Interviewing has a strong claim to be the most widely-practised social science research methods. The ubiquity of this basic activity means that this field has one of the most developed bodies of methodological literature having ramifications throughout the social sciences. Nigel Fielding, the acknowledged expert in the field, has again collected together a set of contemporary classic readings. Interviewing has been established as the authoritative and balanced research resource in this subject. It is comprehensive and generic; however, its coverage does not entirely reflect the apportionment of intellectual effort and interest in the field. Interviewing II delves further into the subject and concentrates on on articles representing topics that have proven controversial and thus attracted many contributions.

Table of Contents:
VOLUME I Part I. Interview History and Epistemology The History of the Interview in Social Research 1. The History of the Interview - Jennifer Platt 2. The Meaning of Opinion - David Riesman and Nathan Glazer Epistemology: The Concept of an ‘Interview Society’ 3. Kundera’s Immortality: The Interview Society and the Invention of the Self - Paul Atkinson and David Silverman 4. The Active Interview - James A. Holstein and Jaber F. Gubrium Epistemology: Perspectives on the Interview 5. The Nondirective Method as a Technique for Social Research - Carl R. Rogers 6. Interviewing Women: A Contradiction in Terms - Ann Oakley 7. Interview Talk: Bringing off a Research Instrument - David Silverman Part II. COMPARING, CONTRASTING, AND INTEGRATING TYPES AND MODES 8. Toward a Sociology of Social Scientific Knowledge: Survey Research and Ethnomethodology’s Asymmetric Alternates - Douglas W. Maynard and Nora Cate Schaeffer 9. Set Them Free: Improving Data Quality by Broadening the Interviewer’s Tasks - Giampietro Gobo 10. Theory-Driven Interviewing: From Theory into Practice - Niall Hamilton-Smith and Matt Hopkins New Types of Research Interviews Postmodern Interviewing 11. Interview Shocks and Shockwaves - Roberta G. Sands and Michal Krumer-Nevo Online Interviewing 12. Using the Online Medium for Discursive Research about People with Disabilities - Natilene Bowker and Keith Tuffin 13. E-Mail Interviewing in Qualitative Research: A Methodological Discussion - Lokman I. Meho 14. Conducting On-Line Focus Groups: A Methodological Discussion - Ted J. Gaiser Definitive Treatments of Established Interview Types and Modes Survey Interviews 15. Understanding the Question-Answer Process - Norman M. Bradburn 16. Perspectives on Pretesting: “Cognition” In the Cognitive Interview? - Eleanor R. Gerber and Tracy R. Wellens 17. Informal Testing as a Means of Questionnaire Development - Dawn D. Nelson 18. Anatomy of the Survey Interview - Wendy Sykes and Martin Collins 19. Methods of Behavior Coding of Survey Interviews - Yfke P. Ongena and Wil Dijkstra VOLUME II Part II. COMPARING, CONTRASTING, AND INTEGRATING TYPES AND MODES (Continued ) Focus Groups 20. Why Things (Sometimes) Go Wrong in Focus Groups - David L. Morgan 21. Using Focus Groups with Lower Socioeconomic Status Latina Women - Esther I. Madriz 22. An Evaluation of the Group Interview - Margaret Chandler 23. Interruptions in Group Discussions: The Effects of Gender and Group Composition - Lynn Smith-Lovin and Charles Brody 24. Displaying Opinions: Topics and Disagreement in Focus Groups - Greg Myers Life History Interviews 25. Introduction: The Afterlife of the Life History - Margaret B. Blackman 26. The Life Story Approach: A Continental View - Daniel Bertaux and Martin Kohli 27. The Life History Calendar: A Technique for Collecting Retrospective Data - Deborah Freedman, Arland Thornton, Donald Camburn, Duane Alwin and Linda Young-DeMarco CATI and CAPI 28. Research Opportunities Related to CATI - Howard E. Freeman 29. Questionnaire Design with Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing - Carol C. House 30. The Use of CAPI for Attitude Surveys: An Experimental Comparison with Traditional Methods - Jean Martin, Colm O’Muircheartaigh and John Curtice Comparing Interview Modes 31. A Comparison of Three Mixed-Mode Interviewing Procedures in the National Crime Survey - Henry F. Woltman, Anthony G. Turner and John M. Bushery 32. Interview Mode Effects in Surveys of Drug and Alcohol Use: A Field Experiment - William S. Aquilino Part III. DESIGNING INTERVIEW-BASED RESEARCH Access and Refusal 33. Survey Introductions and Data Quality - Mick P. Couper Keeping Track: Recording and Representing Interview Encounters Recording 34. Interviewing with Tape Recorders - Joseph C. Bevis 35. Recording Technologies and the Interview in Sociology, 1920–2000 - Raymond M. Lee 36. From Ethics to Analytics: Aspects of Participants’ Orientations to the Presence and Relevance of Recording Devices - Susan A. Speer and Ian Hutchby 37. ‘Analytics’ Are No Substitute for Methodology: A Response to Speer and Hutchby - Martyn Hammersley Transcription 38. Transcription in Research and Practice: From Standardization of Technique to Interpretive Positionings - Judith C. Lapadat and Anne C. Lindsay 39. Transcription Quality as an Aspect of Rigor in Qualitative Research - Blake D. Poland 40. Working with Traumatic Stories: From Transcriber to Witness - Kim Etherington Designing Questions and Constructing Instruments Question Wording 41. Hardly Ever or Constantly? Group Comparisons Using Vague Quantifiers - Nora Cate Schaeffer 42. Creating Happy People by Asking Yes–No Questions - Hanneke Houtkoop-Steenstra and Charles Antaki VOLUME III Part III. DESIGNING INTERVIEW-BASED RESEARCH (Continued ) Constructing Instruments 43. Question Threat and Response Bias - Norman M. Bradburn, Seymour Sudman, Ed Blair and Carol Stocking 44. The Use of Respondent and Interviewer Debriefing Studies as a Way to Study Response Error in Survey Data - Pamela C. Campanelli, Elizabeth A. Martin and Jennifer M. Rothgeb 45. Reducing Response Error in Surveys - Seymour Sudman Enhancements of Interview Research Designs 46. Role-Playing in Survey Research - Howard Stanton, Kurt W. Back and Eugene Litwak 47. Card Sorting as a Technique for Survey Interviewing - Everett F. Cataldo, Richard M. Johnson, Lyman A. Kellstedt and Lester W. Milbrath 48. The Use of Vignettes in Survey Research - Cheryl S. Alexander and Henry Jay Becker 49. The Effect of Incentives on Response Rates in Interviewer- Mediated Surveys - Eleanor Singer, John Van Hoewyk, Nancy Gebler, Trivellore Raghunathan and Katherine McGonagle Part IV. CONDUCTING INTERVIEWS Interview Technique: Probing, Self-Disclosure and Joint Interviews 50. Suggestive Interviewer Behaviour in Surveys: An Experimental Study - Johannes H. Smit, Wil Dijkstra and Johannes van der Zouwen 51. The In-Depth Testing of Survey Questions: A Critical Appraisal of Methods - William Foddy 52. Trying Similarity, Doing Difference: The Role of Interviewer Self- Disclosure in Interview Talk with Young People - Jackie Abell, Abigail Locke, Susan Condor, Stephen Gibson and Clifford Stevenson 53. A Note on Interviewing Spouses Together - Graham Allan Co-Producing Interview Data and Working with Rapport 54. The Sociology of the Interview - David Riesman and Mark Benney 55. The Interviewee and the Research Interview: Analysing a Neglected Dimension in Research - Harry H. Hiller and Linda DiLuzio 56. Interviewers, Elites, and Academic Freedom - David Riesman V. FIELD RELATIONS Sensitive Topics 57. The Study of Sensitive Subjects - Julia Brannen 58. Asking Sensitive Questions: The Impact of Data Collection Mode, Question Format, and Question Context - Roger Tourangeau and Tom W. Smith 59. Conversational Space and Participant Shame in Interviewing - Erica Owens Power, Gender and Interviewer/Participant Relations 60. The Interactive Construction of Narrative Styles in Sensitive Interviews: The Case of Domestic Violence Research - Guy Enosh and Eli Buchbinder 61. The Importance of Researcher’s Gender in the In-Depth Interview: Evidence from Two Case Studies of Male Nurses - Christine L. Williams and E. Joel Heikes 62. Dominance through Interviews and Dialogues - Steinar Kvale VOLUME IV Part VI. INTERVIEWERS: CHARACTERISTICS, QUALITIES, EFFECTS 63. Interviewers’ Verbal Idiosyncrasies as a Source of Bias - W. Andrew Collins 64. Gender Effects among Telephone Interviewers in a Survey of Economic Attitudes - Robert M. Groves and Nancy H. Fultz 65. Age and Authority in the Interview - June Sachar Ehrlich and David Riesman 66. Evaluating Race-of-Interviewer Effects in a National Survey - Nora Cate Schaeffer 67. The Effects of the Ethnicity of the Interviewer on Conversation: A Study of Chicana Women - Yvonne Tixier y Vigil and Nan Elsasser Part VII. INTERVIEWEES Interviewing Special Respondents: The Vulnerable 68. Interviewing Children about Their Families: A Note on Data Quality - Paul R. Amato and Gay Ochiltree 69. The Meanings of Research: Kids as Subjects and Kids as Inquirers - Jan Nespor 70. Carrying Out Surveys among the Elderly: Some Problems of Sampling and Interviewing - Gerald Hoinville 71. When in Doubt, Say Yes: Acquiescence in Interviews with Mentally Retarded Persons - Carol K. Sigelman, Edward C. Budd, Cynthia L. Spanhel and Carol J. Schoenrock Interviewing Special Respondents: Elites 72. Interviewing a Legal Elite: The Wall Street Lawyer - Erwin O. Smigel Part VIII. ANALYSING INTERVIEW DATA Handling Context, Subjectivity, Perspective and Scope 73. One from the Gallery: An Experiment in the Interpretation of an Interview - David Riesman and Nathan Glazer 74. One from the Gallery: An Experiment in the Interpretation of an Interview (Conclusion) - David Riesman and Nathan Glazer 75. Stories, Background Knowledge and Themes: Problems in the Analysis of Life History Narrative - Michael Agar Contemporary Articulations of Interview Analysis: The Accounts Perspective 76. Moral Tales: Parents’ Stories of Encounters with the Health Professions - Geoffrey Baruch 77. The Art (Fulness) of Open-Ended Interviewing: Some Considerations on Analysing Interviews - Timothy John Rapley Contemporary Articulations of Interview Analysis: New Feminist Perspectives 78. ‘Emotion Work’ as a Participant Resource: A Feminist Analysis of Young Women’s Talk-in-Interaction - Hannah Frith and Celia Kitzinger Contemporary Articulations of Interview Analysis: Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis 79. Close Encounters of the ‘CA’ Kind: A Review of Literature Analysing Talk in Research Interviews - Kathryn Roulston Contemporary Articulations of Interview Analysis: The Reflexive Interview and Performativities 80. The Reflexive Interview and a Performative Social Science - Norman K. Denzin Part IX. DOES IT DO WHAT IT SAYS ON THE LABEL? THE UTILITY OF INTERVIEW RESEARCH Bias and Cross-Cultural Interviewing 81. Methodological Problems in Cross-Cultural Research: A Korean Immigrant Study in the United States - Won Moo Hurh and Kwang Chung Kim 82. Working between Languages and Cultures: Issues of Representation, Voice, and Authority Intensified - Rachelle Hole Integrating and Validating Interview-Based Research 83. Recent Methodological Studies on Survey Questioning - N. J. Molenaar 84. Integrating Focus Groups and Surveys: Examples from Environmental Risk Studies - William H. Desvousges and James H. Frey 85. Fertility, Family Planning and the Social Organization of Family Life: Some Methodological Issues - Aaron V. Cicourel 86. The Quality of Qualitative Health Research: The Open-Ended Interview and Its Alternatives - David Silverman