses. Introduction There are several ways in which research can collect primary and secondary data on how ESL and EFL students can improve their writings skills and the typical mistakes to avoid, interviewing being one of them. If for instance seeking to research written works on particular stylistic or grammatical features adopted, interviewing the writers is always a viable means of collecting and establishing data (Spradley, 1979). An interviewer plays an important role in determining the results generated by interviews employed during such a research. That role is partly played out during the actual interview, but the major responsibility of an interviewer is during the planning process of the interview (Spradley, 1979). The book, Research Methods in Education written by Louis Cohen, Keith R. B. Morrison and Lawrence Manion is one of the leading literatures relevant to any research into education research writing. For the purposes of this paper, we will focus on the author’s consensus on chapter 15 of the book, which is on interviewing as a method of education research. The chapter starts with an introduction, an expose on the conceptions of interviews, then a review of the purpose of interviews, the various types of interviews, the process of planning interviews based procedures and finally the non-directive interview and the focused interview (pp. 273) This paper thus reviews what the book has established on the non-directive interview and the focused interview after an overview of what the book has to say on interviewing. To begin with, the overview of the text is given before highlighting some of the major findings, the texts strengths and weaknesses and finally a few recommendations on how to improve of the text’s weaknesses. This is then tied all together by a conclusion on the text. Overview of the Text This chapter of the book shows a considerable analytic attention. The authors have focused on the interviewer’s range of choices in the planning and execution of the research interviews. Of core importance is how the authors have recognized the need for an interviewer to make cognitive choices that affect how the interview is constructed, the type of data collected, how interview data is analyzed and how the interviewer can objectively pilot the interview towards the intents of his or her research. To Cohen, Morrison and Manion, the interviewer must assume absolute charge of the interview, especially in the planning stages. The authors argue that interviews aim at triggering production of talk in respondents and it is the interviewer to determine the kind of talk to receive, through how he or she structures the interview questions for instance. The interviewer can thus analyze some de-contextualize features of an interview’s talk since the interview is “inherently a social encounter dependent on those interactional contingencies the interviewer pouts in place”. Before embarking on the description of the non-directive and the focused interviews, the book gives a detailed 6-step interview process. This includes identifying the research problem, formulating the research questions, designing the interview and or Drafting interview questions, piloting and modifying the interview, conducting the interview, transcribing the interviews, coding the interview data and finally interpreting the interview data. In planning for the interview questions, the authors suggest that there are three interview designs an interviewer can choose from namely, structured, semi-structured and open/unstructured research designs. As already noted, this paper concentrates on the focused (structured) and non-directive (unstructured) interview designs. These two are detailed in the next section as illustrated in the text of analysis. The Text’s Major Findings Focused interview designs, also called standardised or structured interviews constitute those interviews in which wording of interview questions and the arrangement of the questions is similar in all interviews. The questions are written on a piece of paper that is used in all interviews and each interview constitutes going through the questions from beginning to the end. According to Cohen, Morrison and Manion (2000), this is the interview design popular with language researchers who need to interview readers and or students on particular usage of language. For instance, Harwood (2008) used closed questions on graduate students when researching on the use of academic citations used by academic writers of sociology and computer science papers. A typical question used in the interviews was, “For what purpose do you employ the heavy citation of writer’s names in your academic writing?” Students then had to choose from such choice answers as to supply readers with more details on the citees, to employ the Footnote System in the paper etc. Fielding and Thomas (200: 124) actually agree that the structured interviews are the easiest and the most used since the questions can just be answered by selecting a given choice answer or ticking boxes. Cohen, Morrison and Manion in their book confirm that this ease attributed to closed questions accrue simply because the structured interview is similar in form to a typical questionnaire. In such fixed range of questions, Cohen, Morrison and Manion (2000:275) give an example that a respondent may be given 2 or more alternatives to pick an answer from, such as Yes or NO. Agree or Disagree etc. To this list, Fielding & Thomas (2001: 124) and even a third option Undecided, do not know etc. The following example of focused questions is given by Cohen et al (2000: 275): Is it against the school interests to make its examination results public? {Yes}, {No} and {Don’t know}. An ESL of EFL student researching on the writing stylistics employed in specialised forms of writing such as legal discourse for instance may use a question like, “Do you think the use of long, unpunctuated sentences serves any purpose in legal discourse?” For an open questions interview, the choices provided the interviewee would be {Yes}, {No} and {Don’t know}. This is comparable to the non-directive interviews, which would ask the question and then instead of giving alternatives, wait for the response before quipping in a follow up question such as, “Which purpose, if the interview said yes, or why are the sentences written that way then, if the interviewee said no”. The non-directive interviews are also called non-standardised, unstructured or open interviews since the interviewer has a list of broad topics asked to the respondent. The respondent is not expected to choose a provided answer or give any expected reply, but to talk about the topic from his or her own conception. As elaborated elsewhere by Fielding & Thomas (2001: 124), the interviewer is also free to arrange the questions in any way, to phrase them as they wish and even to leave seem questions unasked during some interviews as it may seems sensible. Fielding & Thomas (2001: 124) agrees with Cohen, Morrison and Manion (2000) that in un–directed interviews even allow interviewers to join the conversation especially when elaborating the topic under discussion, preferably stating their thoughts too for clarity reasons. The open-ended questions usually identify a topic and does not restrict it in scope, manner and content. Cohen et al states emphatically that the interviewer places ‘no…restrictions on either the content or the manner of the interviewee’s reply’ (2000: 275). Cohen et al thus exemplifies open-ended questions as: “What kind of television programmes do you most prefer to watch?” The Text’s Strengths One of the major strengths of the text under analysis is that the authors have gone further that stating what we mean by focused and non-derective interview questions. The authors have also explored the various advantages and disadvantages of using either of the two question types so that a researcher can choose which favours him or her most. More so, the authors have also provided suggestions to how the identified weaknesses of either interview design can be overcome. For instance, Cohen et al (2000: 275) states the advantages of focused interviews include the guarantee of every interviewee answering the same questions such that the results have greater reliability and analysability as compared to open-ended interviews. According to the authors, something Odell et al (1983: 234) agrees the major benefit of focused interviews is the ease of coding and interpreting the interview results during research writing. On the disadvantages of focused interviews, easier to code and interpret the results Cohen et al (2000: 276) states that they are superficial and that the informants sometimes do not find any of the choices available to fit they preferential answers. To overcome these weaknesses, Cohen et al (2000: 275) suggests that the interviewer mix both focused and non-derective questions for those questions that best fit each type. This is also expressed by Odell et al (1983: 234) who agree that researchers should adopt a multi-method (two or more methodologies) approach while researching writing. For the non-directed interviews, Cohen et al (2000:275) gives several advantages. They say that open ended questions are flexible; they allow interviewers to probe an issue to greater depth if there is need to and also to clear any arising misunderstandings. Further, open ended questions ‘allow interviewers to make a more accurate assessment of the respondent’s belief’ (p. 275). The open-ended interview situations also result in some unanticipated and or unexpected answers that goes on to create insights for the interviewer, on areas hitherto unthought-of in regards to the hypotheses. Cohen et al (2000:275) goes on to give some disadvantages of the open ended interviews such as the difficulty to quantify and precisely measure the responses from questions during coding and interpretation. In their journal, article on interview findings for ethics and integrity in proofreading among writing research, Harwood, Austin and Macaulay (2010) quips that although the closed/focused interviews are easy to proof through, most writing researchers would benefit more from the open questions interview. This is because admittedly, the respondents (such as writers) may be more informed about the writing basics in question and could thus add on the probable ignorant position a typical ESL/EFL student may be in, which actually necessitates the writing research in the first place. This finding thus seems to be in agreement with Cohen et al (2000) findings as stated in the foregoing paragraph. The Text’s Weaknesses An obvious weakness of the text under analysis is that the authors fail to draw in other sources and views on interview designs. For instance, the authors fail to capture the numerous criticisms levelled against interview-based writing research which could have helped enrich their findings. In this instance for example, drawing some comments from Elliot Mishler’s (1986) would have added to the informativeness of their text, since this is the one book best known in interview based research critiques. Mishler is the leading expert in critiquing especially the structured interviews that are format like questionnaires such that all the informants are asked similar questions and results are analysed statistically. Mishler (1986) argues against the authenticity of these by saying that coding such data usually removes the data from its relevant social context. Mishler (1991) argues that interviews when analyzed into statistics (coded responses) present unreliable results independent of relevant contexts involved in their production (p. 4). Another important disadvantage of interviews in researching writing, focused or non-directive, is that it produces a lot of ambiguity in the process of asking questions and receiving answers. This problem of ambiguity was not captured by Cohen et al (2000). Mishler (1986:45) captures this by saying that different interviewees understand a single question in very different ways and the answers given will also fit these variations. The authors of the text of analysis should have captured the role played by complexity and ambiguity always omnipresent in interview situations since even for the questions regarded as apparently simple, they wording and structure always leaves a lot of room for variant alternative interpretations nit just for the respondents but also for the interviewer (Mishler, 1986:45). The authors also omitted consideration of some typical situations in which focused interviews are best suited and others where only the open interviews can work. In some instances, the researcher has no choice but to use one form or the other of interview questions (Richards, 2003). In such topics as sex and sexuality, focused questions may be most suited since respondents would shy away to offer to mush opinion on their own, without having some choice responses to choose from. Finally, the authors have not explored how an interviewer can best employ interview tactics to ensure that the open interviews and focused interviews are optimally productive. The manner in which an interview is conducted determines the results gained. Suggested Improvements The text of analysis has explored interviews as a method of data collection in research. The major weaknesses in the information presented and the findings published by Cohen, Morrison and Manion is that they did not consider the impacts of interviews to the research, perhaps in comparison to other forms of data collection such as questionnaires. By doing this, the authors could have captured some shortcomings and advantages of employing either focused or non-directive interview designs (Edge, 2002). Another omission is as highlighted above is that of the satiations in which one type of interview is suited over the other. The only mention of context by Cohen et al (2000) is that open questions are sued mostly by business researchers. In researching writing, one may employ each type of research design with considerations of context and which method best suits which context (Edge, 2002). A good example is when a researcher needs quantified results that can be expressed in numbers. At such instances as Richards (2003) says, only focused interviews would work best. An example from Holstein and Gubrium (1995) here on their active interview would be adequately illustrative. Ivani (1998) and Johns (1997) as quoted in (Holstein and Gubrium (1995) envisage that when researching language use in writing, students should use a set of interview models together. First, they may explore critical pedagogy as compiled in form of corpus data from as many journal articles in the ESL/ EFL discipline or other disciplines of interest in which they can compare such instances as pronoun, negation and adjectival use. Once this is done, it would be important to use closed questions in a few interviews may be directed at senior students with greater experience in the same field. Thirdly, to comprehensive gather reliable findings, the students should then interview their lecturers and this time use open question interviews to allow the lecturers chip in their knowledge, which the students may not have predicted at first, and which would thus have been missed if the students had provided a list of choice answers. Such a comprehensive coverage of the writing research subject is what yields best results and not a singular approach. Conclusion This paper has endeavored to provide an analysis of the contribution Cohen, Morrison and Manion (2000) Chapter 15 pp. 267 – 292 has made into the field of researching writing. Of specific interests was the use of focused and non-directive research designs as applicable to the ESL/EFL niche of writing research. The text of analysis has successfully differentiated and exemplified what is meant by each of the types of research designs. Further, the pros and cons of either have been discussed so that a researcher can choose the one best fitted for his or her enquiry. Cohen et al (2000) also goes further to suggest how to eliminate the weaknesses of the two types of research designs. The paper has considered this elaborate coverage as the major weakness of the text. Nonetheless, the text has omitted some considerations such as the context of interviews and how they determine which interview design is best suited. Again, the text of analysis has omitted considerations of how interviews of either type affect the result of the study. The paper concludes by suggesting the inclusion of these omissions as the best way to improve the text of analysis. The most important coverage of the paper has been the implication of the findings in the text of analysis to the practice of researching writing skills, styles and conventions typical of many ESL/EFL courses. The paper concludes that these interviewing designs can be used to research writing and especially in a combination. References Cohen, L. et al (2000) Research Methods in Education (5th ed.). London: Routledge Falmer. Edge, J. (2002) Continuing Professional Development; A Discourse Framework for Individuals as Colleagues. Michigan: Ann Arbor. Fielding, N. & Thomas, H. (2001) Qualitative interviewing. In N Gilbert (ed.), Researching Social Life (2nd ed.). London: Sage. Mason, J. (2002) Qualitative Researching (2nd ed.). London: Sage. Mishler, E.G. (1986) Research Interviewing: Context and Narrative. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. Harwood, N., Austin, L., & Macaulay, R. (2010). Ethics and integrity in proofreading: findings from an interview-based study. English for Specific Purposes 29: 54-67. Harwood, N. (2008). Citers' use of citees' names: findings from a qualitative interview- based study. Journal of the American Society for Information Science & Technology 59(6): 1007-1011. Holstein, J. A., & Gubrium, J. F. (1995). The active interview. Thousand Oaks: Sage. Richards, K. (2003) Qualitative Inquiry in TESOL. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Spradley, J. (1979) The Ethnographic Interview. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Odell, L. et al (1983) The discourse-based interview: a procedure for exploring the tacit knowledge of writers in non-academic settings. In P. Mosenthal et al (eds.), Research On Writing: Principles and Methods. New York: Longman, pp. 221-236. Read More