Your Role as Reflexive Interviewer

  • Your own biases and prejudices will affect what questions are being asked and the responses from the interviewees.
  • You should adopt a responsive interviewing model (Rubin & Rubin, 2005), which asks interviewer to examine his or her understanding and reactions when interacting with interviewees.
  • Being a good interviewer will minimize the effects of our biases.

How can this be done practically?

  1. Make good use of the pauses: examine whether the questions are “misleading” or whether certain questions should be avoided.
  2. Check your emotions and feelings: there may be times that you or your interviewee feel offended, e.g. a researcher who supports Democratic Party may have strong views against research participants who support DAB.
  3. Self-awareness: sometimes the strong empathy towards your interviewees may also affect your judgement and values.