Kitwood lucidly contrasts three conceptions of
it. The first conception is that of a potential
means of pure information transfer and collection.
A second conception of the interview is
that of a transaction which inevitably has bias,
which is to be recognized and controlled. According
to this viewpoint, Kitwood explains that
‘each participant in an interview will define the
situation in a particular way. This fact can be
best handled by building controls into the research
design, for example by having a range of
interviewers with different biases’. The interview
is best understood in terms of a theory of motivation
which recognizes a range of non-rational
factors governing human behaviour, like emotions,
unconscious needs and interpersonal influences.
Kitwood points out that both these
views of the interview regard the inherent features
of interpersonal transactions as if they were
‘potential obstacles to sound research, and therefore
to be removed, controlled, or at least harnessed
in some way’.
The third conception of the interview sees it
as an encounter necessarily sharing many of the
features of everyday life (see for example, Box
15.1). What is required, according to this view,
is not a technique for dealing with bias, but a
theory of everyday life that takes account of the
relevant features of interviews. These may include
role-playing, stereotyping, perception and
understanding. One of the strongest advocates
of this viewpoint is Cicourel (1964) who lists
five of the unavoidable features of the interview
situation that would normally be regarded as
problematic: