Semi-structured Interviews

Semi-structured interviews are designed in such a way as to give great scope to the interviewee to seek to emphasize the attempt to let the interviewees to talk about their experiences by means of addressing open ended questions which do not allow for simple “yes” or “no” responses but try to elicit from the interviewees greater depth of insights. Semi-structured interviewees could be regarded as the happy medium between unstructured interviews, at one end of the continuum and structured interviews at the other end.

Unstructured interviews can be difficult and call for great skills on the interviewer’s part. This almost “free association” of ideas approach has its value and place in research and can sometimes be used in phenomenological inquiries where the interviewer tries to avoid any presuppositions which might introduce bias into the data and affect validity.

Structured interviews are really similar to questionnaires except that the interviewer asks questions in a very structured way without deviating from the set of questions and instructions. In effect, it can often appear to be like being talked through a questionnaire. Where the interview is very tightly structured in this way, the instrument actually becomes a quantitative one and could be analysed by statistical methods.

In between lies the semi-structured interview and its great strength lies in its great flexibility. The questions are open-ended and allow the interviewees great

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scope in being as descriptive as they wish in their responses. Rather than a formal set of questions, the interviewer simply has a number of issues that she/he wishes to explore or investigate. The interviewer allows the respondents to elaborate on their responses and the issues often do not require the interviewer to stick to a set order. The ideal would be to allow the data to come quite freely without any manipulation on the interviewer’s part. The interviewer should have some prior experience of interviewing and have developed a sixth sense of where the respondent might still have more to say. The interviewer should not be ticking boxes but should be listening attentively and be able to sense from non- verbal cues and body language that the interviewee may have yet more to say on a particular issue. The importance of non- verbal cues such as posture, hand-movements, eye-movements, facial expressions etc. are so important that Thomas (2009) argues that the researcher should become immersed in these in order to appreciate subtle nuances in what is being said.

So phrases such as “how did you feel about that” or “ are there any other aspects of this phenomenon that you would like to bring to our attention or comment on?” Picking up on body language and emotional responses as well as the choice of diction in describing situations and interpreting the realities which are embedded in the language used (Corbetta, 2003) should enable the researcher to tune into the lived experiences of project managers as they often struggle to keep their project on target in terms of time and cost restraints.

On the other hand, a balance must also be struck between allowing the interviewee too much scope so that some essential issues never get addressed as planned as the interviewee rambles on or gets bogged down in one particular aspect of the problem. Some interview skills and techniques can be

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learned by observing the presenter on a political forum on television and how he presses the question home and does not allow the interviewee to get off the hook. However, semi-structured interviews in research are not intended to become confrontational like political panels and should be conducted in a friendly and informal manner (Creswell, 2007). Nevertheless, they can help the interviewer acquire skills of knowing when to push the respondent gently to say more but equally, how to interrupt when it is necessary to do so to avoid the interview getting stuck on one or two issues.

However, the open-ended nature of the questions in semi-structured interviews does not imply that the questions are vague and authors such as (Denzin and Lincoln, 2005) emphasise that the questions should be clear and understandable openings for the respondent to reveal how they see the world.

Additionally, it is possible for the interviewee to ask questions of the interviewer where clarification of issues is required. This type of interview has the potential to provide rich sources of data for interpretation (McQueen and Knussen, 2002).

Nevertheless, (Silverman, 2005) cautions about how interpreting the various meanings in interviews is difficult as they do not give the interviewer direct access to the factors or phenomena being investigated. Silverman (2005) comments further that the interview data does not reveal people’s actual experience but only representations of that experience. This verges on the issue of validity but one solution put forward by Cresswell (2013) is to assess the value of the researcher’s interpretation against the weight of expert opinion in the literature.

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The foregoing has drawn attention to a potential problem with the interpretive approach, that is, the danger of interviewer bias in interpreting what the respondent is saying (Scollon et al., 2003). On the one hand, there is a need for the interviewer to get behind the literal meaning of what is being said in order to find its deeper or intended meaning (Blaikie, 2000). Nevertheless, the researcher needs to be aware of the danger of prejudging what is being said and of reaching conclusions at too early a stage.

Mason (2002, p. 62) advises that since knowledge in qualitative research is always context specific, the researcher needs to ensure that “relevant contexts are brought into focus so that situated knowledge can be produced” However, the interviewer was aware that data from interviews are reliant on the participants’ abilities to interact, verbalise, conceptualise and remember Mason (2002). Participants’ stories must always be understood as presenting reality from their points of view and can be hampered by professional expectations of what should or should not be said Charmaz (2006).

It is anticipated that, following the analysis of the IT project failures in Chapter 3, some issues will require probing in greater depth and this will be accomplished by means of qualitative semi-structured interviews involving a sample of project managers and other stakeholders. The qualitative analysis will be followed by a process of combining the findings in such a way that the interview data analysis will serve to support and add some depth to the findings from the IT projects investigation. The final stage of the research design will be to select what emerges as the key issues which will be recommended for an improved framework.

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The appropriateness of semi-structured interviews for in-depth exploration is well supported e.g. [Bryan (2004), de Vaus (2001), Denscombe (2010), May (2011), Robson (2011), and Silverman (2011)]. They will also present the interviewer with opportunities to seek clarifications or to push questions a little further. Another approach could be to use focus groups which would have the advantage of in depth exploration but with larger groupings. This would be difficult to implement due to the difficulty of project managers being available for such group meetings. Equally, phenomenologically-based approaches could be considered for probing, for example, the human meaning and essence of project planning with all of its pressures and constraints on the manager to complete in time and within budget. However valuable these insights might be, however, they could detract from the main focus of this research.