Skills in diagnostic interviewing
In my work as a Management Consultant, I’m often carrying out mini research projects. The balance of hard and soft data collection techniques varies in the generation of evidence to support conclusions of issue analysis; which often leads to a business case being developed for funding for the implementation of a project to proceed.
The skills in my work are all replicated in the skills of a researcher – I undertake an initial diagnosis. This often involves end-to-end process mapping of an organisation to carry out current state and future state analysis that gives significance and relevance to the issue so that sponsors and stakeholders buy-in and take the issue forward into implementation. Further diagnosis continues that leads to solution options, decision and implementation into everyday working.
In my work, I often need to understand how managers see the current situation and what would need to change, to improve it. I find out how employees see the problematic and what creates it. To do this, sometimes interviews are carried out to understand the world through their eyes to discover how they perceive, define and give meaning to their situation.
To do this, diagnostic interviewing and grounded theory, a method of analysing the non-standard data are often utilised.
The focus of the interview is often centred on the concept of organisational effectiveness, and the objective is to identify the key organisational issues that will then form the basis of change and improvement programmes.
A key route for me to understand challenges and define what changes need to be made and assess likely constraints is to ask the people who work in and experience life in the organisation and explore what they think.
Face to face interviews operates within a qualitative framework and I present a particular stimulus (question) to the interviewee, in order, to understand the world through their eyes
Key events in diagnostic interviewing
Theoretical considerations
Type of interview
Interview samples
Interview aids
Interview schedules
The interview process
Representation of analysed data
Validation and reliability
Understanding the world through the eyes of another is critical within diagnostic interviewing. The aim is to ensure, through a number of checks and balances, that how the interviewee sees and defines things has been achieved, rather than imparting into the interview my own expectations or conclusions.
By “seeing through the eyes of other” I hope to encourage the subject to share the individual’s experience of working in the organisation, the opinions and attitudes expressed, the justifications and rationalisations offered in making sense of them and the underlying values and beliefs that shape, guide and underpin them.
We hope to achieve these rather demanding goals by stepping through a number of key events in undertaking a diagnostic interview programme
However, at this point it is worth pointing out that whilst the data provided by an individual subject can be of interest in its own right, this is not the goal.
Using, for example, grounded theory in the analysis of non standard data, the interest is in the themes and patterns that emerge from all interviews conducted with a sample population of subjects.
Such themes and patterns are taken to represent the dominant reality that exists in the organisation, around the stimulus introduced by the researcher.
By “seeing through the eyes of other” I hope to encourage the interviewee to share with me, the interviewer, the individual’s experience of working in the organisation, the opinions and attitudes expressed, the justifications and rationalisations offered in making sense of them and the underlying values and beliefs that shape, guide and underpin them.
The stimulus (questions) given to subjects in an interview programme depends on the type of data I’m keen to collect. The data generated and analysed across the entire sample will elucidate the:
Dominant reality that exists in the organisation about phenomena (rules, plans and conventions)
Any clusters differentiated by function, group or position in the organisation
Dominant ideology (that underpins the above) in terms of ideas, images, values and beliefs
Dominant sentiments about what should and should not be done about the situation being described
In the interview, what people say is used to infer something about what they think and do but the relationship between these aspects of behaviour is problematic. People are not totally rational beings and do not always know why they think, feel or do certain things. Apart from confusion and lacks of understanding in the conscious world of the individual, there is also the unconscious mind, inaccessible to both the interviewer and interviewee.
In many cases I can only infer what is going on from what people say. To do this effectively requires the interviewer to negotiate the meaning being conveyed by the subject, so that we balance the surface structure with deeper structures of meanings being conveyed. This can be done by challenging inconsistencies, paradoxes and dilemmas in subject accounts and exploring the significance of stories, incidents and illustrations provided during the interview process.
Here, the concern is whether I have got the essence of how people (as a collective) define and make sense of their experience. Whether substantiated by theoretical concepts, empirical research or just sound common sense, it will be their reality of the situation. This needs to be taken seriously as data because it is likely to guide behaviour and will be confronted when attempts are made to change it in some way.
Interview questions can be more unstructured or structured in how they are presented to individuals.
An unstructured approach may be simply to say to a subject ‘If you could change three things in this organisation to make it more effect, what would they be and why?’
A structured approach would be where the interviewer provides the subject with ten design elements of an organisation (eg roles, decision-making, communication, structure etc) derived from a model of organisational effectiveness and asks the subject to identify the three that need to change.
With quantitative techniques of data collection, in which sample size and structure is critical for the various statistical tests applied to data to substantiate validity, reliability and generalisation of results, the same is not true with qualitative research.
Here, the concern is whether we have got the essence of how people (as a collective) define and make sense of their experience. Whether substantiated by theoretical concepts, empirical research or just sound common sense, it will be their reality of the situation. This needs to be taken seriously as data because it is likely to guide behaviour and will be confronted when attempts are made to change it in some way.
Subject orientation to the field of enquiry that is of interest to the interviewer is achieved with a presentation of visual aids at the start of the interview.
These often include the corporate strategic agenda to give focus to what the organisation is trying to achieve. Sharing this with the subject, together with any supporting aids that substantiate the agenda, orientates the interview towards the environmental and competitive conditions facing the company, current wisdom on the company’s positioning strategy to compete, and sets the scene for exploring with the subjects what would have to change in the organisation to effectively pursue the strategic agenda.
During this orientation phase, data is also collected on the clarity, coherence and commitment of people to the corporate strategic agenda and if they simply do not accept the propositions being made, diagnostic interviewing should be delayed until a general level of acceptance within the interview population has been achieved.
Asking questions in the interview and collecting responses (as data) involves deciding where, on the continuum between unstructured and structured, the interview will be.
The process of diagnostic interviewing is shown above, with non-standard data recorded in some book or notepad for later analysis.
Data collected is not shown in an ad verbatim form but rather the “essential meaning conveyed”. It is qualified through probe questions and the exploration of stories, illustrations and incidents.
Often data collected tends to be provided on managerial processes and organisational relationships and is offered in terms of “now we are like this – tomorrow we need to be like that”.
In doing so, subjects reflect both on themselves and others, construct theories, provide rationalisations and justifications and provide a rich source of data, not only on the design and operation of organisations but also on the dominant culture that underpins the company today and, more often than not, will constrain perceived improvements required for tomorrow.
Contradictions may also occur in the accounts given by interviewees or simply what they say just does not make sense. Here as the interviewer, it is important to challenge and confront such discrepancies seeking to get the interviewee to reflect on these and to help make sense of the point being made.
Finally when exploration of one theme has been exhausted, feed back to the interviewee a summary conclusion before going on to pick up the next theme.
When all interviews have been completed in this style you will have a rich source of data from an array of individuals to analyse, make sense of and turn into information.
There are two basic approaches in making sense of qualitative data, content analysis or grounded theory.
Content analysis has often been used in the analysis of historical artefacts, such as reports and papers, or in the analysis of mass communications. It involves the counting of key phrases or words and their frequency and pattern of use which may represent motives, values and beliefs. In order to derive words or phrases of interest, a researcher-generated hypothesis of relevance or interest will exist.
Grounded theory is a more open approach and is particularly suited to analysing interview transcripts where a large amount of non-standard data is produced.
Meaning has to be teased out in terms of themes, patterns and categories. Rather than forcing data within logical, deductively derived assumptions and categories, theories are generated that fit and work because they are derived from the concepts and categories used by the social actors themselves in order to interpret and organise their world.
SEVEN STAGES IN GROUNDED THEORY
1 FAMILIARISATION Re-read data, notice interesting things
2 REFLECTION Link data to ideas, models, experiences, get a feel
3 CONCEPTUAL LIAISON Generate concepts that seem important for understanding what’s going on
4 CATALOGUING CONCEPTS Start putting concepts into meaningful clusters or patterns
5 RECODING Revisit data to check fit with evolving theory of what’s going on
6 LINKING Link clusters into a more holistic theory
7 RE-EVALUATION Test the hypothesis created with a sample of those providing the original data
The seven stages shown above illustrate a learning and discovery approach in the task of trying to make sense of non-standard data.
In practice, as interviews proceed interviewers start to notice interesting things, patterns or differences arising and the making sense process emerges and evolves through the process rather than simply at the end. The same applies with theory use; the struggle to make sense pulls in an array of abstract theories to aid understanding. The seven stages above can be thought of in terms of a quality audit in which hypothesises that grow through the interview process are tested by going over the data again to check that conclusions drawn can be supported from the evidence available.