Qualitative Interviewing

In-depth interviewing is a widely used method for data collection in the social and human sciences. It is the method of choice for research projects that aim to explore people's experiences, motives, opinions and perspectives in their depth and richness and without constraining the respondents' answers by a priori categories or pre-set reply options. In political science in particular, it is often also used for the purpose of reconstructing processes and events. A yet less frequent, but equally interesting use of interviews is to use them as tools for accessing collective and cultural discourses. Although generally structured by a topic guide, in-depth interviews allow for flexibility and openness throughout the interview interaction and are based on open and non-leading questions that are designed to get the interviewee to talk freely and at length, and to explore the width and depth of his or her views and experiences. The workshop will for the most part consist of a mixture of lectures and practical exercises. It is mainly intended for graduate students with little or no prior knowledge and experience of research interviewing, who either plan to use interviews at some stage of their own research, or who are simply curious to be introduced to this method.

About the lecturer

Lea Sgier is a senior researcher at the University of Applied Arts and Sciences (Social Work) and a senior lecturer at the Political Science Department of the University of Geneva, Switzerland. She currently works for a National Science Foundation project on dementia policy in Switzerland (PNR74, 2017-2021). She also co-directs a project on elder people’s political citizenship in nursing homes in French speaking Switzerland (Leenaards Foundation, 2017-19) as well as a smaller project on dementia related trainings (for the Canton of Geneva). A political scientists by training, she was an assistant professor in qualitative methodology at Central European University (CEU) in Budapest from 2010-2017. During this time, she also acted as methodological advisor for two large scientific cooperation projects with the Western Balkans (RRPP Western Balkans) and the South Caucasus (ASCN). She also in an instructor on various methodology summer/winter schools and doctoral programmes (Essex Summer School UK, ECPR Winter School, WSSR Montreal, SSRM Hong Kong University, CUSO Switzerland). Finally, she has been a member of the Steering Committee of the ECPR Standing Group on Political Methodology since 2013 (www.ecpr-methods.org).