At first glance, conducting an interview may seem simple: it’s “just” asking questions to an expert and writing down the answers. Done, task complete, cross it off the to-do list!
But for us, nothing is “just” anything: an activity unfolds through many steps before it can be carried out. First, defining the profiles of the people to be interviewed, discussing with the team to establish the question guide, having the technical tools and basic knowledge for the conversation, deciding who will ask the questions and how many people we want to interview, among other points. Then, getting these people’s contact information and scheduling a time – and perhaps having to reschedule due to unforeseen circumstances.
Through the Tridecs project, we plan to interview people from civil society organizations, social movements, victims of the floods in Rio Grande do Sul and the fires in Maranhão, government officials, communication and technology experts, researchers, among other profiles.
Faced with such a long list, where to start? Perhaps it’s worth sharing a small part of the methodology we’re going to use here. The technique known as snowball sampling is used to find interviewees for qualitative research. This technique consists of expanding the research sample from an initial base selection, using contacts and networks to reach more people. For example, at the end of the interview, after explaining the project and asking the questions, we add one more point: who do you think can’t be missing from our list of interviewees?
This question helps the interviewee point to other contacts. It’s interesting because the person has just been interviewed, so they know exactly who could speak to this topic. In addition, the interviewee’s connections and context help “reach” the next contact. The originally planned list keeps growing, and we enrich the pool of people contributing to our research.
Lastly, an important point: we always try to thank people for their contacts and let them know whether the referrals led to interviews or not. In fact, feedback is something to always keep in mind in projects with partners where we rely on someone else’s knowledge, but that’s already a topic for a future post.
And we take this opportunity to thank each of the people who contributed to our project through semi-structured interviews, conversations, or by suggesting references and making connections.