Yu kun's questions

Questions about variants of qualitative interviews

In Hopf’s “Qualitative Interviews: An Overview”, (204). He listed different types of interviews , give them definitions. Though I don’t have any experience to conduct interview people for research goals. But, based on my experience to be a journalist, I think it is very dangerous to strict ourselves in one particular way to interview people. Combination of different ways to interview people is the most successful way to find the truth. But I am not sure if I can take this thinking in academia.

How to deal with the relationships with the interviewees

In Flick,“Field Observation and Ethnography,” (223). He listed several topics to be discussed in pervious literatures. I am interested in first two topic : How to build up relationships of trust and How to shape one’s role in the field. For me, those skills are hard to learn from books. Therefore, I want to know more about that. In addition, how to keep my objectivity is also a challenge. If I maintain closed relationships with interviewees, I don’t know if I will lose my subjectivity.

Criticisms of Observation

Adler and Adler, proposed two problems in “Observation Techniques,”(p 87-88): validity and reliability. But these two issues are also criticisms of qualitative researches. We can distinguish the qualitative methods with quantitative methods by these two characteristics. In my opinion, if we pay too much attention on these two issues, we will lose some characteristics of qualitative methods.

Questions about ethnomethodology

Adler and Adler (99), “ ethnomethodologists are concerned with how people accomplish their everyday life.” For this issue, I am still concerned about the objectivity of a researcher. How to keep a suitable relationship with the subject is still a question for me.

Questions about formal sociology and new Iowa school

Adler and Adler (91), does it mean that those scholars were affected by science-orientation tradition and tried to improve the validity and reliability of this methods? Does it mean that this qualitative should give up some of its characteristics?