E) Interviews

Interviews:

• entail a researcher presenting the questions to the informant orally and audio- or video-recording the responses
• give you detailed information from a few people
• prepare a list of questions, plan out a series of potential pathways through the list
• find a balance between simply barking out questions in a preordained order and letting the interviewee take over and tell you things you don't want to know
• if appropriate, try to elicit the data you want by deliberately setting up situations or asking specific questions

Guideline questions for interviews:

• see Interview Schedule (Tagliamonte) (adapted from the work of William Labov, 1973)
• drawn from the companion website of Tagliamonte, Sali A. 2006. Analysing Sociolinguistic Variation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  

Considerations in connection with questionnaires and interviews:

• results depend heavily on the way the questions are formulated
• direct (explicit) or indirect (inexplicit) approach?
• open questions or closed questions?
• avoid loaded questions and leading questions
• many potential pitfalls
• difficulty of getting the questions right
• if possible, run a pilot study