Methodological explanation of realist interview

Abstract

Retroduction research strategy based on realistic philosophy is one of the four research strategies in the social sciences, which despite the necessary philosophical and methodological foundations, due to the complexity of the mechanism explanation and the lack of appropriate research tools, has put researchers in this field in serious trouble. Realistic (theory driven) interviewing is an emerging tool that has tried to compensate for existing shortcomings. Lack of sufficient methodological literature for conducting such a type of interview, especially in the scientific community of the country, motivated the researcher, in addition to explaining the theoretical foundations and enumerating the distinctive aspects of its components compared to common interviews in both quantitative and qualitative traditions, to describe its implementation methods as well. Findings reveal that the distinctive identity of the realistic interview due to the researcher's theory assignment as the subject of negotiation in the interview, embedding teaching-learning and conceptual focus functions, the dynamic and expert-centered role of the researcher in conducting the interview and different criteria in compiling, analyzing and validating the findings, takes the function of this interview beyond the typical level of regulation or mere interpretation of data.

Keywords

• "evaluation
• conceptual focusing
• mechanistic explanation
• realistic interview
• retroduction"