Miejsce i warunki wywiadów z kierownikami instytucji jako informatorami-ekspertami
Abstract
The study presents empirically-based reflections about the influence exerted by the place and conditions of interviews with managers of associations and institutions, considered as expert-informants in the substantive domain studied, upon their general attitude toward the research as well as upon the nature of their informational reactions revealed during the interviews. Discussed are the purpose and procedure of the research in the course of which observations were made concerning the methodological aspects of interviewing. Three types of attitudes of the managers interviewed were distinguished:
1. Informants actively oriented toward the interview, tending to be interviewed in isolation and eliminating or limiting the presence of third persons, adjusting themselves to the natural length of the interview or even trying to prolong it; characteristic for these informants was a semi-official spacial pattern of the interview (e.g. at a coffee table); % of all informants belonged to this type.
2. Informants actively oriented toward the interview, but reluctant to find an isolated place for interviewing, encouraging or inviting third persons to be present or to participate in the interview; they tended to cut down the interview, official special pattern ("from behind the desk”) being a characteristic feature of interview situation (1/5 of all informants).
3. Informants passively oriented towards the interview and adjusting themselves to natural conditions of interviewing: the interview takes place on the very spot where the interviewer met the respondent and under accompanying spacial and social conditions, the official spacial pattern of interviewing being most frequent (Vu of informants).
It was pointed out that managers of associations and institutions in the role of informants in general show an official bureaucratic attitude towards the interview (treatment of interviewers as clients and their own role of a respondent as an official duty; inclination to use, in the course of interview, the official reports and communiques, etc.). It is believed that such an attitude seriously distorts the process of information gathering in the domain concerned.
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