Managing Mass Collaboration
Ahmad Ghazawneh
that does not try to avoid the unstructured interview nor minimize the structure one, but aims to channel and form the interview and related questions implicitly by which I can obtain the most appropriate information that can help me answer the research question in an efficient way. I have followed the “Realistic Interview” structure in my study. See figure 2.5.1
Figure 2.5.1 Basic Structure of the Realistic Interview (Pawson & Tilley, 1997, p.165) This ‘realistic’ approach is about dealing with informants not only as ‘answering machines’ or databases but also as knowledge holders ‘knowledgeable’ (Pawson & Tilley, 1997). And this will richness the empirical data and will make it more effective. Naturally and in common interviews, if a researcher asks a direct and straight question, the answer will mostly be straight. But when dealing with theories and practices it will be harder to get the required information from the informants unless they understand the question and what answers the researchers expects. In this ‘realistic’ approach the technique teacher-learner is applied (Pawson & Tilley, 1997). The researcher takes the role of a teacher, and the informant takes the role of a learner. By this it means that the researcher teaches his/her perspectives to the informants in order to push them toward clear understandings of the study and aims behind. Pawson & Tilley (1997) simplified this by stating that “the researcher/interviewer should play a much active role in teaching the overall conceptual structure of the investigation to the subject” (p.167). Back to my study, this had been applied by teaching the informants in Hedensted Kommune the process framework of my study, and let them understand all the stages of the process framework, in order to bring them to the scene and get the knowledge that can not be obtained by direct questions.
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