A Review of “Online Interviewing”

Online Interviewing fills a critical gap in research methods literature. Researchers are increasingly conducting qualitative research through online communications. Although there is an ongoing dialog focused on adapting ethnographic methods to online environments (Hine 2000; Kozinets 2009), there remains little work that focuses more broadly on adapting methods for conducting interviews online. Much of the work that has engaged with broader discussions of online qualitative research methods has been confined to methodology journals. Online Interviewing codifies those ongoing discussions into a single volume. The book is grounded in the authors’ practical needs and considerations in their own adaptations of interviewbased research methods for online environments. Largely due to the geographic distance between Nalita James and her research participants, she conducted her 1998 doctoral research on academics’ workplace learning and communities of practice through e-mail interviews. The book addresses the practical concerns that arose through developing and designing that project. In the initial chapters, James and her coauthor, Hugh Busher, articulate an argument about the epistemological issues involved in conducting qualitative research online. Researchers will find the first chapter to provide an excellent overview of some of the existing work on conducting qualitative research online. In accord with much qualitative methodological work, the authors focus on largely constructivist stances, including phenomenology hermeneutics and symbolic interactionism. In relying on Crotty (1998) for this orientation, James and Busher do not discuss equally valid epistemic foundations for qualitative research, like critical realism (Bhaskar, Archer, Collier, Lawson, & Norrie 1998; Sayer 2000; Fairclough 2003) and pragmatism (Sayer 2000; Putnam 1995). Although the book stands as a critical introduction to methodological discussions about interviewing online, the epistemology section would have been stronger if it directly engaged with the potential for these epistemological stances as well. The first chapter concludes with an excellent table comparing and contrasting online and face-to-face interviews in relation to eight factors for consideration in research design. This includes cost, access, temporal dimension, nature and speed of response, time venue and participation, quality of data, and identity and confidentiality. This chart alone warrants the price of the volume. It distills an important set of considerations for thinking through the practical value and validity of conducting a study through face-to-face or online interviews. The book is at its strongest when it is working through practical considerations for conducting research. Each chapter ends with a series of practical tips for online researchers and a series of suggestions for further reading. For example, the chapter on engaging with participants online considers the value of synchronous and asynchronous methods of conducting interviews online. James and Busher do an excellent job of situating the practical differences between these modes of communication in existing literature and offer a cogent argument for the strengths of each for different goals. In this case, the asynchronous e-mail interviews can generate longer form, rich reflective discourse, while synchronous modes of communication offer performative, dynamic interactions that can be examined more explicitly through methods for examining oral face-to-face interviews. Depending on the practical needs and goals of a given research project, each