Qualitative Data Collection: Interviews, Observation, and Questionnaires

This article examines three qualitative data collection instruments used in an online language learning study: semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and open-ended questionnaires. It explains how interviews supported grounded theory and the constant comparative method, how observations and audio recordings contributed to triangulation, and how open-ended questionnaires provided richer participant responses. The discussion also covers individual and group interviews, retrospective interviews, field notes, auditory observation, short-answer questions, and discourse completion tasks in qualitative applied linguistics and online language education research.

Interviews

The Role of Interviews in Qualitative Research

In this qualitative study based on grounded theory, the main instrument of data collection was interviews together with the researcher’s observations, as it is typical of any grounded theory research (Briggs, 1986; Corbin & Strauss, 1990; Duff, 2008; Rennie & Fergus, 2006) because according to Duff (2008), “interviews play an important role in much research in sociolinguistics and applied linguistics/SLA” (P. 132). The rationale for opting for interviews as the major instrument of collecting and analyzing the data lies in the fact that a research interview is a construction or joint production by means of social interaction (online social presence) between the interviewer and interviewees to come up with a version of truth (grounded theory), which basically evolves over the course of the interview and from one interview to the next (Briggs, 1986; Duff, 2008).

Semi-Structured Interviews

Immediately after each class, a semi-structured interview in which the researcher drew the attention of the participants to one single question in conjunction with the research questions and hypotheses was conducted and recorded on Skype and Discord in the first and second phases of the investigation respectively. The single question in each semi-structured interview, which lasted for approximately five minutes, was the main area of concern with reference to the research questions and hypotheses, but the researcher and the participants could probe for more information as long as it was relevant to the principal unit of information or category (Mackey & Gass, 2005). Appendix B catalogues all the questions that were posed in our semi-structured interviews at the end of each class under the title of Call for Feedback. The interview questions were displayed at the bottom of the posts of each class created by the researcher on the blog so that the participants could have enough time to reflect upon them before the class.

Individual and Group Interviews

Although the majority of our interviews were conducted in a group mode, some reserved participants were interviewed individually because, according to Creswell (2007) and Duff (2008), some participants might be too shy to express their ideas and feedback freely in public. In both individual and group interviews, the researcher could “add flesh to the bones” (Dörnyei & Ushioda, 2011, p. 241) by asking the participants to explain or illustrate their obtained patterns that were obscurely decoded in supplementary instruments of data collection (i.e., open-ended questionnaire and observation), a technique that is referred to as retrospective interviews (Gass & Mackay, 2000), according to which it was attempted to focus on the participants’ own responses, especially in our open-ended questionnaire that needed to be clarified through retrospective interviews. The researcher constantly analyzed each piece of data (code) explicitly or implicitly elicited from the interviews by swinging back and forth over the new and old data reflected in the numerous interviews “to take a fresh look as to whether this code sheds light on earlier data” (Charmaz, 2005, p. 517), something which is technically referred to as constant comparative method.

Observation

Participant Observation in Online Learning

One of the supplementary instruments of data collection and analysis for the sake of triangulation was the researcher’s observations, which were categorized according to participant observations (Duff, 2008; Merriam, 1998; Robson, 2007). Participant observation is a specific data collection technique where the researcher is closely involved in the social setting and has a negotiated and understood role in it (Creswell, 2007; Robson, 2007). As Warschauer and Whittaker (2002) have wisely stated, in this qualitative study, the researcher as a teacher (or the teacher as a researcher) played the role of a guide on the side rather than a sage on the stage in a truly communicative and interactive atmosphere in which the teacher/researcher was technically immersed in the social context of the online community.

Field Notes and Audio Recording

In his observations, the researcher used field notes to record his feelings and reactions to the observed events (Best & Kahn, 2006). Furthermore, as stated by Duff (2008), he audiotaped the entire classes on Skype and Discord, and uploaded the recorded files on the website under the title of Classes Archive. In so doing, according to Duff (2008), audiotaping “helps preserve the linguistic character of interactions” (p. 139) between the researcher and the participant, and “transcripts that can be subjected to discourse analysis are extremely valuable sources of information about classroom interaction” (Nunan & Bailey, 2009, p. 270) because they could serve to condense data and facilitate identifying patterns (Nunan & Bailey, 2009).

Auditory Observation and Data Analysis

After each session of our English conversation class (Wednesdays, from 9:00 to 10:00 pm according to Iran’s standard time), the researcher immediately listened to the audiotaped version of the class uploaded on the website, making an attempt to bridge in the gap between the data elicited from the interviews and his own speculations on the research questions and hypotheses. This type of auditory observation could tremendously cast light on some information that the participants voluntarily or involuntarily failed to present to the researcher in our semi-structured interviews. The immediacy of reconsidering the recorded classes critically while taking notes could help the researcher to process and analyze the data on the participants’ behaviors in response to the research questions more accurately.

Open-Ended Questionnaire

Questionnaire for Data Triangulation

To further triangulate the data, the researcher elicited some supplementary information from the participants with the help of an open-ended questionnaire (Appendix A) because this type of data collection instrument can “provide a far greater richness than fully quantitative data” (Dörnyei, 2007, p. 107) through allowing for greater freedom of expression.

It is important to add that there was considerable overlap among the question items in our semi-structured interviews and open-ended questionnaire. In other words, these two instruments of data collection were basically aimed at eliciting the same data in response to the research questions and hypotheses from the participants from two different supplementary perspectives to account for saturation because it is believed that although open-ended questionnaires can provide the researcher with greater depth of responses from the side of the participants, sometimes they are difficult to interpret and report in research (Best & Kahn, 2006).

Short-Answer Questions and Discourse Completion Tasks

This open-ended questionnaire falls into the category of short-answer questions (Brown, 2001). The question items of this type of questionnaire required the participants to use several phrases and sentences to answer the questions in a pre-specified place. When the questions were rather technical and the participants needed to have some background information in order to understand and answer them correctly, discourse completion tasks were provided before the questions items to familiarize the participants with the central idea in the questions (Nunan & Bailey, 2009).

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