Blee and Taylor (2002) ‘Semi-Structured Interviewing in Social Movement Research.’
Citation: Blee, Kathleen M. and Taylor, Verta (2002) ‘Semi-Structured Interviewing in Social Movement Research,’ in Klandermans, Bert and Staggenborg, Suzanne (eds.), Methods of Social Movement Research, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 91-117.
Blee and Taylor (2002:92-93): Rather than relying on a rigid questionnaire, semi-structured interviews follow a guide, which provides questions and topics but allows digression and further interrogation. “Semi-structured interviews are particularly useful for understanding social movement mobilization from the perspective of movement actors or audiences. They provide greater breadth and depth of information [than structured interviews], the opportunity to discover the respondents’ experience and interpretation of reality, and access to people’s ideas, thoughts, and memories in their own words rather than in the words of the researcher, but at the cost of a reduced ability to make systematic comparisons between interview responses.” [These advantages are particularly important given their use in the dissertation: since they are intended in part to triangulate information and impressions gained from communiqués, it is important to avoid them simply being used to confirm impressions gained from that material and, where necessary, challenge those impressions].
Blee and Taylor (2002:93): Highlight as an advantage of semi-structured interviews that they can help “gain access to the motivations and perspectives of a broader and more diverse group of social movement participants than would be represented in most documentary sources.”
Blee and Taylor (2002:94): A second noted advantage is that it provides a semantic context to statements, placing them in the setting of broader discourses. Notes example of a study of British fascist movement showing simultaneous expressions of racial tolerance and active participation in National Front activities.
Blee and Taylor (2002:95-97): Other advantages highlighted are allowing scrutiny of meaning, in terms of how movement participants understand their involvement and their world; providing longitudinal window to capture change over time; allowing understanding of how individual and collective identities are constructed; making human agency central to analysis; and allowing understanding of how messages are received by audiences.
Blee and Taylor (2002:99): Argue that both the order of questions and the language used should be tailored to the interviewee with the goal of maximising rapport.
Blee and Taylor (2002:102-109): Identifies four types of semi-structured interviews other than simple respondent interviews that are prevalent: oral history (focused on historical periods, past/past of social movements); life history (focused on individual respondents’ involvement); key informant (focused on gaining insider insight; and focus group interviewing.
Blee and Taylor (2002:110): Emphasise that, with semi-structured interviews, “analysis and interpretation are ongoing processes,” with interpretations of earlier interviews influencing who is selected for subsequent interviews, questions, additional topics, and research design.
Blee and Taylor (2002:111): “it is important to keep in mind that even the most nondirective interviews ultimately produce data derived from artificially constructed realities. Interviews are highly situational conversations, respondents can engage in retrospective interpretation, the interviewer can fail to establish the level of rapport necessary to obtain accurate data, and interviewees can conceal or distort information.”