Identifying Interviewees

  • Who should be interviewed in your research? They should be people who can provide relevant information to your research question(s).

Once you have identified who should be interviewed, you should consider where and how you can find these people. Two considerations:

  • Representativeness: a single case can be sufficient if it is unique and not comparable e.g. one in-depth interview can be valid evidence in oral history. However, more interviews are needed if you want to compare groups of interviewees, or different perspectives within a group.
  • Data saturation: Students may think of conducting as many interviews as possible, until no new perspectives or information related to the topic are obtained. However, this could be time consuming. It may not be necessary too, as the aim of your research is not about generalizing the findings to the entire society

 

 NOTES

Please revisit the section about sampling to have a better understanding of sampling size and sampling methods.