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Qualitative Interview Method: Introductory Manual to the Emergent Literacy Eco-Cultural Family Interview (EL EFI) Introduction The study in which you are a fieldworker/interviewer has a qualitative interview method component, the Emergent Literacy Eco-Cultural Family Interview (EL EFI). The purpose of this method is to examine impacts on children and families in areas of emergent literacy that arise from children’s natural home environment. For example, what can we learn about the home environment and cultural setting of a child who demonstrates more emergent literacy skills versus that of a child who demonstrates less? In this study we are interested in learning about families—including household and daily contexts, settings, activities, resources, and routines—and how family life supports the development of emergent literacy in young children. We are working to discover how these factors may or may not support emergent literacy skills and whether home environments have any important impacts on the intervention effectiveness. Dr. Tom Weisner and his colleagues at UCLA designed the EFI protocol to focus on family routines based on 20 years of experience observing families. They have found that daily routines serve as the best indicators of family well-being and child outcomes (Weisner et al., 1997). Every family faces the challenge of balancing resources, needs, and skills, and negotiating beliefs about which daily activities are most meaningful and important to them. The interview is called the Eco-Cultural Family Interview for two reasons. First, families’ daily routines are primarily based on the family ecology—their resources and constraints. Second, daily routines are based on the family culture—their beliefs and values. Families work hard to create daily routines that work for them within the resources and constraints of their ecology and are meaningful to them within the framework of their cultural beliefs and values. The goal of the EL EFI is to understand how a family goes about organizing the target child’s (TC) daily routine, and why--but focused in on emergent literacy. Fieldworkers listen for the goals and values that parents bring to the task of raising a child well. Fieldworkers listen for beliefs about what is important, and why, as parents talk about the child’s daily routine. Interviewers seek to find out what resources the family feels they have available and what constraints the family must live within. For example, the interviewer learns about how the family gets TC to school, who might read a story to TC, and what their hopes are for his/her future. As researchers, we gain an understanding of family ecology and cultural beliefs through learning about and understanding their daily routines. This manual will give you an initial overview of the interview to be used in this study. The section above has given you a brief introduction to the qualitative interview method’s general principles. The second section contains specific details about administering the interview protocol, data recording, and data processing. This section will provide a reference for you to refer back to periodically so you can focus on the important research issues when conducting your interviews. The third section contains the interview protocol. By the time you finish training you should be able to conduct a thorough and unbiased interview that will provide invaluable information to our project. Your role as fieldworker/interviewer is important and your contribution to the study is very much appreciated.
The Interview Method You will be visiting families at their homes and requesting an interview with the primary caretaker of the target child. In most cases, this will be the mother. In other cases, you may have to ask some well-placed questions to find out who has been doing the most caretaking. The qualitative interview method allows us to gather information from families that we cannot get by conducting written or oral surveys. The basic design of a qualitative interview is to gather information during an interaction that, as much as possible, mimics a natural conversation. This approach intends to facilitate a conversational manner rather than follow a more structured interview in which the interviewer simply lists questions for the respondent to answer. It enhances the likelihood that research participants will feel comfortable and willing to offer honest, complete, and forthcoming responses—like telling stories to a friend. It also allows the respondent the opportunity of explaining in their own words how their family works, instead of requiring them to respond to a restricted set of questions and answers. While the EFI method appears relaxed and informal, by the end of the interview, the content of the ‘data’ must be complete and collected systematically to assure standardized administration of the protocol across all participants. This point cannot be overemphasized and presents the largest challenge to you as an interviewer—how to maintain rapport and facilitate a conversational tone in the interview while at the same time assure that the information gathered addresses every item in the interview protocol. Often a respondent may start answering a question that is further along in the survey. This is fine and adds to the conversational nature of the interview. It remains important to address every topic and all the additional questions listed. That is why you have check boxes for each question and key pieces of information. If you are not sure whether a topic has been covered completely in earlier conversation, bring it up again later in the interview and tell the respondent that you would like to clarify his/her responses. You do not necessarily need to repeat each question exactly as it is written; you can rephrase questions appropriately depending on the specific circumstances of each interview, the characteristics of each respondent, and your unique style. However, it is essential that you don’t change the wording in ways that might lead the respondent to answer in a certain way. For example, you don’t want to say, "I’m sure you read with your child; can you tell me about that?" since some parents may not read to their child. In understanding the content of the questions, you will learn what changes are acceptable and when you should stick more closely to the scripts to avoid biasing the caretakers’ answers. It is very important to collect the data without contamination of your ideas by leading the participant to answer one way or another. This is a difficult skill and will improve with practice.
Interview Topics Aside from inquiry about the household and immigration demographics (i.e., who is in the home, their job status, relation to TC, birth places, education level, and general household resources), the interview is designed to gather information about family activities and beliefs where TC is concerned and focused on emergent literacy. Topics address activities the child participates in at home, parenting beliefs about raising children, and parents’ own experiences as a child. Families are asked to describe, in detail, the daily activities and routines in their home that focus on emergent literacy. Through these descriptions, families reveal their use of available resources (e.g., materials, space, people), the frequency of routines that make use of these resources, and the reasons for engaging in and structuring daily routines in the ways they do. Also, caretakers are asked to describe their goals for their children and for themselves, naturally revealing their values and moral convictions regarding the right way to live, raise children, participate in their children’s education, and achieve their goals. And finally, caretakers describe their own upbringing to reveal educational histories, experiences, perceptions of adequacy and appropriateness, and motivations for seeking additional learning.
Procedures Your primary responsibility as a fieldworker is to complete the in-home data collection and assure that what you have learned is properly recorded. The protocol materials have been prepared to make this as easy as possible and include two main pieces: Tape recording—at the appropriate time during the introduction, once you have assured the participant is comfortable, you must remember to turn on your audio tape recorder and check to see that it is operating properly Hand written responses—the interview form is organized to draw your attention to all key questions (and where to record answers) that you will seek responses to. You will see that:
Note that included in the interview form is one "survey" type of scale—the "Frequency (Sorting) Task" and one "Home Resources" checklist that you will administer verbally with the caretaker. The "Frequency (Sorting) Task" involves a set of activities that you will ask the caretaker to respond to based on a frequency of occurrence scale The "Home Resources" checklist is a set of objects that you will ask the caretaker to indicate whether or not they are present in the home Once you have completed your interview please assure that all written data have been clearly recorded on the interview form. Returning from the field (the home, Head Start, or elsewhere), you will have two things: the marked up interview form and the audiotape recording. You will return the audiotape and interview form to the person(s) responsible for data input and processing.
Requirements for Quality Write-ups The interview is structured around a set of 15 main topics. While you will not be responsible for generating the fieldnote write-up, it is important for you to understand how the audiotape information will be used in the research. On the interview form there are brief descriptions of the key information to be collected in each section (see the boxes beneath each heading). The goal of the fieldnote write-up is to capture rich and complete information about each section for every family. For each interview, the UCLA team will be listening to the entire audio recording and writing all the parents' comments that capture the content relevant to each of the 15 key areas of inquiry. The quality of these write-ups depends largely on the quality of information contained in the audio recording of your interviews. These write-ups will be input into the same system that contains all other data you collect in the home visit so they can be analyzed together. Please spend time reading and understanding these descriptions so you can be sure to conduct interviews that will contain the rich and complete information that will help assure the success of this research.
Summary In review, the EL EFI form will guide your conversation and data recording as you conduct the interview. The initial question of each topic provides a starting point for the conversation. Let the caretaker speak freely with an occasional question on your part to clarify or elicit additional information. Use the checklist of questions to make sure the caretaker has addressed all the questions. If not, ask the caretaker directly. Record responses to all questions where a shaded scale, "yes/no", or blank line is provided. While you are interviewing the primary caretaker, first listen to most of the answer to a topic. Review the section descriptions—which appear in boxes under each topic header—to make sure that your interview conversation includes an example of the activity and information about each of the additional questions. Use what you know from observing as well as what the caretaker tells you to guide your conversation toward eliciting rich and complete information.
Again, thank you for your participation in this research and do not hesitate to raise questions to the research team if anything seems unclear or if you have suggestions that may improve the overall quality of our work.
Interview Visit Protocol Checklist Getting Ready for the Visit:
Conducting the Visit:
After the Visit:
Submitting Visit Data:
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