## Annette Grindsted*

## Interactive resources used in research interviewing

## Abstract

The semi-structured research interview is often critized for not producing reliable and valid  results  due  to  1)  interviewer  bias,  and  2)  non-commitment  on  the  part  of  the informants, and 3) for being an expensive information gathering tool. By applying a CA perspective in the analysis of semi-structured interview data it is shown, however, that in the present case both interviewers and informants were very much concerned with producing true, accurate and valid responses. It is shown that among the interactive resources  they  have  at  their  disposal,  some  of  them  are  especially  suited  to  ensure validity and are often recurred to by both parts. They concern e.g. question-response managment,  the  management  of  pauses,  and  repair  organization.  That  the  semistruc  tured  research  interview  is  an  expensive  information  gathering  tool  cannot  be denied. However, and all other things being equal, if validity is secured, it may turn out be a more safe research instrument than the structured interview.

## 1. The research interview as talk-in-interaction

The semi-structured research interview is a widely used research instrument in social sciences. Compared to the structured interview, which is often used to verify what people's behavior, opinions, beliefs, values, etc.,  are  at  any  moment,  the  aim  of  the  semi-structured  interview  is to  gain  insights  in  how  they  give  meaning  to  their  worlds  in  social inter  action. The point of departure of this paper is, however, that the interview texts do not merely refer to some reality beyond the texts. The interview itself is interaction between an interviewer and an informant and is of interest in its own right. If it is to be considered a valid and reliable research instrument it is therefore necessary to examine how the joint construction of the interview between interviewer and informant infl  uences the kind of knowledge produced.

* Annette Grindsted University of Southern Denmark agr@language.sdu.dk

117

This paper is a study of some of the interactive resources used by inter  viewers and informants in their joint construction of semi-structured research interviews. One of its theoretical points of departure is that interlocutors as rational beings possess a natural predisposition to accounting. In the interview event this means that they are concerned with producing true and accurate responses. In the survey interview the interlocutors' natural inclination to demonstrate that they see themselves as being socially accountable to each other is systematically suppressed (e.g. Suchman & Jordan 1992). In the semi-structured interview, however,  they  are  not  prevented  from  doing  so.  Consequently,  what  this paper intends is  to  demonstrate  that  the  interviewers  and  informants that  participated  in  the  generation  of  the  interview  data  used  for  the present analysis, per se were concerned with questions of veracity and validity. This will be shown through the analysis of repair interaction, question-response management, specifi  c types of formulations used for verifi  cation purposes and of how meaning is negotiated.

## 2. Data description

The study is based on nineteen  interviews  made in Spanish, Danish and Swedish owned companies in Caracas, Venezuela, Guadalajara and Mexico City, Mexico, the aim being to investigate stereotypic beliefs and their importance in daily work at the intercultural work-place. The informants were all autochthonous Hispanic or Scandinavian em  ployees at a mid-executive level. The interviews were conducted by three different interviewers. One was Venezuelan, one Swedish and one Danish. They are all researchers in their respective home countries.

## 3. Research interviewing and the generation of true and valid responses

In their study on survey interviews Suchman and Jordan (1992) consider the  interview  as  inescapably  an  interactive  event.  On  one  hand  the survey interview relies upon a wealth of conventions and resources from ordinary conversation, but at the same time suppresses crucial elements of ordinary conversation. They frame the contrast between the survey interview and ordinary conversation as a matter of distant, externally imposed versus local, internally produced determinations of what gets talked about in what way and by whom. Fundamentally interviewing procedures concern the issue of how to generate valid responses and validity requires a mechanism to assure that the parties involved in the enterprise have a common understanding of what questions mean and how the answers are to be taken. To secure validity active colla  boration  between  the  parties  is  required.  Therefore  Suchman  and  Jordan recommend that the interviewer should be allowed to talk about the questions, to offer clarifi  cations and elaborations, and to engage in a limited  form  in  recipient  design  and  common-sense  inferences.  To the extent that the negotiation of meaning is suppressed resources are lost through which the intent of the questioner can be communicated or the interpretation of the respondents assessed. And in so far as the meanings of questions and responses remain uncertain, so also does the validity of the measures produced.

In her study of standardized survey interviews Hanneke HoutkoopSteenstra (2000) is also concerned with issues of validity and she also recommends greater fl  exibility as far as the interviewers' communicative behaviour is concerned. Among other verbal activies she suggests that interviewers should be allowed to discuss questions and answers, to accept unformatted answers and to draw and verify inferences, although she admits that  such  fl  exibility  also  entails  certain  disadvantages. It is more time-consuming and involves greater costs both as far as interviewer training, carrying through and analysing interviews are concerned.

Mazeland and ten Have (1998) argue that to allow for local negotiations concerning the meaning of questions and answers as suggested by Suchman and Jordan cannot solve the basic problem caused by the antioriented interests between interviewer and respondent in the interview situation. Even qualitative and open interviews are a practical compromise between in principle incompatible forms of life. The informant 'experiencing'  and  'telling'  and  the  interviewer  'analysing'  and  'categorising'. According to Mazeland and ten Have, what conversation analysts ought to do is to suggest ways in which interviews could be conducted that take these tensions into account. They suggest that the interviewer adapts his or her questioning to the recipient and the fl  ow of the interaction, and in accepting the answers gives a demonstration of understanding a more symmetrical format, designed for the sharing of life-world information and interests.

As to the discursive organization of the interview data used for the present  analysis  they  were  semi-structured.  In  the  present  case  this means that the interviews were based on an interview schedule with a number of both open-ended and closed questions that the interviewer was supposed to go through before the interview was concluded. The order in which the questions were raised during the interview was free and other topics than those raised by the questions could be introduced if it was found relevant. Finally, apart from asking clarifying questions, the interviewers were allowed to give feed-back to or even to comment upon the respondents answers. This gave rise to a less asymmetrical format than is normally found in semi-structured interviews, designed for leaving some room for sharing and negotiating world views.

What  I  intend  to  show  in  the  following  analyses  is  that  in  their inter  active  management  of  interview  questions  and  responses  the interviewers and informants amply demonstrate that they are concerned with issues of veracity and validity.

## 4. The negotiation of meaning

As pointed out by Suchman and Jordan (1992) the conversational dilemma of the interviewer is on one hand to elicit as much relevant information as possible bearing in mind his research interests, and on the other to avoid respond or interviewer bias. This issue is also touched upon by Mazeland and ten Have (1998) who maintain that as an interactional genre, research interviews seem to share the preference for agreement that is also generally found in ordinary conversations. They relate it to the fact that informants do not have an intrinsic interest in the research interview, for which reason interviewers are under a constant pressure to keep them motivated to continue their participation, which an open disagreement might endanger. This is one of the reasons why literature on interviewing especially urges interviewers to act in a 'neutral' fashion by refraining from evaluative comments and restricting reactions to minimal responses. As it is argued by Kvale (1996), however, even the type and intonation of minimal responses will be taken as indications of the interviewer's interest and evaluation, and will, for that reason, infl  uence  the  way  answers  are  elaborated  and  stories  told.  Interview statements are interactional products, inevitably.

Following this line of thought, as it has been stated above, the interview is locally achieved through the talk by interlocutors. This means that  questions  and  responses  are  formulated  in,  developed  through, and  shaped  by  the  interaction  between  interviewer  and  respond  ent. In  this  way  Mishler  (1986)  shows  a  number  of  ways  through  which meanings of questions and responses may be achieved from successive reformulations by interviewers and respondents until they arrive at an acceptable level of shared agreement to the insistence of interviewers on their defi  nitions, because they are infl  uenced by a priori assumptions about adequacy. A case to the contrary is Hutchby and Wooffi  tt's report on semi-structured interviews on group membership and identifi  cation, where the fi  rst  exchanges  were  analyzed. The  opening  question  was designed to elicit a subcultural self-categorization. Many respondents immediately  did  affi  rm  the  relevance  of  that  kind  of  social  identity. However, in several cases, the respondents' fi  rst turn was some kind of dispreferred answer. They portrayed themselves as 'not seeing the category relevance' of the interviewer's fi  rst turn, and in this way they rejected the validity of the basis on which they were selected for the interview.  They  were  resisting  the  categorical  affi  liation  which  the interviewer's fi  rst turn tacitly asked them to confi  rm. So on the basis of the interactional management of category ascription, resistance and affi  liation they were able to make some critical points on the assumption underlying  the  social  identity  theory  and  the  purchase  it  affords  on understanding  processes  of  group  affi  liation  and  self-categorization (Hutchby & Wooffi  tt 1998). These studies point out extreme cases of the  relational  alignment  between  interviewer  and  respondent  in  their joint construction of the interview.

The semi-structured  research interview is often used for information gathering because it allows for a less imposing, more natural and spontaneous way of interaction. It cannot be ignored, however, that to ask a  question  in  itself  is  a  very  powerful  way  of  eliciting  information. Very  often  an  informant  will  accept  without  hesitation  the  premises on  which  a  question  is  built.  In  the  present  study  the  questions  rest on the presupposition that national identity is a relevant membership category to account for differences in communicative behavior at the intercultural workplace. Even category features that may or may not be related to the membership groups are introduced by the interviewer. In this way negotiation of meaning refers to national identity as a relevant category and to relevant category features. If we turn to the process of  negotiating  the  thematic  dimension  of  interviewing,  fragments (1)  and    (2)  suggest  ways  through  which meanings of questions and responses  may  be  arrived  at.  It  should  fi  rst  be  mentioned,  however, that  a  recurrent  feature  of  all  text  questions  is  the  fact  that  they  are very  broad  and  general  category  features  or  open-ended  questions about the organization of interactive events that should be used as a basis for categorizing memberships. What is often negotiated is not the relevance of the category features nor the interactive events themselves, but how they could be narrowed down to constitute precise and accurate descriptions of the two membership groups. If we look at fragment (1) below about argumentation technique and effi  ciency  the  central  part of the question concerns effi  ciency. What does it mean to be effi  cient in argumentation and what are the membership categorizations made in this respect? The features introduced by M to categorize effi  ciency are directness, objectivity, fi  gures and results as far as the Danes are concerned, and emotions and talk to characterize the Venezuelans. A's question of what is meant by results is interesting. She does not only ask the question but suggests herself new shades of meaning that could be attributed to the term results, namely achievements and to get things done. These new shades of meaning are immediately accepted by M . Although they are not explicitly treating the dimension of effi  ciency or ineffi  ciency in argumentation, one is left with the impression that the cultural attributions made by A and M is that the Venezuelans are not very effi  cient 'argumentators' whereas the Danes are, since objectivity and achievements are to be valued, but emotionality and talk without action is not.

```
Fragment (1) Interviewer: A(driana) Respondent: M(iguel)
```

- A: es interesante eso mira y qué opinas de la técnica argumentativa que ellos usan (.) es decir

it's interesting and look what do you think about the argumentation technique they use (.) I

M:

cómo  presentan  sus  argumentos  de  manera  efi  ciente  o  poco efi  ciente

mean how do they present their arguments effi  ciently or not very effi  ciently

sí muy directos muy directos

yes very direct very direct

A: son directos

they are direct

sí  seguramente  directos  bien  objetivos  en  todo  lo  que  es  sus presentaciones o sea son

yes for sure direct pretty objective in every bit of their presentations that is it's presentations

presentaciones este que a lo mejor somos mientras nosotros somos emotivos y emocionales

maybe we are emotive and emotional making presentations that will appeal to another type

haciendo presentaciones que a lo mejor van a apelar::: a digamos a otro tipo de percepción

of  perception you know maybe we even talk things over and over again and again we are

eh a lo mejor inclusive damos más vueltas al asunto damos una antesala como pa:ra: ir

paving the way to: let's say warm up names and all that you know they begin and present

digamos calentando nombres y todo lo demás no? ellos comienzan y dan sus resultados

their results this is the important thing

cifras resultados eso es lo importante

A: o sea lo que interesa son resultados logros you mean what is interesting is results achievements

M:

sí logros

yes achievements

A: lo hecho

things done

M:

claro

that's it

M:

124

But it also occurred quite often that national identity was rejected as a valid category to account for differences in communicative behavior and  in  stead  the  informants  introduced  other  membership  categories that they found more relevant to explain perceived differences. This can be illustrated by the following fragment:

Fragment (2)

Interviewer: A(nnette)

Respondent: C(amilla)

- A: hvad  med:  hænger  de  sig  i  protokollen  øh  forstår  du  hvad  jeg mener er der særlige:

what about er do they stick to the protocol er do you understand what I mean are there

procedurer man altid skal følge særlige: arbejdsgange man skal følge og dem viger man bare

special er procedures you always have to follow special routines you follow and you just

ikke fra

don't abandon them

- C: ja men der er vi så nødt til og gå tilbage og sige det det øh 'her gør vi ikk fordi nu igen det

well then we are to go back and say it it er 'here we don't because now again the fact that

der med at det er et ungt fi  rma ikke også

we are a young company you know

- A: mm

mm

- C: det tager man ikke så højtideligt men de fi  rmaer vi arbejder med we don't take it seriously but the fi  rms we work together with
- A: mm

mm

- C: hvor det faktisk er ældre indkøbschefer og så videre jo der er der meget protokol

where there  actually  are  elderly  purchasing  managers  and  so  on  yes  there  is much protocol A: ok ok The thematic part of the question raised by the interviewer refers to formality  ('they'  refers  to  the  Venezuelans).  Interactionally  we  fi  nd typical recipient design features such as reformulations and hesitations markers. We even fi  nd a kind of person-oriented meta statement ('do you  understand  what  I  mean'?)  (cf.  Section  7).  What C does  in  her reply  is  in  the  fi  rst  place  to  generate  a  kind  of  meta  statement,  too, referring to something she said in reply to an earlier question ('well then we are to go back and say'). She takes up an earlier line of thought and categorically rejects  that  'sticking  to  the  protocol'  forms  part  of Venezuelan  cultural  identity.  Instead  she  introduces  another  set  of membership  categories,  i.e.  the  younger  and  the  older  generation, where the category feature seems to apply. She is working in a young fi  rm,  where  they  do  not  stick  to  formalities,  neither Venezuelans nor Danes. However, in Venezuelan fi  rms with elderly staff they do. So, according to her point of view generation gaps are more important than national identity gaps to account for value mismatch. This is accepted as an adequate answer by A .

The  analysis  of  the  present  data  seems  to  demonstrate  that  the informants do not automatically  accept the relevance of the categories and category features introduced by the interviewer, but showed great care and effort in offering true and accurate descriptions of how they gave meaning to their social world at the intercultural work-place.

## 5. Repair organization

In the interactive fl  ow of ordinary conversation interlocutors, if asked a  question,  will  under  normal  conditions  just  produce  the  relevant second. This is also the case in the semi-structured research interview. It  happens  however  that  the  informants  produce  utterances  in  which they explicitly consider if they possess the kind of knowledge which the  question  invites  them  to  talk  about.  When  the  informant  in  the following fragment is asked about her general opinion of the Danes, a very long response is produced, in which one of her statements is:

126

## Fragment (3)

Informant: (M)itz

- M: yo por lo menos soy asistente de la presidencia y el presidente es danés entonces yo sí sé las diferencias (que) yo estoy viviendo I'm secretary to the management and the managing director is Danish so I do know about the differences (that) I see……

What Mitz does is to make explicit that she considers herself to be in a position that allows her to produce a true and valid response. This is, indeed, a very marked option.

But what interactional resources may the informant recur to if (s)he thinks (s)he does not possess the kind of knowledge asked for?

Fragment (4)

Interviewer: A(driana)

Informant: M(iguel)

- A: poco sociables
- qué opinas de la competencia social de ellos son sociables o son what do you think about their social competence are they sociable or not very sociable
- M: (2.5) es que una cosa es sociable y otra cosa es en el trabajo (2.5) well you know one thing is sociable and another is at the job
- A: umm hm
- M: yo en a nivel sociable no los conocí fuera del trabajo socially I don't know them outside the job I don't know them
- A: umm hm
- M: fuera del trabajo no los conozco outside the job I don't know them
- A: no tuviste oportunidad nunca, you never got the opportunity,
- M: no un en una sola oportunidad nada más o sea que que diría que no me atrevo a opinar en ese aspecto no only on one occasion that's all so I would say I wouldn't dare to have an opinion in this respect

- A: claro o sea han sido relaciones puramente de trabajo of course not  so you only have work relations
- M: de trabajo de trabajo sí de trabajo work relations work relations yes work relations
- A: ah y…

ah and …

We see that after A has asked the interview question there is a pause of 2.5 sec. before M initiates his response. He interprets the question as a matter of leisure time activities and in this context he does not know the Danes. By her next question A wants to verify if she has understood him correctly and M replies that he is not competent to answer the question. One might say that he is accounting for not accounting. Since he is not able to produce the projected response, he explains why it is not forthcoming and the reason is lack of knowledge. This explanation is accepted by A .

One thing is that the respondent is not able to produce a relevant reply for lack of knowledge. Another is that (s)he is unable to do so because (s)he  does  not  understand  the  question.  How  may  (s)he  demonstrate that the question causes troubles for reasons of comprehension?

Fragment (5) Interviewer: A(driana) Informant: L(isbeth)

- A: y te parecen dominantes o no and do you think they are dominating or not
- L: (7.0) no sé cómo dominantes dominantes que son qué (7.0) I don't know how dominating dominating that they are what
- A: bueno la persona que quiere imponerse sobre los demás well a person that wants to assert himself
- L: imponerse to assert himself
- A: umm yeah
- L: no no

- A: (1.0) o sea dominante:: autoriatrio (1.0) that is dominating:: authoritarian
- L: (3.0) no (3.0) no
- A: no no has tenido:: ninguna experiencia no you don't you don't ha::ve any experience
- L: no hasta el momento ha sido:: sea siempre con respeto y y y no so far it has been:: well always with respect and and and
- A: muy amable (1,0) okej very friendly (1.0) okey

We see that after A has posed the interview question there is a pause of 7 seconds before L displays that she does not understand the question in a kind of next turn repair initiator which could be seen as a self-initiated repair that invites A to fi  nish the repair by clarifying what is meant by the  trouble  source. After A's reformulation  of  the  question L repeats its  central  part  and A produces  an  acknowledgement  token.  Now L produces only a minimal response and A tries to elicit more information fi  rst by her pause and next by another kind of clarifi  cation. Again, and after  a  pause  of    3  seconds L produces  a  minimal  response. A even accounts for the almost absence of an answer. A suggests that the reason why she does not add more information could be lack of knowledge. And fi  nally L produces  a  kind  of  minimal  account. A tries  to  verify if  she  has  understood L right.  The  absence  of  a  response  is  taken  to act  as  a  confi  rmation.  Now,  to  return  to  the  question  of  informants' ability to produce true and accurate accounts, if they do not understand the  question  posed,  they  cannot  fulfi  l  their  obligation  to  produce  an account,  and consequently they must try to remove the trouble source asking for clarifi  cation.

The  fact  that  repair  organisation  is  an  interactional  resource  that informants  frequently  recur  to  seems  to  support  the  affi  rmation  that they are concerned with issues of validity. We have so far only treated cases of lack of knowledge or lack of comprehension on the part of the informant. It  also  happens,  however,  that  the  trouble  source  is  to  be traced back to the interviewer, because (s)he in his or her inferential work explicitly shows that (s)he followed another trajectory than was intended by the informant. This kind of trouble source is the basis for the  repair  work  made  in  the  following  fragment  (arrow  marks  turn where repair work is initiated):

Fragment (6) Interviewer: L(ars) Informant: A(ntonio) L: e  voy  a  hacer  un  par  de  preguntas  un  poco  más  especifífi  cas no,  e:::  en  su  opinión  un  sueco  típico  es  individualista  o  no  es individualista, Er I'll ask a few a little more specifi  c questions, er::: in your opinion a typical Swede is he individualistic or not, A: (2.0) mi opinión es que son muy individualistas (2.0) my opinion is that they are very individualistic L: muy individuali very indiviuali A: ((bue)) ((we)) L: stas en qué sentido stic in which sense A: es decir te lo voy a poner como ejemplo (3.0) (RUIDO) el el por lo menos el sueco that is I'll give you an example (3.0) (NOISE) the the at least the Swede that goes here que viene yo no te puedo opinar sobre los suecos que viven I cannot give you an opinion of the Swedes that live L: los the A: dentro enclavados en la sociedad sueca in the Swedish society L: umm hm A: sino el sueco que viene acá but the Swede that comes over here

## 130

- L: que viene a ( ) ( )

that comes o ( ) ( )

- A: exacto evidentemente (2.0) (RUIDO) hay dos cosas características de ellos (2.0) si han

exactly obviously (2.0) (NOISE) there are two characteristic things about them (2.0) if

sido enviados al exterior traen e una gran obsesión por triunfar por demostrar

they  have  been  sent  abroad  they  are  very  obsessed  by  making  success  by showing

precisamente porqué se les trajo

precisely why the were sent over

- L: umjú hhm
- A: (3.0) a veces cometen el error precisamente de de perder de vista (2.5) la labor de

(3.0) sometimes they make the mistake of of losing sight of (2.5) team work

equipo (2.0) y por eso yo pienso que el sueco defi  nitivamente o sea co sus sus metas

(2.0)  and  thefore  I  think  that  the  Swede  defi  nitely  or  that  his  his  goals  for instance

por ejemplo quizá no están fi  ncadas muchas veces en Méjico no todos pero sí una

maybe are not very often based in Mexico not all but the great majority yes or that

gran  mayoría  o  sea  por  ejemplo  Méjico  puede  ser  un  país intermedio en su carrera

for instance Mexico can be an intermediate country in their carreer

- L: ya por eso desa desaparecen e se van,

and therefore they disa disappear e they leave,

- A: no no es decir me refi  ero  a que se vuelve más individualista desde el punto de vista

no no it is I mean that they become mor individualistica from the point of view that

que es más importante para él su logro personal his personal success is more important to him

- L: (ya entiendo) (ya entiendo) (I understand) (I understand)
- A: que el logro del equipo than the team's success
- L: (sí ya entiendo sí) (yes I understand yes)

The interviewer asks the informant if he thinks the Swedes are individual  istic or not and he produces a minimal response in the affi  rmative, and L asks a new question inviting him to elaborate his response. Now A produces an account of why he thinks the Swedes are individualistic. He thinks they go to Mexico as a step in their career building and therefore  they  are  more  interested  in  their  personal  success  than  in  team work. This induces L to  state  that  this  is  the  reason  why  they  leave, and this was not what A meant to say. To remove the misunderstanding he therefore makes an other-initiated other-repair. The original question  was  about  individualism  and  he  intended  to  explain  why  he considered them to be individualistic. He focussed on their interest in personal success and not team work. And L repeatedly confi  rms that he understands.

It goes without saying that repair work is a very useful resource in re  search interviewing, since it is the only resource the interlocutors can recur  to  in  order  to  eliminate  trouble  sources.  In  very  asymmetrical inter  view  situations  as  for  instance  those  reported  by  Suchman  and Jordan (1992) and by Hanneke Houtkoup-Steenstra (2000) repair work is initiated because the respondents fail to understand the question. This also holds true of the present data. The last fragment showed, however, that repair work also may be initiated due to misunderstanding on the part of the interviewer. It was even an instance of other-initiated otherrepair, and research on repair work has shown that this is a dispreferred option (Hutchby & Wooffi  tt 1998). This is yet another way of showing the informants' concern with producing true and valid responses.

## 6. Question-response interaction

Literature  on  question  design  (Briggs  1986;  Silverman  1995;  Kvale 1996) distinguishes between different question types, e.g. open-ended questions  and  closed  questions.  Open-ended  questions  invites  the informant to produce long stretches of talk with little control on the part of the interviewer on response construction. This is the typical question design in qualitative interviewing. In this connection Mazeland and ten Have (1998) report that in their corpus they see a more or less open negotiation going on in most of the questioning sequences. Massively, these negotiations concern the extendibility of the answers, and start at the moment a minimally adequate answer is given. At that moment, the  interviewer  could  initiate  a  new  questioning  sequence,  but  most of the time he or she just waits for more to come or limits himself or herself  to  a  minimal  response.  Closed  questions,  on  the  other  hand, is  a  powerful  means  of  control  because  they  for  syntactical  reasons put serious constraints on the range of response options inviting  the informant to produce short and minimal responses. The closed question design  is  typical  of  survey  interviews.  As  long  as  respondents  are not  given  the  opportunity  to  elaborate  on  their  minimal  responses, e.g.  yes-no  answers  to  yes-no  questions,  the  interviewer  has  no  way of  knowing  if  the  question  has  been  understood. A  yes-no  response mere  ly  demonstrates  that  the  respondents  have  understood  that  the ques  tion is a yes-no question. This means that the use of e.g. yes-no questions in survey interviews poses an inherent threat to the validity of the responses (Suchman and Jordan 1992; Houtkoop-Steenstra 2000). Behavior  coding  studies  of  recorded  survey  interviews  show  that respondents provide answers that do not match the response options or  say  more  than  just  'yes'  or  'no'  in  response  to  a  yes-no  question (Houptkoop-Steenstra 2000). This demonstrates the natural inclination on  the  part  of  the  respondents  to  produce  what  they  believe  to  be adequate and valid responses.

## 6.1.  Question delivery structure

The activity of questioning may be accomplished across various turn constructional  units.  On  the  basis  of  data  from  survey  interviews Houptkoop-Steenstra (2000) shows how such multi-turn questions may cause interactional troubles because the respondent upon completion of the fi  rst part of the question takes a turn to provide an answer because  he  or  she  thinks  that  the  fi  rst  possible  completion  point  is  a tran  si  tion  relevant  place.  Houtpkoop-Steenstra  points  out  that  this kind of interactional troubles may be a serious threat to validity since it may discourage the interviewer from asking the whole question for which reason only inadequate answers will be generated. The question delivery structure of question-answer sequences that will be analyzed in the following is one in which the open-ended and closed question types are combined. The fi  rst component is an open-ended question, and the second a closed question in which a few response options are offered, as in the fragment below:

Fragment (7)

Interviewer: A(driana)

Informant: M(iguel)

- A: qué opinas de la competencia social de ellos son sociables o son poco sociables

What do you think about their social competence are they sociable or not very sociable

Following the line of thought of Houptkoop-Steenstra what could be suspected is that the informant in his role as question recipient would start production of the second projected by the open-ended questioning component immediately after its completion. But he does not, and A can unhampered continue the delivery of the closed question component.

The  moment  the  interviewer  has  delivered  the  fi  rst  part  of  the question he reaches a possible completion point in which the informant must  take  into  consideration  if  he  is  expected  to  shift  his  role  from question  recipient  to  response  generator  and  consequently  choose himself as next speaker, or if he should keep listening and thus conti  nue  in  his  role  as  question  recipient.  What  could  be  argued  in  this con  nec  tion is that the informant who does not take the turn at this point displays that he is a careful and attentive listener who does not intend to produce an answer until he feels sure that he has received the entire question. In the pursuance of true and accurate responses listening is an indispensable resource not only on the part of interviewers but also on the part of informants.

## 6.2.  Response delivery

How do informants interactionally manage a question format in which the fi  rst part consist of an open-ended and the second a closed question?

Do they orient towards the open-ended and/or the second component? A recurrent  feature  of  the  present  data  is  that  the  opening  sequence of  response  delivery  is  a  closed  minimal  response  as  projected  by the closed part of the question. After completion of this minimal res  ponse  the  interlocutors  have  reached  a  crucial  moment  in  response construction. The interviewer has posed a closed question whose syntac  tical, formal constraints imply that the relevant second is a closed, minimal response. But what about the open-ended part of the question? Although Mazeland and ten Have (1998) do not mention the type of interview schedule questions that were used in their corpus, they found that as far as the negotiation of the extendibility of responses is concerned, most of the time the interviewer in displaying active listening (Kvale 1996) just waited for more to come or limited him or herself to a minimal response. In this connection two comments are relevant. In the fi  rst place most of the time question recipients are normatively oriented towards  producing  responses  that  correspond  to  what  is  projected by the question. In this way they design their responses so that they struc  turally correspond to the question. This means that in the present case a closed, minimal response is of course a relevant second, but it could hardly be considered to be a complete and adequate response. In this way if a response component that is sequentially linked to the open-ended part of the question is not produced the interviewer would consider it to be noticeably absent. This implies that the informant is expected  to  extend  his  minimal  response  on  his  own  initiative,  and this is, in fact, what happens in the following fragment (arrow marks relevant turn):

## Fragment (8)

Interviewer: A(nnette)

Informant: H(éctor)

- A: qué opinas de la técnita técnica argumentative de los e daneses a nie si hay algú algún

what do you think about the er Danes' argumentation techni technique a nie if there is

problema que que resolver y cuá cuál cuál es su técnica ar  gu  menta  tiva presentan sus

som some kind of problem to be solved and ho how how is their argumentation argumenta e sus argumenta sus argumentos de forma efi  ciente o poco efi  ciente.

technique do they present their argume er their argumenta effi  ciently or not very effi  ciently.

H: → son muy efi  cientes s el danés es una persona muy culta

they are very effi  cient s the Dane is a very educated person

- A: umjú hm
- H: que lee mucho y de mucho más experiencia que que que el mejicano en (esos)

who  reads  a  lot  and  have  a  lot  of  experience  that  that  that  the  Mexican  en (these)

entonces sus argumentos son siempre basados en cosas científi  cas o  experiencias…

so his arguments are always based on cientifi  c things or experience…

As far as question structure is concerned we see that the fi  rst part is an  open-ended  component,  and  the  second  closed,  and  we  note  that H does not start constructing his answer until A has fi  nished the interview schedule question. In delivering his response H fi  rst  orients  towards  the  second  question  component  producing  a  closed,  minimal response  and  immediately  afterwards  he  extends  the  answer  on  his own  initiative  producing  an  account.  Note  that A's continuer  is  not pro  duced immediately after the closed, minimal response, but not until fi  rst completion point of account construction inviting H to add more information.

The second comment is about turn transition. We know from studies of ordinary conversation that the time lapse involved in speaker change is minimal. On one hand there is a preference for only one speaker at a time and on the other for always one interlocutor producing talk. However, the data used for the present study point in the direction that the interactive fl  ow is somewhat slowed down in the sense that pauses are frequent and relatively long (up to 7 seconds). However, as far as pause length is concerned, the longest pauses are not produced in connection with question delivery and closed response generation but immediately after the minimal, closed response has been produced. It may be argued that these rather long pauses belong to the informant, since at this point in response delivery he has oriented himself only towards the closed part of the question. In the above fragment, however, the time lapse between the minimal response component and the open-ended response com  ponent could hardly be called a pause. The interviewer  is not even being given the opportunity to use waiting as a resource to prompt an answer. Rather the informant on his own initiative chooses himself as next  speaker  to  produce  a  response  that  is  also  directed  towards  the open-ended part of the interview schedule question. As far as the way in  which  the  informant  in  the  above  fragment  interactively  manages the open-component-closed-component question delivery is concerned it  could  be  stated  that  he  displays  a  great  willingness  and  ability  to produce an adequate and complete answer on his own initiative both in his role as question recipient and response generator.

As it was stated above, in the present data pauses following pro  jected  closed,  minimal  responses  are  found  to  be  relatively  longer  than those  involved  in  speaker  change.  This  could  be  explained  by  the fact  that  closed  questions  cognitively  are  much  easier  to  cope  with than open-ended questions, where informants generally will not have ready answers. This seems to be supported by the preferred response component order, where the closed part is followed by the open-ended part.

Returning to the issue of question delivery it might seem contradictory to pose question components that work in opposite directions, one inviting to produce a closed response, and another to produce an open-ended response. Why this discrepancy in the discourse identities displayed by the interviewer as both a closed question 'asker' who in his formulation of questions sets up a few categories thus inviting to a few canonical response options, and an open-ended question 'asker', who preferred to do account recipiency. One possible explanation has to do with recipient  design.  Closed  questions  offering  only  a  few  response  options invite to a deductive way of thinking that are cognitively much simpler to  cope  with  than  open-ended  questions,  where  informants  may  not at  fi  rst  be  able  to  take  a  comprehensive  view  of  the  issue  raised  by the  question.  In  this  way  the  closed  question  format  may  trigger  off a train of thoughts that is a precondition for doing accounting at all. This  explanation  seems  to  be  supported  by  the  sequential  order  of the  response  components.  The  fi  rst  thing  the  informants  did  was  to introduce a 'closed' minimal response to which they added an extension that  served  as  a  kind  of  explanation  and  not  the  inverse  order. They did not delay the minimal response in order to introduce the reasons to support the minimal response fi  rst.

## 7. Verifi  cation

As mentioned by Kvale (1996), interviewers who know what they are asking about, and why they are asking, will attempt to clarify the meanings relevant to the research project during the interview obtaining a dis  ambiguation of the statements made, and thereby providing a more trustworthy point of departure for the later analysis. Ideally, the testing of hypotheses and interpretations is fi  nished by the end of the interview with  the  interviewer's  hypotheses  having  been  verifi  ed  or  falsifi  ed dur  ing the interview. Verifi  cation is an important interactive resource in  the  generation  of  true  and  accurate  responses.  In  this  way,  in  the pro  cessing  of  information  interviewers  often  use  formulations  which offer a summarizing interpretation of the locally relevant tenor of the just  provided talk. They help to establish a shared sense of what the an  swers really mean. As described by Mazeland and ten Have (1998) formulations are sequentially implicative: the informant has the right to decide on their adequacy. Therefore they could be considered to be fi  rst-pair-parts of and adjacency pair Formulation/Decision . As a fi  rst part of that pair type, they project the continuation of the current topic over  at  least  two  subsequent  turns,  the  present  formulation  and  the expect  able decision. Heritage (1985) describes cooperative recycles as a type of formulation which seems to be particularly relevant for the semi-structured research interview. In cooperative recycles the tenor of the preceding utterance is expanded in a way that probably is agreeable to the informant; the recipient just assists the speaker in making his or her point utterly clear. They use a request for confi  rmation format; by submitting an assertion concerning the informant's previous utterance who is an expert on its meaning, a decision on their meaning is invited.

One of the interactive features that distinguishes the interview from other forms of talk is its fragmentation into question-answer pairs that seem to be totally independant of each other. From a sequential point of view the interview, like any other form of talk unfolds on a turn-toturn basis where one turn sets up expectations as to what kind of turn is to follow. This sequential implicativeness implies that coherence is local  ly achieved and is studied as very local phenomenon. This implies, in  turn,  that  if  interlocutors  want  to  refer  to  talk  that  was  produced before  the  immediately  preceding  utterance,  a  special  job  has  to  be done. Using Stubbs's conceptual framework (1983) this can be done by using a misplacement marker that announces that what follows is not only sequentially linked to the previous turn. Among the type of mis  placement markers identifi  ed by Stubbs in committee meeting interaction, especially  two types are relevant for the present study, i.e. selfreferential metastatements and metareference to other speaker's talk. In fragments (9) and (10) that follow there is an example of for  mu  lations that refer to own previous talk and to the other speaker's talk and that are sequentially linked both to the previous turn and something uttered by the informant prior to that (arrow marks relevant turn).

## Fragment (9)

Interviewer: A(nnette)

Informant: C(amilla)

- A: ok: æ:hm æh hva mener du om deres evne til at argumentere for en sag

okey um: um what do you think about their ability to argue for a cause

- C den er som regel god altså der der er jo ikke den ting som lige pludselig ikke kan hive

usually it's good there isn't the thing you know that they suddenly they pull out the hat um: often

ind som et argument æh tit så får man blandet sin sin bedstemor og fodbolden ind i det

you get your grandmother and football mixed up into it ((laughing))

## A: (laughing)

hvor vi starter med at argumentere et eller andet ikk og så lige pludselig sådan altså

where we begin to argue for something you know and then all of a sudden well I don't know if the

jeg ved ikke hvis de tænker sådan på saglige argumenteren og vi snakker om 'det her

think of like factual or objective arguments and we are talking about this tiny problem in this case it lille problem der kan det være svært lisom måske at holde igen opmærksomheden og may sometimes be diffi  cult to keep paying attention and to concentrate on this tiny problem koncentrationen om 'det lille  problem  for  så  kommer  der  altså nogle andre ting der for  then  there're  some  other  things  that  are  included  and  that  are  relevant  to them bliver draget ind i det og som for dem har relevans

## A: → det var de du startede med at sige omkring

this was what you started by saying about

- C: ja yes
- A: strukturering

structuring

- C: ja ja yeah yeah
- A: dit første indtryk

your fi  rst impression

- C: mm

h'm

## Fragment (10)

Interviewer: L(ars)

Informant: M(iguel)

- L: pero a un mejicano o a un mejicano normal bueno de esa empresa le resulta fácil o

but  to  a  Mexican  or  to  a  normal  Mexican  well  from  this  fi  rm  is  it  easy  or diffi  cult

difícil comunicarse con un sueco o ahora pienso quizá comparando con

to communicate with a Swede or now I think perhaps comparing with

norteamericano alemán etcétera etcétera el sueco presenta difi  cultades generales por

## 140

Northamerican  German  etcetera  etcetera  does  the  Swede  present  general problems so

así  decirlo  en  la  comunicación  e:  por  ejemplo  no  se  le  nota reacciones que sí se le

to speak in communication er for instance you don't see his reactions yes you see

notan muy bien sus reacciones o que en el lenguaje corporal o bueno todo

his reactions very well or that in body language or everything

## M: umjú

hm

## L: el conjunto

taken together

## M: umjú

hm

## L: de del ( ) comunicarse

in communicating

## M: sí sí

yes yes

## L: con alguien

with somebody

## M: no

no

## L: qué qué le parece,

what what do you think,

M: → no creo yo creo que el sueco por lo que explicaba anteriormente el det tener que

I don't think I think that the Swede  due to what I explained before the fact that he has er

haberse e abierto a pues a una Europa primero con un montón de de idiomas

opened up to a well a Europe fi  rst with lots of of different languages expressions and

diferentes expresiones y desde luego también hacia el resto del mundo yo creo que of course also to the rest of the world I think that Sweden is the most transnational country Suecia  es  el  país  más  transnacional  que  existe  por  todas  las grandes compañías que that exists because of all the big companies it has and I think that there are not tiene y yo creo que no hay otro país tan gran tan transnacional per cápita como Suecia other countries as big as transnational per inhabitant as Sweden In fragment (9) the informant is asked about the Venezuelans' ability to argue for a cause. In her response the gist of her argument is that they fi  nd it diffi  cult to keep attention and to concentrate on a specifi  c problem. The factual basis of discussion is sometimes slipping because all kinds or arguments are introduced. How does the interviewer treat this statement?  She reintroduces the topic of structuredness and makes a kind of meta-referential comment to something stated earlier by the informant, and tries in this way to verify comprehension. It could be described as a kind of inferential work, in which she tries to link together parts of the immediately preceding utterance with something that the informant replied to an earlier question. In this way her comment is both of local and global relevance in the sense that she suggests a way in which the informant's statements may form a coherent whole centering around the topic of structuredness. The informant treats the comment as a request for confi  rmation and does confi  rm that structuredness and the Venezuelans' diffi  culties in keeping attentention and concentrating themselves are bound up with each other.

In  fragment  (10)  the  informant  is  asked  if  he  thinks  it  is  easy  or diffi  cult to communicate with the Swedes. What he does after having produced  the  closed,  minimal  response  is  to  refer  to  something  he explained in an earlier statement. In this way he is making a kind of self-referential formulation where Swedish openness towards the world is of local relevance as a response to communication ability and at the same time of global comprension relevance since it can explain other aspects of Swedish cultural identity as well. In this way the informant himself  tries  to  facilitate  or  verify  comprehension  across  questionanswer pairs and demonstrates that he is also concerned with producing consistent and valid responses.

## 8. Conclusion

If  we  accept  the  idea  that  the  construction  of  the  social  world  takes place in the local management of context and meaning in conversation, the interview turns out to be an interactive event that is of interest in its  own  right.  Since  it  is  also  an  information  gathering  research  tool we  must  of  course  also  be  concerned  with  matters  of  validity.  For many years it has been generally acknowledged that to avoid response bias interviewers interactionally had to proceed in a fashion that was as  neutral  as  possible.  We  must  accept,  however,  that  'neutrality' is  not  possible,  since  even  very  subtle  intonation  cues,  the  use  of con  tinuers  or  acknowledgement  tokens  or  other  kinds  of  minimal responses produced by interviewers will infl  uence  the  way  in  which informants construct responses. It could also be argued that restricting the  interactive  repertoire  of  interviewers  may  be  a  threat  to  validity. With a view to maximizing validity several interview data researches have recommended an expansion of interviewers' interactive repertoire to  allow  for  a  more  symmetrical  format.  Such  was  the  format  of the  interview  data  used  for  the  present  study.  The  aim  of  the  study was  from  a  conversation  analytical  perspective  to  analyse  some  of the  resources  interviewers  and  informants  recurred  to  in  their  joint construction of the interviews. It was based on the presupposition that the interlocutores as rational beings per se are concerned with matters of accountability. Therefore, from the very moment that have accepted to engage in a research interview, they will automatically make every effort  to  produce true and accurate responses. Among the interactive resources interlocutors recur to, especially four were analyzed. They were  phenomena  related  to  the  negotiation  of  meaning,    questionresponse interaction, repair organization and verifi  cation. It turned out that both interviewers and informants were highly concerned with producing  valid,  accurate  and  consistent  responses,  not  only  within  but also across question-answer pairs. It can therefore be concluded that in semi-structured research interviews of the present type, allowing for a certain extent of sharing and negotiating world views, may enhance issues  of  validity. As  it  is  stated  by  Mazeland  and  ten  Have  (1998), inter  viewers and informants basically have different agendas. However, allow  ing for a more ordinary conversation-like interactive format may situate the interlocutors on a more equal level where they both feel they have a joint commitment to produce true knowledge.

## Transcription key

- . indication that an utterance is fi  nished (falling entonation)
- , rising entonation
- ? questioning entonation

(fi  gure) pause

- ( ) inaudible speech
- (word) transcribers' guess
- :: prolonged sound
- (( )) non-verbal activities, e.g. laughs

It should be mentiond that the transcriptive detail of each fragment has been adapted to the interactive phenomena it is meant to illustrate.

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