Goals

After reading this article, you will be able to do the following:

1. Identify the three key ethnographic interview elements.
2. Develop and use various ethnographic explanations.
3. Conduct an ethnographic interview as a learning exercise.

Introduction

Ethnographic interviewing is a complex process that requires specific skills to conduct. Practicing ahead of time and creating an interview protocol helps alleviate the anxiety that ethnographers feel when conducting interviews. To ensure a successful ethnographic interview, it is essential to identify and understand important elements that make it unique. In this article, you will learn about three key ethnographic interview elements: 1) your explicit purpose, 2) ethnographic explanations, and 3) ethnographic questions (Spradley, 2016). Also, I will provide a protocol list that will help you conduct successful ethnographic interviews and obtain valuable insights from your informants.

Explicit Purpose

The first important ethnographic interview element is to establish your explicit purpose, which you—the ethnographer—communicate to your informant. You must have a clear direction and purpose, even if the interview develops as a friendly conversation. The ethnographer takes more control of the conversation and steers it towards uncovering the informant’s cultural knowledge. For example, if you interview a health worker informant, introduce your purpose this way: “The purpose of this interview is for me to learn more about your experiences and perspectives as a health worker.”

Ethnographic Explanations

The second important element is ethnographic explanations, which you, the ethnographer, must offer repeatedly to the informant. Here are the five explanation types:

• Project Explanations translate your ethnographic goal into terms that the informant will understand.
• Recording Explanations are about writing things down and about audio-recording interviews.
• Native-Language Explanations encourage informants to speak in their cultural language.
• Interview Explanations tell the informant what to expect and that the interview process is more formal.
• Question Explanations explain the different ethnographic-question types that you use in the interview.

To illustrate explanations, let’s imagine that you are interviewing the same health worker informant, and in this scenario you may introduce each explanation as follows:

Ethnographic Questions

The third essential element is ethnographic questions. There are more than thirty ethnographic-question types (Spradley, 2016), but for now, we’ll focus on the three main types:

• Descriptive Questions collect an informant’s ongoing language samples.
• Structural Questions discover information about domains, such as departments in an organization—the basic units in an informant’s cultural knowledge.
• Contrast Questions enable the ethnographer to discover the dimensions of meaning that an informant employs to distinguish the objects and events in their world.

Now, let’s examine an ethnographic-interview example that covers several aspects in the three important elements discussed above. This excerpt delves into the informant’s involvement in the healthcare industry, conducted in a hospital setting, where the informant demonstrates a sound understanding of their profession.

In this example, the ethnographer begins by reminding the informant of the interview’s purpose and asking whether recording the conversation is okay, which are important aspects of an ethnographic interview. Then, the ethnographer asks descriptive questions to learn about the informant’s typical day at work. Next, the ethnographer asks structural questions to learn about the different departments in the hospital and their responsibilities. Finally, the ethnographer asks a contrast question to learn about the language used in the healthcare industry.

This ethnographic interview example illustrates key elements that are typically involved in this conversation type. However, due to this being a short, illustrative article, the example deviates from the usual ethnographic interview. The ethnographer is jumping from one topic to another instead of allowing the informant to provide more detailed topic responses. In reality, ethnographic interviews are much longer and more in-depth, with the informant given ample time to elaborate on their experiences and perspectives.

It is important to note that the example also includes elements that are typically introduced in subsequent interviews, rather than the first interview. For instance, descriptive, structural, and contrast questions are typically introduced gradually over several interviews. This example is designed to provide an ethnographic interview overview, rather than to provide a comprehensive full-interview example. Therefore, it is important for you who are learning to conduct ethnographic interviews to keep in mind that each interview is unique and that the elements we’ve introduced may vary depending on your interview’s context and purpose.

Developing an Ethnographic Interview Protocol

Understanding how to develop an interview protocol is a crucial step in learning about the ethnographic interview (Schenkel et al., 2020). To assist in this, I have adapted a protocol list from Spradley (2016) and categorized the elements for clarity. These elements are essential to ensure that you conduct successful ethnographic interviews and to help you establish rapport with your informant as you elicit cultural knowledge.

Ethnographic Interview Protocol List

1. Greet Your Informant
2. Establish The Interview’s Purpose
3. Give Ethnographic Explanations
   1. Give project explanations.
   2. Give question explanations.
   3. Give recording explanations.
   4. Give native-language explanations.
   5. Give interview explanations.
4. Ask Ethnographic Questions
   1. Ask descriptive questions.
   2. Ask structural questions.
   3. Ask contrast questions.
5. Take Asymmetrical Turns
6. Express Interest
7. Express Cultural Ignorance
8. Repeat Informant’s Words
9. Restate Informant’s Terms
10. Incorporate Informant’s Terms
11. Create Hypothetical Situations
12. Ask Friendly Questions
13. Take Your Leave

Ethnographic interviews can take many forms, including casual friendly conversations like catching up with a friend. In fact, some ethnographers may conduct interviews without the participant’s awareness and just introduce a few ethnographic questions (Spradley, 2016). It is important to note that ethnographic interviews can differ from friendly conversations in terms of turn-taking, repeating, expressing interest and ignorance, and expanding on what each person says. The ethnographer typically asks most of the questions, repeats what the informant has said, and encourages the informant to provide more detail. The ethnographer also expresses interest and ignorance to establish rapport and to ensure that the informant feels understood (Rogers-Shaw et al., 2021).

Conclusion

To ensure successful ethnographic interviews, it is best to gradually introduce new elements that help informants to respond as informants (Spradley, 2016). Introducing too many new elements too quickly or using them exclusively can make the interview feel like a formal interrogation, which can damage rapport and cause informants to discontinue their cooperation (Souleles, 2018). It is crucial to remember that you can shift interviews back to friendly conversations at any time. And if you include a few minutes of easygoing talk throughout the interview, you will establish rapport and yield significant benefits.

Practice

Consider the steps below to document and reflect on your experience creating an interview protocol and conducting an ethnographic interview with an informant.

1. Choose a topic that you are interested in learning more about and develop an ethnographic interview protocol using the elements in the list above. Make sure to include a variety of different question types.
2. Conduct an ethnographic interview with someone who has knowledge of the topic you selected. Remember to introduce new elements gradually and shift the interview back to a friendly conversation if needed.
3. After conducting the interview, reflect on your experience. Did you encounter any challenges? What did you learn? What could you have done differently to improve the interview?

References

Rogers-Shaw, C., Choi, J., & Carr-Chellman, D. J. (2021). Understanding and managing the emotional labor of qualitative research. Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 22(3), 1–26. https://doi.org/10.17169/fqs-22.3.3652

Schenkel, K., Bliesener, S., Barton, A. C., & Tan, E. (2020). Community ethnography. Science Scope, 43(7), 56–64.

Souleles, D. (2018). How to study people who do not want to be studied: Practical reflections on studying up. PoLAR: Political & Legal Anthropology Review, 41, 51–68. https://doi.org/10.1111/plar.12253

Spradley, J. P. (2016). The ethnographic interview. Holt Rinehart & Winston.