The work of the research interviewer: Are there slippages in the normative practices?

The effecting of a single, relatively open-ended interview with a participant whom the interviewee does not know well poses a number of problems that must be addressed if useful data are to result. One of these problems is the issue of proposed introduction of separate topics. In 2000 I interviewed a sample of employees of a large construction company to elicit accounts of (a) their understandings of training and assessment within a training package framework, (b) the value of such a framework, and (c) the training and assessment programs that were being implemented within the company using this framework. Prior to the interview I circulated a list of possible topics that could be addressed during the interview. In this paper I use transcripts of the interviews to show how: the topic of the future was introduced by the interviewer during the interactions; and this activity was differentially organised across the transcripts. In this process I reflect on two binary normativities: on the one hand that of interviewer and interviewee as subjective co-constructors of data; and on the other, the interviewer as objective elicitor and the interviewee as informer without the two parties acknowledging an vestige of a shared history or interest. I conclude that the notion of a binary is inappropriate; rather. what is evident in the transcripts is a local movement, sometimes more fluid than at others. between these positions.