L’arte dell’intervista: imparare dall’esperienza degli intervistatori

Abstract

Scholars agree with the idea that the interviewer has a central role in the fieldwork, but their concordance is decreasing speaking about details of behaviour that the interviewer has to adopt.Behaviourists assert that the interviewer’s job is valuable referring to a standard behaviour, inspired to greatest impersonality. Others scholars propose a very different point of view, that emphasizes the interviewer’s role.Keeping as background models this two different ideas, we asked 26 CATI interviewers to tell us their work experiences and the strategies they adopt to cope with problems and difficulties.We have conceptualized the interviewer’s job as a continuum between complete obedience to the interview protocol and autonomous decision-making. In order to evaluate interviewing performance we reconstructed the training briefings and the supervision strategies; analysed the ambivalent effect of the interviewer’s commitment on the results and of the telephone on interaction; reconstructed the sources of gratification for interviewers.