Denominaciones de origen

depth interviews are a common data collection method in a range of disciplines. In-depth interviewing is a qualitative research method that uses open-ended questions to uncover information on a topic of interest and allows interviewees to express opinions and ideas in their own words (Webber & Byrd, 2010). Various terms are used to refer to this research method, including qualitative interviews, intensive interviews, and semi-standardized or semi-structured interviews. This concept of research focuses on in-depth interviews that take place face-to-face between an individual researcher and

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his/her interview respondent (variably referred to as an interviewee, respondent, informant, or participant).

Typically, prior to conducting the interviews, an interview guide (sometimes referred to as an interview schedule or instrument) that includes potential questions, topics of interest or some combination of these help focus the interview without locking the interviewer into a fixed set of questions in a rigid order and with specific wording (Appendix A). This flexible approach allows interviewee responses to guide the interaction and aids in keeping the interview on track in light of the topic of interest of the interview. The use of follow-up questions, often referred to as probes, is also common in this research approach, and aids in confirming what participants had previously made reference to. The primary goal of using an interview guide is to balance the systematic collection of data with the flexibility needed to tap respondents’

understandings. The amount of pre-structuring - although this was effectively avoided throughout the majority of the interviews, can vary, depending on a number of factors, including the comfort or experience of the researcher, the extent of the researcher’s familiarity with the culture of those interviewed, the degree to which the topic is understudied and the complexity of social processes involved (Maxwell, 2005).

It must be noted that the choice of such a method denotes that a researcher rarely begins research projects to test pre-formulated hypotheses (explicit statements regarding the nature or direction of relationships between variables) (Schutt, 2009); but instead, they typically develop a research question or set of related research objectives geared toward discovering what people think and feel, how they account for their experiences and actions and what opportunities and obstacles they face. In-depth interviews, especially with regards to this research on resilience have enabled the researcher to explore complex topics and allow for ideas to emerge that have not been predetermined by the researcher (Berg, 2009; Denzin & Lincoln, 2000; Esterberg, 2002;

Warren & Karner, 2005). In this research, conducting interviews face-to-face allowed for recording expressive or emotive nonverbal responses that were definitely instrumental in indicating the importance of particular questions or topics to respondents. Seeing

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people’s reactions also had an influence on the researcher to probe further or to ask additional questions as this is where most of the complexity had proven to be situated.

With this type of in-depth semi-structured interview, the researcher was able to ascertain the participants’ point of view on why they do what they do whilst, at the same time, capturing the ways respondents described and explained their decisions, actions, and interactions with others. Collecting data in this way most certainly made it possible to examine and interpret the motivations behind respondents’ actions and to identify the various constraints they face. By understanding and contrasting respondents’

motivations and explanations for their behaviour, the researcher was able to understand the meanings of the social phenomena under study which was significantly beneficial to the stance of phenomenological existentialism. Essentially, face-to-face in-depth interviews offer a way to explore people’s lives and the contexts in which they make decisions and yield “thick descriptions” of social life (Hesse-Biber & Leavy, 2006).

Interviewing people in depth undoubtedly revealed contradictions and ambivalences concerning how they viewed options for work and family especially with regards to how instrumental the construct at hand (resilience) was within those related opinions. In-depth interviews were particularly well-suited to get at emotional experience and response from the participants in this study, given that observations alone may not necessarily capture everything that a researcher wants to know. Combining observation with in-depth interviews allowed the researcher to access perspectives other than their own and to better understand others’ points of view (Esterberg, 2002).

In-depth interviews were certainly beneficial in this study as they were also used as a tool to explore sensitive topics in a complex and nuanced way. The interview in the study addressed the sensitive topic of personal intimacy, which is often overlooked in studies of families, relationships and work, despite how central this personal aspect is to relationship happiness and personal well-being.

In-depth interviews can contribute to generate theory and to develop new conceptual models (that is, distinctive ways of understanding or explaining social phenomena). For example, the data may well be used for the formulation of resilience interventions at a

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later stage. Moreover, in-depth interviews were used to capture attitudes and actions not adequately understood with the structured questions that would be present should the study have used survey research. Intensive interviewing uncovered details about the lives of these participants that surely would not be evident or identifiable from surveys alone, including differences related to work hours, occupational socialization, work schemas and happiness with work-life balance.

Finally, data collected through in-depth interviewing has helped refine measures used in this quantitative study and it is very possible that the results the interviews have rendered in this study could be used to develop a set of structured interview questions, according to which multiple regression methods could be used to identify factors predicting a range of orientations toward resilience thereafter. Together, this body of research provided insights on the intersection of work and family that would potentially have been left undiscovered by other methods.

5.7 Philosophical orientation that informs the qualitative method