Hi all,

Really stupid question that I should know but have completely over analysed!

I was originally taking an interpretivist, qualitative approach, adopting the case study method. However, I have figured out that case studies are too in-depth for the information I am gathering and am now aiming for 30-40 interviews with managers. Was wondering what approach this is as I am not building up a case and only doing interviews?

Hope this makes sense and thanks for your help x

Your methodology then, is interviews! You can be more specific eg, indepth, semi-structured interviews. And don't say 'only' doing interviews - interviews are an important qual tool! Get yourself a decent book on research, like Denscombe's 'The Good Research Guide' - it will provide you with info to make your interview methodology sound lovely and robust!

Hi Donzy,

it is also useful to think now, thus before your interviews, how you are going to analyse them. A lot of researchers use "grounded theory" (Glaser and Strauss) and this means that you need to transcribe, analyse, transcribe etc. Most would have a second independant researcher to do the same thing. All issues to think about before starting to collect your data.

And, as Sue mentioned, 30-40 interviews means a lot of transcribing!:-)

Yeah, Donzy, Rick makes a really important point. Really think about the approach you are going to take to analysing your data. Interviews are one approach, as Sue points out, to collecting data for qualitative research, but the interpretive, qualitative approach you speak of includes lots of different approaches to qualitative research within the Naturalistic Inquiry Paradigm. Qualitative research is largely interpretivistic after all. Would it be okay for you to tell us, broadly, what you are aiming to do? It's just 30-40 interviews sounds an awful lot. Do you think you could interview such a number of managers within you time frame. Maybe you won't need to mif you adopt the principle of data saturation (though that is a little bit positivistic and may depend on your own research worldview.

Donzy, Sue,

one can debate about how many interviews are enough, probably depends on the field you are in, saturation etc.
However I do think that one should not think too lightly about doing 30-40 interviews, especially not with professionals. There may be all kind of hurdles, for example finding managers and getting access to the ones who want to be interviewed, setting dates, travelling to the managers and last, but not least the transcribing. The latter takes a long time!!

I actually have a mate doing a grounded theory study, where he aimed to interview 30 counsellors, and he is encountering exactly this hurdle. He's now looking at 20. The problem he finds is the ones that are interested are all over the UK and others don't bother e-mailing him back or giving him a time he can go and interview them. I myself originally planned to do 3 focus groups with some health professional and I've ended up only being able to do two. It's the logistics of it all. Grrr...

Interviewing is an accepted method - Do make sure you know exactly what you are going to ask, and how you are going to analyse the data you collect. The transcription can take ages, and some people say you have to do this yourself in order to get all you can out of the data. I went to a session on this at my uni, and they really analysed everything, every single word and its context. It also involved a paper mountain of post-its and a rainbow of coloured highlighters! so you need to know what you are after.

How many people is enough? well it partly depends upon the number available, if there are only 10 in the country, you should in theory do all ten  for example. There is a statistical table, I saw one I think in Cohen, Mannion and Morrison (2007) Research methods in education, that gives a breakdown of the number of people you need, might be useful. it also depends on availability, one of my supervisors said he was offered interviews, only to find that the place they sent him to didn't exist, or the person wasn't there. 30-40 seems a lot if they are indepth interviews though.

I guess the appropriate number of people to be interviewed depends on a lot of things...the research question(s), method of analysis, availability of population etc. My friend is interviewing 60 people (to be analysed with grounded theory and interpretative phenomenological analysis) which is a huge sample for that type of study, but that's basically her whole PhD. My PhD is mainly quantitative but I am also doing either 1 or 2 small qualitative studies with 10-12 people in each, which is a fairly typical sample size for that type of study in the field I am in. Whilst I have an awful lot more testing and visits to do than she does, it's her transcription and analysis that's gonna take all her time up. I don't suppose there is an ideal sample size that caters for all studies...

Well, I am doing qualitative research. I plan to interview a total of 40 people. I have already done my pilot and I believe that I can do it, despite the fact that I will have to do double work as the interviews will be in Greek and I will have to translate them into English...But it is a research that really interests me and my supervisors and we believe that it can be done....We'll see..........

hi Emmaki,

obviously everything can be done, yet I think it is a matter of being aware beforehand where you are letting yourself into, how much frustration you can deal with and how much time you have available.
My interviews were in an other language as well, the researchers worked in that language and then quotes which were used in the main article needed to be translated by an official translator. Again perhaps something to check before starting translations yourself and then finding out that was either not required or not permitted.
:-)

Your method is interviews, your methodology is a different thing. That depends on your theoretical framework and how you are analysing things. Interviews is just a tool (or method) within a broad range of methodologies.