The Interview

"...The Interview is a major new book on the oldest of sociological methods. The grasp of the field is definitive. It moves from the modern to the postmodern, from oral history to grounded theory, active interviews, to the interview as a negotiated accomplishment. Accessible, well-written, this book will become the point of reference for all future treatments of the interview. "... --Norman K. Denzin, Univ. of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign " I sat down to read The Interview, expecting a textbook; soon I was caught up in an engaging, well-written and unfolding story about the interview society, the different approaches to interviews, their history, how they are used academically, and future directions. Full of poignant examples, this book is unique in its coverage of interviews along the continuum from art to science. Readers will appreciate the authors' focus on ethics and gender, as well as on electronic interviewing. This book makes a valuable contribution to qualitative classes that attempt to introduce students to the full range of research possibilities. I know it will fill a niche in my graduate qualitative methods class." -Carolyn Ellis, Univ. of South Florida "Fontana and Prokos simplify the essential features of interviewing and direct practitioners and theorists to a new appreciation of how to talk with people for maximum impact and minimum damage. The section New Trends in Interviewing illuminates how reflexive sociology can move forward without forgetting important lessons from the past. This is a good book." -David Altheide, Arizona State University "Qualitative and quantitative researchers have come to rely on the interview as a basic method of data gathering, whether with a single subject or thousands. Fontana and Prokos (both sociology, U. of Nevada, Las Vegas) concentrate on methods of interviewing a range of subjects in research relating to social science, but their ideas also translate to research in liberal and fine arts. They describe how interviewing has become ubiquitous in Western society and why, techniques of structured and group interviewing, unstructured interviewing, including understanding the language and culture of the respondents, locating informants, gaining trust, and collecting empirical material, and describe types of unstructured interviewing such as oral history and postmodern interviewing with attention to grounded theory and gender. They consider the ethics of interviewing, new trends such as empathetic interviewing and the interview as a negotiated accomplishment and give future directions in formal, group, unstructured and electronic interviewing." -Book News