Active Listening in Interviews

1. Active Listening in Interviews Stephen Louw KMUTT PhD programme

2. Interviews in Qualitative Research • Structured vs unstructured vs semi-structured • To elicit rich data through extended responses • Issues arising for the novice researcher: • Covering the required ground • Reacting to unexpected responses • Following the interviewee’s lead • Getting sidetracked

3. Active listening • Intended to make the speaker feelwelllistened to, encourage reflection, personal insight and extendedresponses by: • Respondingempathically • Reflecting the speaker’s message

4. ‘Open’ functions in active listening • Opening ‘Alright, on a completelydifferent note, how wouldyoudescribe a good teacher?’ • Probing ‘Let’s talk more about the trainee, what do youthink the traineegetsfrom the feedback session?’ • Paraphrasing ‘So sometimesduring the feedback yousay ‘how do youthinkitwent’ and one of themmaysay ‘I thinkitwas terrible’. Do you use that as a lead in for whatcomesnext?’

5. ‘Focusing’ functions in active listening • Evaluating ‘I’minterested in this concept of good feedback. Can youdefinewhatbad feedback is?’ • Clarifying ‘And isthatwhenyoustartyour feedback?’ • Repeating ‘Be ‘self-critical’?’

6. Functions in active listening • Opening Alright, on a completelydifferent note… • Probing Let’s talk more about … • Paraphrasing So let me check I have this right then… • Evaluating It soundslike… • Clarifying Are yousaying…? • Repeating <keyword>?

7. Tryit out • Alright and by always starting with the good things, why do you do that? • Okay, do you go through the good points chronologically? • Oh so you feel it’s not worth bringing that kind of thing up? • Probe • Clarify • Paraphrase

8. Purpose of thispaper • To whatextentdid I use active listening? • How usefulis active listening in eliciting long responses in semi-structured interviews? • Whatproblemswerethere in trying to implement the active listeningapproach?

9. Context 4 interviews withteachertrainers: • Commercial TESOL training centre in Bangkok • Elicitingbeliefs about teaching, training and teaching practice

10. Analysis of interviews

11. Analysing the interviewer’sintention Open – a new topic Probe – the same topic Evaluate – the same topic with new perspective Paraphrase – the same subtopic, reworded Clarify – a question about the same subtopic Repeat – an echo of a word or phrase This shows how I used their reply to elicit further responses.

12. Analysing the interviewee’sinterpretation Open – new content expected Probe – additional content expected Evaluate – change in perspective expected Paraphrase – additional content on subtopic expected Clarify – rewording required Repeat – no new content expected This analysis shows how the initiations were interpreted.

13. Proportion of Functions 76% of initiations followed from the interviewee’s turns (i.e. Involved active listening).

14. Responselength by function Large mismatch between intention and interpretation for paraphrasing

15. Point biserialcorrelation Compare the length of responses with: *Open functions: Openings, probing and paraphrasing Length of response correlates to interviewee’s interpretation of initiations http://faculty.vassar.edu/lowry/pbcorr.html

16. MismatchesbetweenInterpretation and Intention A large proportion of paraphrase function mismatch

17. Clarifyinterpretedas paraphrase I Is it normally the case that they do have their [own] ideas? S Yeah and sometimes um they’re ve-, students can be stubborn so they might not think anything was amiss or they feel unusually down when they should be feeling more positive about way things.

18. Paraphrase interpreted as clarify I Alright, so basically you let them give their overall feelings first, then you go through the positive things, if there are joint things together, then separately, and then stuff that they need to think about afterwards. S Yeah.

19. Paraphrasingsignals • ‘Let me see. You’re saying that it’s because you’re serious that they don’t participate in any great detail’ (Edge, 2005, 61). • ‘Alright, so you’ve got a few minutes at the beginning of the lesson where they’re alone talking to each other’ (interpreted as ‘clarify’).

20. Paraphrasingsignals • If I’ve understood you properly, then... • Let me see if I understand you. You’re saying that ... • Just let me check that I’m with you. So you mean that... From Edge, J. (2002) Continuing Cooperative Development. University of Michigan Press.

21. Conclusion • Openings, probes and paraphrases are useful for eliciting long responses. • Clarifying, repeating and evaluating create focus. • The interviewee’s interpretation of the initiation is important for consistently long responses. • Clear signals help interviewee’s recognise function of an initiation.

22. Purpose of thispaper • To whatextentdid I use active listening? • How usefulis active listening in eliciting long responses in semi-structured interviews? • Whatproblemswerethere in trying to implement an active listeningapproach?

23. Q&A