Interviewing the Investigator: Strategies for Addressing Instrumentation and Researcher Bias Concerns in Qualitative Research

Authors

Ronald J. Chenail, Nova Southeastern UniversityFollow

Abstract

Instrumentation rigor and bias management are major challenges for qualitative researchers employing interviewing as a data generation method in their studies. A usual procedure for testing the quality of an interview protocol and for identifying potential researcher biases is the pilot study in which investigators try out their proposed methods to see if the planned procedures perform as envisioned by the researcher. Sometimes piloting is not practical or possible so an "interviewing the investigator" technique can serve as a useful first step to create interview protocols that help to generate the information proposed and to assess potential researcher biases especially if the investigator has a strong affinity for the participants being studied or is a member of the population itself.

Keywords

Interviewing, Instrumentation, Researcher Bias, and Qualitative Research

Acknowledgements

An earlier version of this paper was presented October 10, 2008, as part of a concurrent session entitled, “Issues and New Directions in Data Collection/Analysis” at the 9th Advances in Qualitative Methods Conference, Banff, Alberta, Canada.

Publication Date

1-1-2011

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.

DOI

10.46743/2160-3715/2011.1051

Recommended APA Citation

Chenail, R. J. (2011). Interviewing the Investigator: Strategies for Addressing Instrumentation and Researcher Bias Concerns in Qualitative Research. The Qualitative Report, 16(1), 255-262. https://doi.org/10.46743/2160-3715/2011.1051