Mastering the Semi-Structured Interview and Beyond

Mastering the Semi-Structured Interview and Beyond offers an in-depth and captivating step-by-step guide to the use of semi-structured interviews in qualitative research. By tracing the life of an actual research project–an exploration of a school district's effort over 40 years to address racial equality–as a consistent example threaded across the volume, Anne Galletta shows in concrete terms how readers can approach the planning and execution of their own new research endeavor, and illuminates unexpected real-life challenges they may confront and how to address them. The volume offers a close look at the inductive nature of qualitative research, the use of researcher reflexivity, and the systematic and iterative steps involved in data collection, analysis, and interpretation. It offers guidance on how to develop an interview protocol, including the arrangement of questions and ways to evoke analytically rich data. Particularly useful for those who may be familiar with qualitative research but have not yet conducted a qualitative study, Mastering the Semi-Structured Interview and Beyond will serve both undergraduate and graduate students as well as more advanced scholars seeking to incorporate this key methodological approach into their repertoire.

A beautifully crafted book. Methodologically authoritative and narratively engaging, its comprehensive description of the semi-structured interview introduces established and emerging social scientists to a versatile, informative, inductive qualitative method that too often is treated as if it were methodologically self-evident. Galletta describes how this method can include diverse participants voices, experiences, understandings, and concerns with rigor and rich conceptual and narrative effects. This timely book will surely be a classic, widely used in methods courses and as an important resource for researchers interested in the complex dynamics of social issues and societal change., Reading this book is like having an extended conversation with a wise and experienced qualitative researcher that explores not only how to construct and conduct effective semi-structured interviews but also many other aspects of qualitative research, including the difficult but important question of how to move from your data to your conclusions.

Anne Galletta is Associate Professor at the College of Education and Human Services at Cleveland State University. William E. Cross, Jr. is the author of Shades of Black: Diversity in African-American Identity.