Equipping the Constructivist Researcher: The Combined use of Semi-Structured Interviews and Decision-Making maps

1. IntroductionCohen & Manion (1994, p.36) described the constructivist approach to research as being based on understanding the world of human experiences. This world of experiences is continuously shaped through the human interaction with objects and other subjects. In order to access and achieve an understanding about human perceptions, one of the main requirements of the constructivist approach is the establishment of a reciprocal and communicational ground between the research project participants and researchers in the co- construction of meaning. Eventually this would lead to building a theory that is based on the experiences of researchers and that of research participants (Mills et al. 2006). Several authors have discussed the use of constructivist epistemological principles in inductive research. The constructivist paradigm traditionally follows qualitative research methods, although quantitative methods may also be used in support of qualitative data (Mackenzie & Knipe 2006). Since constructivist researchers tend to rely on participants' viewpoints about the situations under investigation (Creswell 2003, p.8), the vast majority of inductive research remains interview-based and interpretivist in nature. Accordingly, the use of interviews as a data collection method in inductive research is justified by its affinity with daily-life conversations and the centrality of interactions, exchanges, and negotiation of meaning between two parties (Kvale & Brinkmann 2009), which corresponds to constructivist approaches to research.There are different approaches to carry out an interview, although the dominant characterisation of interviews is based on the dichotomy between structured and unstructured interviews (Collins 1998). However, more varieties of interview styles have been recognised by researchers (e.g. May 2003, p.121), such as semi- structured interview, group interview and focus group interview. Each one of these types follows their own approach to conduct an interview and to collect the research data. A clear sign of the differences between each type of interview styles is the way the interview questions are formulated and the amount of freedom given to interviewees in their replies to each interview question (e.g. Bryman 2012). Nonetheless, the operationalization of qualitative interviews' underlying epistemological principles remains complex and at times controversial.Whether the researcher applies a semi-structured or unstructured interview, there is an unconditional principle that researchers need to adhere to during the interview process, which is the capacity of maintaining social negotiation of meanings between the interviewee and interviewer. This component is somehow missing or underachieved during the operationalization of research that claims a constructivist affiliation. In addition, most of the tenets of modern inductive approaches such as thematic analysis, grounded theory or even phenomenography are predicated in listening to informants' perceptions of the social world around them, interpreting them and producing a theory that attempts to generate a context-bound understanding. This process contains an inherent artificiality since researchers are trying to understand social worlds by interpreting informants' perceptions without any feedback loop that enables negotiation and validation of the adequacy of the interpretation.To address the challenge of researchers' exclusive reliance on the interpretation of interview evidence to construct their studies, this paper proposes the introduction of a methodological innovation in semi-structured interview design: the use of decision-making maps that help both the researcher and the informant negotiate meaning, define data and advance interpretations in a collaborative fashion.This is particularly important in the context of qualitative research that is aligned with a constructivist conceptualisation of knowledge - one that asserts that researchers must rely upon the "participants' views of the situation study" (Creswell 2003, p. …