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research question. Thus, he had to repair the damage in the subsequent phase of the interview in
order to get the appropriate level of communication.
In the following example, the interviewer demonstrates a better introductory phase, namely a
truly informed beginning of the interview:
Q: ... I have looked up in the internet what you are working at, what is your research field. And I understood
it as follows: You conduct surface investigations of semiconductors and metals and aim at a microscopic
understanding of the interaction of molecules and atoms on surfaces.
A: That is a big part. Another important part are organic thin layers, organic materials that are deposited on
anorganic solid states and reverse, in order to make devices. But we are primarily concerned with the
foundations. This belongs to the area of soft matter … And there we use our technologies for advancing the
microscopic understanding.
In this interview, the interviewer begins with a description of the interviewee’s research field as
she understood it from information collected prior to the interview. In doing so, she is trying to
communicate the level of her understanding of the interviewee’s research and the technical terms
that can be used in the interview. With his answer, the interviewee is adapting to this level of
communication.
There is also a danger in the interviewer’s self-presentation as scientifically well informed.
Scientists can forget that it is not a colleague they are talking to, and can therefore move up to a
scientific level the interviewer cannot understand. Whenever this happens, the interviewer must
negotiate the level downwards by stating that the scientific argumentation was incomprehensible.
Thus, the aim of these negotiations is not to pretend an understanding that is not there (e.g. to
impress the interviewee), because the interview can produce useless (because incomprehensible)
scientific talk. It is important to achieve a level at which the interviewer can still understand all
the dialogue of the interviewee.
4. Summary and conclusions
In our investigations of institutional influences on scientific practice, an informed approach is
necessary for three reasons:
-
the content of the professionals work is an important explanatory variable in sociological
investigations,
-
it is a consequence of the operationalisation of research questions,
-
third, it is a consequence of general principles of interviewing: probe deeply and
demonstrate competence.
The two major counterarguments refer to two possible distortions of an investigation by
diverting too much energy in the scientific rather than sociological understanding, and by going
native, i.e. unconsciously accepting taken-for-granted assumptions of the field under study. If
one regards the ‘pros’ more important than the ‘cons’ (as we did), three tasks have to be fulfilled
in applying an informed approach, namely
-
learning about the interviewee’s world in intensively preparing the interview,
-
create an ad-hoc pidgin, that is a language that is understandable to both the interviewer
and the interviewee and that facilitates the description of the interviewee’s world, and
Convention