Hello
At the end of my first year, I have just started my qualitative interviews (hurrah!). However, although ive only done a couple, im a bit concerned as they only seem to be lasting about 20 minutes. i feel like ive covered what i need to, and i cant wring people dry if they have nothing further to say...or can I?
Probably an odd question, but is there some sort of accepted length of a qualitative interview for a PhD??? Would 20 minutes per participant (and im suggesting only 20 participants) be enough? Any thoughts???

If you're intending in-depth interviews, you ought to be aiming for around one hour, otherwise you won't get the depth necessary. I assume you have a discussion guide to work from which can be used to fill one hour.

Hi Zelda,

I think it depends on whether or not you are using other methods to gain data for your research as well. If you are using these interviews along with other methods (i.e. participant observation, focus groups, documentary sources etc) then the amount and length of interviews you are using may well be enough.
However, if you are using interviews as your main (or only) source of data then I would agree with Sylvester and say that you have to aim for an hour to get the required depth.

20 minutes does seem short. This has the advantage of being less data to analyse but do you feel you will get enough depth? Are you asking enough open questions? I find that nodding or saying hmm hmm keeps people talking for a lot longer, or you could follow up something they said e.g. 'I was interested when you said X...can you say a bit more about that? How did that make you feel?' etc.

Hi zelda, what methodology are you using? Are you conducting semi structured interviews?
I would agree that 20 mins seems quite short - but it depends on what you're trying to find out. If your research topic is very narrow then maybe its ok? Tell us more about your project!

I'm using very unstructured 'narrative' interviews - basically one question, along the lines of 'tell me about your experiences of.....'. Then i might do a couple of follow-up questions, but only based on what they've told me i.e. I'm not introducing anything new, as I'm looking at how their 'stories' are constructed, what the participants see as 'significant' in their stories, and how their selfhood is constructed, using the idea that we form a self of sense through the use of narrative.
It all sounds interesting in theory, but because i've never used this method before, as a method of data collection nor narrative analysis, I've no idea whether its 'enough'. I'd ask my supervisors, but theyre all on holiday now til October!

hmmm, thanks MistaG, that certainly puts things into perspective!
It makes me therefore wonder if anyone out there has gathered too much qualitative data in their PhD and wishes they'd only done 20 interviews at 20 minutes apiece..........?

Question for Zelda:

Question for Zelda
Hi,

long time ago you posted a question about the length of your interviews. You were planning to do 20, but the first couple of questons were only about 20 minutes long so you were wonderning if that is sufficient for a PHD.

Being in a similar situation myself now, I was wondering if your later interviews were actually longer than 20 minutes? If not, how many did you do and were there any problems with that.

Thanks so much

Otto