The Ethnographic Interview
A guide for people about to be interviewed by an ethnographer
An ethnographic interview is different from a typical one-on-one timed interview in a couple of ways. First, the e-interview works more like a series of informal or semi-guided conversations on a range of issues. Second, e-interviews require the interviewer and interviewee to establish some level of trust for the sought information to unfold in an authentic way. Both agree to a set of rules and a process for documenting and publishing the “story.” Rather than highlighting a few sound bytes that may convey a person’s position on one issue at one time, the ethnographic interview seeks to understand and highlight a person’s foundational values as a means of discovering human motivation and the elusive character of conscience.
Things to consider for the interviewee (you)
1) The story that will eventually unfold will be largely driven by mutual trust.
Is the interviewer trustworthy – how do you know? What is her/his motivation? The interviewer may come to know private information about you and your background; is this person capable of discernment and good judgement?
It’s important to have the conversation about trust with your interviewer at any time, and ideally create the space to question the interviewer and his/her motives and plans for sharing the information s/he has learned about you. Often, people who are being interviewed will provide little information initially and slowly reveal more based on the level of trust between s/he and the interviewer. This takes time, but is usually a good way to approach an ethnographic interviewer if you don’t already know her/him well enough. A skilled interviewer will know how to treat this information and it will help to inform the rest of the interviews s/he has with you.
2) Be clear about what information is ok to be public and what is not. This doesn’t mean that your conversations can’t include private information, just be clear when you don’t want the information you share to be made public.
3) The interviewer is obligated to share the story you tell them with you before any part of it is made public. Think about how this story could affect you personally and professionally if it were written. What kinds of protections do you need for yourself.
4) Think about what you gain by this kind of telling of self. Communicate this information with your interviewer at some point and ensure that s/he understands what’s in it for you.
The interview process (specific to my approach)
The process for an ethnographic interview varies widely depending on who is interviewing you. Typically, all involved should agree on the documenting process. The process for this ethnographic interview will generally follow these procedures (it’s negotiable):
1) I will ask for explicit consent to commence the interview process. This can be verbal or written. Consent will usually contain a statement that acknowledges that the information you provide is entirely voluntary, you don’t have any obligation to share anything, and that you may stop the interview at any time for any reason. The information you provide is shared in confidence, and you retain all rights to allow certain information to be made public. Information that will be made public must be explicitly agreed upon by the person being interviewed (you). Anything less will be considered a violation of your privacy and a breach of trust.
2) Usually I will be mining a lot of information and may request that our conversations be voice recorded for my purposes only. I have the recordings transcribed into text (for my eyes only), and then destroy the voice recordings so that there is no record of your voice. Further, the transcriptions will not contain your name or contact information anywhere in the text. If requested, the transcripts will also be destroyed after the written/graphic/sound/video story has been agreed upon by both parties and is ready to be published.
4) The interviewee (you) will have rights to use the story as you see fit and give me credits. You, however, must give me explicit permission to publish the story in any given media outlet.
Timeline
The timeline is up to you. My preference is to hold a series of interviews over some period of time before you publicly announce that you are running, but I’m flexible on this. Depending on the quality and depth of the information I receive from you, I anticipate the whole process, all face-time or phone-time combined, can take 10-20 hours of interview time. That is a lot to ask, so let me know if this sounds burdensome. Ideally, I would spend some time following you around.
Getting started
Give me some dates when you will be available for the initial interviews – preferably in person. We can do this somewhere neutral for now. Let me know if you are in town anytime soon and have some time to meet (evenings and weekends are best). I would appreciate 2-3 hours of your time for this initial interview, if possible. If not, I’ll take what I can get.
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