Second Part of the GURN Online Methods School: Interviews in Qualitative Social Research
After the successful start of the first part of the Methods School at the end of September/beginning of October, the online classes continued on October 20, 22 and 23, 2020. The topic of the three half-day events was conducting interviews in the context of qualitative research approaches. The seminars took place online in English and were led by the experts Anna Mayer (Austrian Exchange Service) and Sophie Schmäing (University of Giessen).
Practical knowledge for conducting interviews
On the first day of the workshop series, the two trainers gave a general introduction: When is it useful to use interviews as a method? What types of interviews exist and what are their advantages and disadvantages? After these questions were clarified, a practical exercise followed. The participants not only learned how to select interview partners and to deal with consent forms, but also how to draft a guideline for a structured interview. In addition to practicing various questioning techniques, strategies of note-taking and sound recording, ethical questions and how the role that the interviewer takes on can affect the interview, were discussed as well. On the last day, the group dealt with the evaluation of the interviews. Meyer and Schmäing explained how to transcribe interviews, which digital tools are suitable for this purpose and how collaborative projects can be implemented efficiently. At the end, there was an open space for the exchange and discussion of ideas around individual research projects of the participants.
The GURN Methods School is a series of online workshops with a focus on qualitative research that took place in autumn 2020. In four thematic blocks, young researchers, most of whom work at Ukrainian think tanks, among other things learned to develop their own research design, to apply qualitative methods such as process tracing, content/video analysis and interviews, and to analyse political discourses from a social science perspective.
The project “German Ukrainian Researchers Network” (GURN) aims at establishing a German-Ukrainian research network for junior and senior researchers and their organisations, strengthening country expertise and promoting joint cooperation projects. GURN is conducted in close cooperation with the Ilko Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Foundation (DIF, Kyiv), the think tank development and research initiative think twice UA (Kyiv), the New Europe Center(NEC, Kyiv) and is kindly supported by the Federal Foreign Office.