What is problem-centred interviewing?
6th ESRC Research Methods Festival
St Catherine’s College, Oxford, 9 July 2014
Herwig Reiter
German Youth Institute, DJI
Department of Social Monitoring and Methodology
reiter@dji.de
The problem-centred interview (PCI)
1982
2012
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Outline
•
Background & origin of the problem-centred interview (PCI)
•
Programmatic guiding questions
•
Epistemological point of departure
•
Relevance and status of prior knowledge
•
Concept of respondent, researcher & interview relationship
•
Doing PCIs (selected aspects)
•
Interview guide
•
Communication strategies (general and specific exploration)

Working definition of the PCI:
qualitative, discursive-dialogic interview technique of collecting and reconstructing
knowledge about relevant problems in the perspective of interview partners
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Background and origin of the PCI
•
Developed by Andreas Witzel (1982, 1989) at the University of Bremen in the
context of the German methods discourse of the 1970s and 1980s
•
Research project about occupational socialization of young people
•
Originally, PCI as comprehensive integration of biographical research, case
analysis and theoretical sampling, and group discussions
•
Starting point: status paradox of qualitative interviewing - gradually recognised
but underdeveloped
•
PCI as response to a critique of …

… the hegemonic quantitative paradigm (structured ‘neutral’ interview)
=> fallacy of non-reactivity

… and radical qualitative alternatives (e.g. narrative interview, Schütze 1977, 1983)
=> fallacy of non-intervention
•
Symbolic interactionism (Blumer 1969) - qualitative interview as process of
meaning production in interaction => dialogic consolidation of pre-interpretations
•
Ethnomethodology (Garfinkel 1967) – contextuality and indexicality of
articulations => gradual interpretation of documentary evidences
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Programmatic guiding questions
1) What can we, as interpretive researchers, know about the social world?
2) How can we design our practices of social scientific knowledge collection and
production accordingly without …
a)
… neglecting available social scientific knowledge as prior knowledge
(deductive aspect),
b)
… inhibiting subjective perspectives (inductive aspect), or
c)
… corrupting the chance to discover novel aspects of certain problems
(abductive aspect)?

1) Epistemological point of departure

2a) Relevance and status of prior knowledge

2b) Concept of respondent, researcher & interview relationship

2c) Doing PCIs – selected aspects
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1) Epistemological point of departure
Fußzeile (Editieren unter Ansicht/Master/Folienmaster möglich)
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Understanding others
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Social research as re-construction of knowledge
“(The social world) has a particular meaning and relevance structure for
the human beings living, thinking, and acting therein. They have
preselected and preinterpreted this world by a series of commonsense constructs of the reality of daily life (…).
The thought objects constructed by the social scientists refer to and are
founded upon the thought objects constructed by the commonsense thought of man living his everyday life among his fellowmen.
Thus, the constructs used by the social scientist are, so to speak,
constructs of the second degree, namely constructs of the
constructs made by the actors on the social scene whose behavior
the scientist observes and tries to explain in accordance with the
procedural rules of his science” (Alfred Schuetz 1953: 3; emphases
added).
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2a) Relevance and status of prior knowledge
Fußzeile (Editieren unter Ansicht/Master/Folienmaster möglich)
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Relevance of prior knowledge in research
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Relevance of prior knowledge
Sociological starting point: embeddedness of knowledge - in analogy to the
embeddedness of individual lives in social realities and structures
“We have to accept the fundamental restriction that every observation only takes
on meaning in respect of one’s own meaning schemata, and so prior
knowledge inevitably gives structure to our observations and must therefore be
seen as the foundation of all research.” (Meinefeld, 2004: 156)
Prior knowledge ...
... as research capital and fundamental epistemological a priori of social research
... determines research interest, questions, process, results => all research is ‘biased’
... cannot & should not be suspended (early misunderstanding of Grounded Theory)
... allows to assess and understand empirical observation by referring to available, yet
changeable knowledge
... allows to identify interconnectedness of meanings
... as starting point of a hermeneutic process and revision of available knowledge
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Status of prior knowledge
Consolidation and explication of prior knowledge

What do we already know about the problem (previous research, everyday experience)?

What are key dimensions, concepts, theories of the problem?

What do we want to know in addition to all this?
=> Reflection of relevant everyday, contextual, and research prior knowledge
Using prior knowledge as sensitizing knowledge

Empirically not contentful knowledge (Kelle 2005) serving as heuristic starting point in the
sense of ‘sensitizing concepts’ (Blumer 1954)

Concretisation only in confronting them with the empirical field of research => openness of
qualitative research

Research process as stepwise specification of at first fuzzy concepts/preconceptions

Not in competition with, or superior to practical knowledge of respondents
Working with sensitizing frameworks

Preliminary conceptual and analytic frame of reference; tentative hypotheses about
contours (not contents) of the phenomenon

Relevant on all levels of research from design to analysis and interpretation
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Prior knowledge as sensitizing knowledge
(Witzel/Reiter 2012: 46)
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2b) Concept of respondent, researcher &
interview relationship
Fußzeile (Editieren unter Ansicht/Master/Folienmaster möglich)
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Concept of respondent, researcher, interview relationship
Concept of respondent
•
Comprehensively competent and self-reflective research partner who is taken seriously
•
Interpretation is not privilege of researchers
Concept of researcher
•
Well-informed traveller – well-prepared expert and learning interview participant
collecting and co-constructing knowledge
•
Interview participation in an attitude of ‘relaxed attentiveness’ and impartial expertise
•
Active listening – stimulating thoughts and narrations
•
Active understanding – clarification of meaning and interpretation during the interview
•
Ideal: researcher/interviewer – importance of interviewer training, peer research
Concept of interview relationship
•
Prior knowledge and practical knowledge enter into a corrective relationship =>
moment of control of respondent over interviewer’s interpretations
•
Interview as chance for interactive interpretation and revision of some of the
researcher’s pre-interpretations (developed in the course of the interview)
=> PCI as discursive-dialogic reconstruction and validation of knowledge about a ‘problem’
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The epistemological challenge of the PCI
(Witzel/Reiter 2012: 18)
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PCI principles
•
•
Principle of problem centring
•
‘Problems’ as Problemstellung, problématique
•
Investigation of a societal problem with immediate practical relevance for interview
partner (finding a job, threat of unemployment etc.)
•
“The research question has to correspond to an everyday problem in the
perspective of practical knowledge that the respondent can articulate and also has
an interest in dealing with.”
•
Opposition to naïve empiricism => disclosure of researcher’s prior knowledge
•
Orientation of all research and communication strategies towards the research
problem in the perspective of the interview partner
•
‘Centring’ as joint establishment of a focus of the reconstruction of meaning of all
crucial aspects of the problem
Principle of process orientation
•
•
Stepwise consolidation of knowledge along the suggestions of the respondent (in
interview & research process)
Principle of object orientation
•
Methodical flexibility according to topic, research question and interview partners
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2c) Doing PCIs –
selected aspects
Fußzeile (Editieren unter Ansicht/Master/Folienmaster möglich)
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Interview guide
•
Bridging research interest, prior knowledge and the field/interview interaction
•
Reservoir of topics and memory aid => topical guide
•
Focussing the conversation on relevant dimensions => problem centring
•
Comparability of accounts regarding topics
•
Danger of reproducing the standard question-answer-scheme – ‘interview
guide bureaucracy’ and ‚pseudo-exploration‘ (Hopf 2004)

Topics instead of pre-formulated questions (except: delicate questions)

Priority of relevance and order of topics suggested by respondents

Suggestion of the direction of questions combined with spontaneous formulation in
everyday language
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PCI communication strategies
PCI as dialogue between
the knowledge of the researcher
and
the knowledge of the respondent
=> dialogue between
prior knowledge (incl. concepts/theories/state of the art)
and
everyday experience and practical knowledge
Communication strategies during the interview aimed at:

General exploration: generating extensive (narrative) accounts
(producing ‘material’)

Specific exploration: generating comprehension (producing, revising
and consolidating interpretation)
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PCI communication strategies to generate ‘material’
(narrations, descriptions, argumentation)
General exploration
Beginning of
conversation,
opening question
Detailing questions
Examples from
experience
Ad-hoc questions
Repeated thematic
comparison
Generating material (active listening)
- Open invitation to explicate the respondent's view on problem
(narrative opening account)
- E.g. “You would like to become a hairdresser. How did this come
about? Please tell me how it all happened?”
- Specification of themes, background; stimulation of memory
- E.g. “Could you tell me more about what happened there?”
- Stimulation of memory, reconstruction of context and establishing
links to structural environment
- E.g. “Could you give me an example for ... (e.g. a daily routine or
biographical episode)?”
- Completion of information, gaining comparability, building trust
- E.g. ad-hoc formulations regarding topics from the interview guide in
suitable moments
- Conceptual clarification, thematic differentiation
- E.g. contrasting typical/untypical cases or past/present comparison
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PCI communication strategies to generate comprehension
(dialogue, revision of pre-interpretations)
Specific exploration
Mirroring
Comprehension
questions
Confrontation
Generating comprehension (active understanding)
- Cognitive structuring for interviewer and respondent,
communicative validation
- E.g. summarizing and rephrasing, provoking contradiction, inviting
comments – “As far as I understood ...”
- Clarifying common sense structures, unclear terms and facts
- E.g. ideas from the interview – “You just talked about ... I did not
understand this.”
- Clarifying or specification of contradictory statements
- E.g. summarizing of contradictory statements and careful
demanding of clarifications – “Before you said that ... but right now
you say ... Did I understand you wrong? What do you mean?”
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Flowchart of PCI-interactions
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Flowchart of the PCI
(Witzel/Reiter 2012: 36)
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References
Blumer, H. (1954) ‘What is wrong with social theory?’, American Sociological Review, 14: 3–10.
Blumer, H. (1969) Symbolic Interactionism. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.
Garfinkel, H. (1967/2011) Studies in Ethnomethodology. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Hopf, C. (2004) ‘Qualitative interviews: an overview’, in U. Flick, E. von Kardorff and I. Steinke (eds), A
Companion to Qualitative Research. London: Sage.
Kelle, U. (2005) ‘“Emergence” vs. “Forcing” of Empirical Data? A Crucial Problem of “Grounded Theory”
Reconsidered’ [52 paragraphs]. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung/Forum: Qualitative Social Research,
6(2): Art. 27 [Online] Available at: http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs0502275
Meinefeld, W. (2004) ‘Hypotheses and prior knowledge in qualitative research’, in U. Flick, E. von Kardorff
and I. Steinke (eds), A companion to qualitative research. London: Sage.
Schuetz, A. (1953) ‘Common-sense and scientific interpretation of human action’, Philosophy and
Phenomenological Research, Vol. 14, No. 1, 1-38.
Schütze, F. (1977) Die Technik des narrativen Interviews in Interaktionsfeldstudien – dargestellt an einem
Projekt zur Erforschung von kommunalen Machtstrukturen. Unpublished Manuscript: University of
Bielefeld, Faculty of Sociology.
Schütze, F. (1983) ‘Biographieforschung und narratives Interview’, Neue Praxis, 3: 283–93.
Witzel, A. (1982) Verfahren der qualitativen Sozialforschung. Überblick und Alternativen. Frankfurt/Main:
Campus.
Witzel, A. (1989) ‘Das problemzentrierte Interview’, in G. Jüttemann (ed.), Qualitative Forschung in der
Psychologie. Grundfragen, Verfahrensweisen, Anwendungsfelder. Heidelberg: Asanger Verlag.
Witzel, A./Reiter, H. (2012) The problem-centred interview. Principles and practice. London: SAGE.
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