{"id":436553,"date":"2018-05-31T06:08:01","date_gmt":"2018-05-31T06:08:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/essaypaper.org\/sample-interview-qualitative-dissertations\/"},"modified":"2018-10-24T08:55:24","modified_gmt":"2018-10-24T08:55:24","slug":"sample-interview-qualitative-dissertations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.benedictsol.com\/blogs\/sample-interview-qualitative-dissertations\/","title":{"rendered":"Sample Interview \u2013 Qualitative Dissertations"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

WHAT IS THIS?<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is a homework assignment that I often use with my own doctoral students who are starting a qualitative dissertation. I want them to think about where they hope they will arrive, a year or so from now, when their dissertation is completed. So I ask them to imagine that they are being interviewed on National Public Radio. They must explain what they learned, in a way that the average listener can understand and find interesting. Of course, my students do not know \u2013 yet \u2013 what they might hear from the people they interview, but most of them have some ideas about this. As an example, I give them my version \u2013 what I might say if, by some miracle, NPR wanted to interview me about one of my studies. You might find it useful to write something like this for yourself. It will help you focus your ideas. Six months from now, when you are feeling totally lost, you can reread whatever you wrote \u2013 it may help you refocus. Okay, here is my version. Have fun with this.<\/em><\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER:<\/strong>\u00a0Ok, Rick, I understand you have written a book called, \u201cMiddle-aged Sons and the Meaning of Work.\u201d What can you tell us about it? What is it all about?<\/p>\n

RO:<\/strong>\u00a0Well, as the title is supposed to suggest, it is about how men think about their jobs. But it is an unusual take on the subject: it\u2019s not about earning a living, or being promoted \u2013 which is what men really talk about most of the time. Instead, it is about something that most of them don\u2019t talk about much at all \u2013 but that I think is always lurking somewhere in the background \u2013 and that is the idea that whatever we do as adults, including our careers, always has in it some echo of who we were when we were much younger. I think that some men use their careers as a way of coming to terms with their fathers. That\u2019s not all that work is, of course \u2013 and maybe it is not true of all men \u2013 but I think it is true for many of them \u2013 and that is what interests me.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER:<\/strong>\u00a0Okay, well \u2013 that does sound a bit unusual \u2013 how do you make the case?<\/p>\n

RO:<\/strong>\u00a0Well, you might think of this book as being like one of those novels where the action keeps shifting back and forth between two time periods. There is one story that takes place in the present, and then there is another story about what happened some time ago \u2013 say, thirty years ago \u2014 and we keep shifting back and forth between those two times. And eventually, at the end, those stories come together, and we see how they are connected.<\/p>\n

The story that takes place in the present (that is, at the time when I interviewed these guys) is all about their careers; the older story is about what it was like for them to grow up in their families. What connects the stories, although you don\u2019t figure this out for a while, is something to do with the quality of relationships \u2013 relationships that should be more personal than they are.<\/p>\n

When men talk about their work, they talk (at least in part) about the people around them: their boss, their employees, their customers, their competitors, and so on. Sometimes they have pretty intense relationships with these other people. But they have a funny way of talking about these relationships \u2013 they all say something like the guy in the Godfather, if you remember that movie, who says, \u201cIt\u2019s nothing personal, it\u2019s just business.\u201d (That\u2019s what he says just before he kills the other guy \u2013 I guess that is supposed to make him feel better.) Of course, what we understand in the movie is that it is all very personal \u2013 what could be more personal than killing someone? And what you start to see in these guys\u2019 stories is that their business relationships are also very personal \u2013 but they are careful to say that this is not so.<\/p>\n

Okay \u2013 go back thirty years. When these guys talk about growing up \u2013 and especially when they talk about their fathers \u2013 they also tell you about a relationship that was very personal and emotional in some ways \u2013 I mean, their talking about their fathers \u2013 and at the same time, somewhat distant. Just about all of them, one way or another, talk about how they were not as close to their fathers as they might have wished. Either their father was kind of cold, or disapproving, or judgmental, or in one case, abusive. And of course they still love their fathers, but you get the sense that they grew up hungry for more of a connection with them.<\/p>\n

So what you see at the end is how these two stories come together. The relationships these guys have with other people at work are a mixture of being intensely personal yet distant \u2013 and the way that this is true \u2013 and it is true in a different way for each guy \u2013 is similar to the close-but-distant relationship he had with his father. And the sort of trouble these guys get into at work, the way they make bad decisions, or the way they are dissatisfied, starts to make sense when you see how for them, what goes on at work is sort of like a re-enactment of what went on, thirty years ago, when they were trying to make that connection with their fathers.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER:<\/strong>\u00a0That sounds pretty complicated. So when you explain all this to the men you interviewed, do they say, \u201cOh yeah, you\u2019re right,\u201d or do they look at you like\u2026<\/p>\n

RO:<\/strong>\u00a0No, well you know, I never really said all this to any of them. I mean one of them I think saw some of this \u2013 it was pretty unmistakable, and he was a pretty insightful guy. But the others, no. And I didn\u2019t really see the connections until I was through with the interviews and reading through the transcripts. A lot of the time, I didn\u2019t realize what I was hearing until the interviews were long over, and I had a chance to really think about everything carefully.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER:<\/strong>\u00a0Why didn\u2019t you show them what you wrote after you were done?<\/p>\n

RO:<\/strong>\u00a0Partly it was just inconvenient: I didn\u2019t finish writing until long after I did the interviews. But that is really an excuse: I could have gotten back in touch with them. The real reason was that a lot of what I said about them was pretty rough. They did not end up sounding like heroes; I saw some of them as pretty immature and unpleasant guys. I don\u2019t think they would have liked reading what I wrote. I did show a chapter to that one guy I mentioned. He said his girlfriend read it to him while they were driving somewhere \u2013 and he liked it. But then, I liked him. He was pretty confused about his life too, but at least he was honest about that \u2013 and I guess that came across in what I wrote. But the others: they would not have been very happy with me. I guess that\u2019s the upside of writing a book that hardly anyone has read \u2013 I don\u2019t need to worry about them coming after me.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER:<\/strong>\u00a0So then how do you know if you are right? I mean it\u2019s just you making these connections \u2013 so if the guys are not agreeing with you, how do you know? And if someone who reads your book doesn\u2019t see it, why should they be convinced \u2013 a reader, I mean?<\/p>\n

RO:<\/strong>\u00a0Well you know, that\u2019s a great question \u2013 that really is the fundamental question \u2013 and there is no good answer. All I can do is present the evidence. And the evidence is, you line up the quotes. You show a reader, \u201cHere\u2019s what the guy said about whoever it was \u2014 his boss or his prot\u00e9g\u00e9 or whoever \u2013 and here is what he said about his father. Do they sound similar to you?\u201d And of course the quotes never line up perfectly. It\u2019s not like these guys are talking in some kind of code, you know, where the number one always stands for the letter \u201ca\u201d and 2 stands for \u201cb\u201d and so on. You have to recognize the similarities. And sometimes those similarities are pretty obvious, or at least they seem obvious to me, and sometimes not so much. It is speculative, I admit \u2013 but I can\u2019t think of any other kind of proof. But I don\u2019t think there is anything unusual about this \u2013 we do this all the time. You listen to a friend talk about whatever \u2013 the new girlfriend \u2013 and you say to yourself, \u201cOh, that\u2019s just like what he said about the last girlfriend.\u201d We recognize these patterns in the way our friends talk \u2013 we say, \u201cOh, there he goes again \u2013 that\u2019s just the sort of thing he always says\u2026\u201d And we all know how to do that. So it\u2019s not like I am doing anything unusual here \u2013 I am just pointing out different sorts of connections than most of us usually think about.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER:<\/strong>\u00a0So, okay, supposing you are right \u2013 and you convince me \u2013 why does it matter? I mean, is this going to help these guys live better? Will they be better at doing their job if they figure out these connections? I mean, why should anyone care?<\/p>\n

RO:<\/strong>\u00a0That\u2019s another great question and of course once again I am not sure I have a great answer. No, I don\u2019t think this book is going to help anyone do better in their career \u2013 this isn\u2019t a self-help book \u2013 \u201chow to get along better with your boss by realizing that he is not your father.\u201d That is not really the point. I think for me, this is part of a larger way of thinking about how we all live our lives. I have this sense that all of us, all the time, are living in multiple chapters of our lives, at the same time. We are living in the present moment, of course, but at the same time we are living with the echoes of the past \u2013 and may be are also living with some idea of where this all might be leading us, in the future \u2014 and that this is all going on simultaneously. And all of those memories of the past and hopes for the future are bouncing around in our experience of what we call \u201cNow.\u201d And sometime we are aware of that, and most of the time we are not. And I guess I think life is richer \u2013 it feels more intense \u2013 if we are able to catch a glimpse of those echoes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WHAT IS THIS? This is a homework assignment that I often use with my own doctoral students who are starting a qualitative dissertation. I want them to think about where they hope they will arrive, a year or so from Read More …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-436553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dissertation-writing","category-essay-paper-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benedictsol.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benedictsol.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benedictsol.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benedictsol.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benedictsol.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=436553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.benedictsol.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436553\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benedictsol.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=436553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benedictsol.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=436553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benedictsol.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=436553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}