I am doing research in innovation and I'm conducting a face-to-face interview, I've already conducted 3, but one of the potential interviewees seems to have issues with time availability and has been insistent in alternatives to face-to-face interviews. She initially asked to reply via e-mail, to which I had to politely refuse since it's semi-structured and a written reply wouldn't suffice. To this, she replied asking if it was possible to conduct the interview via telephone. I'm wondering if this will compromise the results of the interview since it's a different method of data collection. It would allow me to conduct the interview in a semi-structured way, but I'm still confused, so I don't know if I should insist on face-to-face or accept the phone interview and prepare for that. Any advice would be greatly appreciated, thank you very much.
Dear Javier Rojas
Generally using different procedures (face to face, email, telephone) for administering the semi-structured interview for different participants in the same study can be a threat to the internal validity of your study. It may introduce errors or bias.
Occasionally it is necessary to accept this risk. If this can not be avoided, remember to mention it in your methods (and the steps you took to maintain the important aspects, e.g. use video so as to capture non-verbal cues) and study limitations (mention if you think this introduced errors or bias).
Dear Javier Rojas ,
I would advise being slightly more flexible than Nyawira Mwangi for several reasons:
Phone interview is allowed when some circimustance my not allow t face to face interview.
You can record your interview for evidence @Dominic
I agree with Peter Samuels that a lot depends on how important this interview is to you. One possible option is to do the interview over the phone (or perhaps via Skype), and then discard it if the quality is clearly lower than your face-to-face interviews.
Thank you very much everyone, this has been really useful. Since it's a relatively important interview, I have decided to accept the interview over the phone. It's true that I can discard it later, and that's an important factor for my decision, it just adds to my data. Thanks again!
You can combine several data collection methods to make your research wide range and cover a lot respondents with varied methods.
I also feel Skype, viber, WhatsApp, Google hangout as good substitutes. If the participant wishes to avoid video conversation you can deviate from the original protocol. This needs justification and need to send this as an amendment to your institution, ethics committee and any other institution involved in your research.
Dear Javier
I totally agree with the different opinions above. Even though, you might not be able to record the physical gestures of the interviewee like you do in a face to face, there is still room for you to probe for more in depth understanding of the subject under research unlike using emails. Also, having different methods of collecting data aids in triangulation of the data you are collecting with regards to research innovation
you can do so provided you can prove that the first method is not ample and such the second is to supplement the first one.
You have to be consistent with your method. Don't forget to have records of interview
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