Interviewing Is The American Common Man - 1020 Words

Interviewing is the method of qualitative research that normally comes first to people’s mind. It is much more than merely asking premeditated question after question. Interviewing is an art that requires the ability to quickly create a relationship between two people in order to gain knowledge. There are many techniques when it comes to conducting valuable interviews. Not every technique works for every interviewer and there is more than one right way to interview. For instance, while both Robert Lane, author of Political Ideology: Why the American Common Man Believes What He Does, and Judith Kestenberg author of Children During the Nazi Reign, used interviewing to gain knowledge for the writing of their books, these two authors prove†¦show more content†¦Kestenberg’s participants were offered nothing, but most described a feeling of emotional healing from letting their deeply hidden feelings and experiences out which is an unseen reward in of itself. Deciding a sample size is a vital aspect of researching. Lane gathered all of his information from only 15 people. This is a narrow sample in comparison to Kestenberg who along with her colleagues, collectively interviewed over people who had some relation with the Holocaust. While Lane’s interviews served as the main material for his book meaning he relied on information from only 15 people. He interpreted the responses from the interviews to find the roots of the political belief from his subjects. Kestenberg took her interviews and then analyzed them psychologically, and her broad sample gave her much more information to work with. Of the 15 people that Lane interviewed, all of them were white, male, and married fathers. Eleven out of the fifteen were Catholic and 11 were either Italian or Irish (Western Political Quarterly). This sample is obviously not very diverse in comparison to Kestenberg who interviewed people of both genders from over sixteen countries. Some of her participants were actual child survivors, others were children of child survivors and even more were former Nazi members during the Holocaust. This wide array of participants adds different perspectives to her research, while Lane’s