Interviews, methods and procedures

Initially, the purpose of the interview was to probe the ideas of the interviewees about the phenomenon under inquiry. Collecting their opinions was achieved in several ways, of which face-to-face interviews were the most common. Besides Face-to-Face (FtF) interviews, interviewing by e-mail and telephone was essential to elicit responses from those participants who preferred those modes of communication. Interviewing using the internet was essential, and was facilitated due to developments in computer technology; many kinds of computer mediated communication (CMC) tools have been developed. Efforts were made to achieve as many FtF interviews as possible in the first place, but due to some constraints this was not always possible. Also, doing research on virtual teams, where some participants did not prefer FtF communication to other forms of communication, paved the way for the use of other interview techniques. One participant commented that we could do the interview by an instant messaging tool. The focus of this research was mainly semi structured interviews. Researcher made sure that three types of interview techniques were compared: FtF interviews, telephone interviews, and e-mail interviews. The three interview techniques differ from each other, thus highlighting the advantages and disadvantages. In this research, semi-structured interviews were particularly useful in helping researcher to gather data on the

participants’ perspectives. Individuals can construct very perceptive language and meanings. Semi structured interviews gave the respondents freedom to express their views. The main aim and objective of qualitative interviewing is to capture how those being interviewed view their world, to learn their terminology and judgments, and to capture the complexities of their individual perceptions. This approach made it possible to gain insight into the participants’ and perspectives, on support or rejection of reform of commercial property leases. In order to gain a deeper perspective of the participants’ views on reform of commercial property leases, a broad and general interview guide was put together. This provides topics of the questions to be examined in detail. The challenge was to ask questions in a clear, open ended way that would let the participants respond appropriately without causing confusion. The questions were based on the themes identified in the literature review. One of the main challenges for qualitative researchers is to ensure that they avoid inventing data or misrepresenting the participant’s perspectives.

Face-to-face interviews

Out of 90 interviews, 50 were face to face (ftf). FTF Interviews are synchronous (real time) communication of time and place. Social signals, such as voice, pitch, and body language of the interviewee can give the interviewer a lot of extra information that can be added to the verbal answer of the interviewee to a question. Of course the value of social signals also depends on what the interviewer wants to know from the interviewee.

Telephone interviews

Fifteen of the interviews had to be implemented by telephone call. Some participants made telephone interviewing a specific condition of their participation, thus making it essential. Telephone interviews are a synchronous communication of time and asynchronous communication of place. Due to the asynchronous communication of place, one of the advantages of telephone interviewing was the extended access to participants, compared to FtF interviews, including diverse geographical access if they had access to a telephone or computer. Although the interviewer could interview

people that are not easy to access, one of the disadvantages of asynchronous communication of place by telephone is the reduction of social signals. The interviewer does not see the interviewee, so body language cannot be used as a source of extra information. But social cues such as voice and pitch are still available. While social cues are reduced, enough social cues remain for terminating a telephone interview without a problem. Another disadvantage of asynchronous communication of place is that the interviewer has no influence on the situation in which the interviewee is situated; because of this, the interviewer has less possibility to create a good interview ambience.

E-mail interviews

Twenty five of the participants expressed that they would only give e-mail interviews. E-mail interviews are asynchronous communication of time and place. As with the telephone, one of the advantages of e-mail interviewing is the extended access to participants, compared to FTF interviews, due to asynchronous communication of place. A disadvantage of using e-mail was the complete lack of social signs. Therefore, e-mail interviewing provided a limited register for communication. Using emoticons can diminish the effects of this disadvantage. However, I was aware that the use of emoticons is not always appropriate according to the interviewee, because each interviewee has his own communication style, and researcher had to adapt his own personal communication style online accordingly. E- mail interviewing did give the researcher, the extra advantage that he could formulate the approach better. This also enabled the interviewee to answer the questions at his or her own convenience without noise disturbance due to independence of place and time. With an e-mail interview, synchronous communication of time was impossible; although the advantage was that the interviewee does not hesitate in giving a socially undesirable answer. But the chance of a spontaneous answer to a question became smaller, because the interviewee had more time to reflect on the question. However, spontaneity can be the basis for the richness of data collected in some interviews.