In this section interviews will be considered from the person perspective. In some cases the section will address topics that have been raised before but the way that the topic is addressed will be different.
It is important that an interviewer asks this question.
The answer to the question is rather difficult to imagine however. Different people will feel differently about interviews, the type of interview will make a difference, where the interview is to be held, what the objective is and the manner of the interviewer will all make a difference. An interviewer may not be able to answer this question for an individual interviewee but should have some general understanding of what factors affect how the interviewee feels and how those factors will influence his or her feelings and responses. It may be worthwhile spending a little time discussing this issue even though, from the outset, it can be recognised that a definitive answer is unlikely.
It is probably true that all interviews will tend to increase stress for the interviewee. A brief search on the internet will uncover a large amount of advice on how to deal with interview stress. What this tends to show is that people do seem to suffer from stress during interviews. This comment is aimed at the interviewee but an interviewer may also suffer from stress.
Interviews where an interviewee is being challenged, accused or deliberately put under pressure are likely to cause the most stress. If the interview seeks to gather good quality information from the interviewee, this may not be a good strategy. If the interviewee is being placed in a stressful situation to see how they respond to stress then this is probably not an interview.
It is known that stress has an adverse effect on memory. If this is accepted, the reduction of stress in interviews is likely to improve information flow.
In a more proactive sense an interviewer can create an environment that puts an interviewee at ease and reduces stress. This means that the interviewer should know what sort of environment will be more relaxing and should know a little about how the intended interviewee may react to certain situations such as noise or dim light etc.
From either the avoidance perspective or the proactive creative perspective it seems that it is stress that is the main issue for the interviewer to deal with. A very general answer to the question at the beginning of this section could be: stressful.
People are interviewed because they know things or have witnessed things or have had experiences that others wish to know about. This very simply point reinforces the need to create an environment where this information can be accessed and transferred in as accurate and complete a way as possible.
There is considerable evidence to show that it is possible to conduct an interview in such a way as to bias the information gathered or even distort it altogether. The following extract is from the AKRI web site but the original source is "Your Memory: A Users Guide : Alan Baddeley: Penguin. 1993”
In one experiment (Elizabeth Loftus), subjects were asked to watch a film of a car crash. All subjects were than asked the same questions about the crash (About how fast were the cars going when they hit each other?) except that the word 'hit' was replaced by one of the words, 'smashed', 'collided', 'bumped', or 'contacted'. Estimates were higher when the word 'smashed' was used (40.8mph) and lowest when the word 'contacted' was used (31.8mph) with the expected range in between. Furthermore, when subjects were questioned a week later about if there was any broken glass, those subjects who were given the word 'smashed' were consistently more likely to report 'yes' than the others. In fact there was no broken glass.
An example of a leading question that could influence memory, or at least the report from memory, is:
Instead of asking, "Did you see a broken headlight", you ask: "Did you see the broken headlight."
When an interviewer feels that he or she knows as much or more than the person being interviewed, there may be a strong tendency for the interviewer to attempt to bias what the interviewee says so that it matches the beliefs of the interviewer. In such cases, the interviewer should remember that the point of the interview is to find out what the interviewee thinks and not what the interviewer thinks.
The role of the interviewer is simply to manage the realisation of the goals of the interview. This implies that each interview has well defined realistic goals and that the theme that must underpin such goals is the elicitation of information from an interviewee. The interviewer needs to engage fully in the process and concentrate on the task in order to develop a dialogue that will achieve the goals. The interviewer must also manage the process including setting it up, managing the environment, managing the interviewees experience and critically, managing the time available.
Whilst searching the internet to elicit a feel for the work done on and thoughts about listening, I came across this rather interesting statement:
If I listen, I forget what I am going to say!
I liked the statement straight away because it seems to embody much of what goes on in peoples heads during meetings and sometimes interviews. Listening is not easy and it requires attention and concentration (very similar qualities). Unless someone is practiced at listening, they will probably not be very effective at it. It is possible to improve attention span with practice. During an interview, the interviewee may find talking about their experience quite easy but the interviewer may need to concentrate hard to pick up important details and follow lines of reasoning. A good interviewer should be a good listener. I have experienced cases where interviewers are more interested in making their own point about what is being said than accurately recording the point being made by the interviewee, hence the relevance of the statement above.
Understanding should follow from good listening but may not do so. It may not be necessary for an interviewer to understand everything that he or she elicits. However, without some understanding it may be difficult for the interviewer to pursue a line of thought and fully explore a topic. Many researchers relate understanding to explanation. This is a useful clue for an interviewer. Try to explain the topic that is being or has been explored. It may be desirable during an interview for the interviewer to explain the topic just discussed back to the interviewee so that the interviewee can comment on whether a correct explanation has been given. Understanding helps an interviewer to manage the full exploration of a topic. The talk back idea also helps the interviewer and interviewee to verify the information captured during the interview.
In some cases an interviewer may need to translate meaning between different experts during different interviews. This may be necessary because the experts may be expert in slightly different parts of the overall topic. Translation is easiest if understanding is present.
It was stated in section 3.1 that stress was a critical factor that could affect the outcome of an interview. The environment that an interview is conducted in could have a considerable impact on stress and also on other features of an interview. For instance, if an interview room was very hot and stuffy, this may make interviewer and interviewee very tired and far less alert. Considering the stress element could be helped by thinking about two extremes of interview environment:
It is more likely that the interview environment will be something in between the examples given above. However, there are certain factors that can have a significant effect. These factors include, noise, light, humidity and space. One factor not usually attended to is smell. This can put a person off and they may not know why.
The point here is that if a person is responsible for organising interviews then they are also responsible for organising the interview environment.
It is useful to end a chapter on the personal perspective of interviews by considering what the interviewer should be. The list is provided below for discussion. Should these things all be included? Are there some things missing?
An interviewer should be: