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This chapter outlines methodological difficulties and ethical dilemmas encountered during my fieldwork at a high-poverty, high-minority U.S. inner-city school. Using a qualitative research design informed by the “new” sociology of childhood and constructivist grounded theory, I conducted child-centered research at the school for four months, including participant observations and interviews with 50 students. This chapter argues that good ethnographic research not only depends on solid research design but also requires researchers to be flexible, adaptable, and diplomatic. Especially regarding the “least adult” role, the dilemma of objectivity, lying in interviews, and the ethical predicament of students sharing sensitive information, I argue that ethnographic studies often require the researcher to act more like a diplomat maneuvering the stormy waters of contradictory interests than the objective observer described in the methodological literature. First-hand accounts of research exploring children’s own perspectives are scarce. Particularly difficulties and dilemmas encountered in the field are often mentioned only in passing, if they are mentioned at all. Novice researchers thus struggle to find information to guide their own endeavors and may set themselves up for frustration if they expect their research to be as predictable as the methodological literature suggests. The paucity of discussion of real-life difficulties encountered in the field also hinders scholarly dialog and obstructs the advancement of methodological and ethical questions surrounding research with children. This chapter hopes to help fill this gap.

Deception detection is instrumental in business management but professionals differ widely in terms of deception detection performance. The purpose of this paper is to examine the genetic basis of deception detection performance using the classic twin study design and address the research question: how much variance in individual differences in deception detection performance can be accounted for by the variance in genetics vs environmental influences?

In total, 192 twins, with 65 pairs of monozygotic (identical) twins and 31 pairs of dizygotic (fraternal) twins participated in an experiment. A series of behavioral genetic analyses were performed.

The variability in deception detection performance was largely determined by differences in shared and non-shared environments.

The subjects were solicited during the Twins Days Festival so the sample selection and data collection were limited to the natural settings in the field. In addition, the risks and rewards associated with deception detection performance in the study are pale in comparison with those in practice.

Deception detection performance may be improved through training programs. Corporations should continue funding training programs for deception detection.

This is the first empirical study that examines the complementary influences of genetics and environment on people’s ability to detect deception.

This article describes a course in interviewing skills for local authority auditors. It represents a further development of the “Bradford Approach” to interviewing skills training developed by Randell et al for appraisal interviewing and subsequently extended to include grievance interviewing by Gill. As such, it relies heavily on the notion that successful interviewing depends upon a number of precise behavioural skills which can best be acquired through practice in role plays. The course was developed at the request of the Internal Audit Section of Humberside County Council, who felt that existing courses for auditors did not provide adequate training in interviewing skills.

Despite the growing pressure to encourage new ways of thinking about research methodology, only recently have interview methodologists begun to realize that “we cannot lift the results of interviewing out of the contexts in which they were gathered and claim them as objective data with no strings attached”. The purpose of this paper is to provide additional insight based on a critical reflection of the interview as a research method drawing upon Alvesson's discussion from the neopositivist, romanticist and localist interview perspectives. Specifically, the authors focus on critical reflections of three broad categories of a continuum of interview methods: structured, semi‐structured and unstructured interviews.

The authors adopt a critical and reflexive approach to understanding the literature on interviews to develop alternative insights about the use of interviews as a qualitative research method.

After examining the neopositivist (interview as a “tool”) and romanticist (interview as “human encounter”) perspectives on the use of the research interview, the authors adopt a localist perspective towards interviews and argue that the localist approach opens up alternative understanding of the interview process and the accounts produced provide additional insights. The insights are used to outline the skills researchers need to develop in applying the localist perspective to interviews.

The paper provides an alternative perspective on the practice of conducting interviews, recognizing interviews as complex social and organizational phenomena rather than just a research method.

Project INISS was established on July 1st 1978 with a grant from the Department of Health and Social Security, and completed its work in October 1980. The aim of the project was to evaluate a number of small‐scale experimental innovations for the improvement of information services in social services departments. Three interviewing techniques were used: one to one, group and telephone interviews. This article describes these methods and offers guidelines for their suitability in particular situations.

Notes that many authors have supported the value of integrating qualitative and quantitative approaches within a research design to address research questions that aim both to develop or extend theory and test its application. Presents research which explores two alternative approaches to conducting qualitative interviews within an integrated research method. Aims to determine how those different approaches can enhance the design of the quantitative component of the research, and contribute to the interpretation of the quantitative data. Concludes that the findings indicate the importance of adopting both qualitative interview techniques within this combined approach, while completing a comprehensive review of the literature. Suggests that this will develop a theoretical framework and quantitative design, and assist in the interpretation of the quantitative data. The qualitative components of two outshopping studies, each study having a combined qualitative/quantitative research design, were selected to illustrate the nature of the data produced through each qualitative interviewing technique and the contribution of the data to the interpretation of the quantitative findings.

This research used the somewhat new methodology of convergent interviews to develop a conceptual framework about relationship constructs in an Internet environment. More generally, this article describes and illustrates the processes and the strengths of convergent interviewing to investigate under‐researched areas, and compares it with alternative qualitative techniques like in‐depth interviews, case research and focus groups. The illustration involves interviews conducted with marketing managers and business consultants from ten service companies, about Internet and relationship marketing. It is argued that convergent interviewing is more appropriate than some other qualitative methods to investigate under‐researched areas where there are few experts because it provides a way of quickly converging on key issues in the area, an efficient mechanism for data analysis after each interview, and a way of deciding when to stop collecting data. Convergent interviews could become another useful qualitative research method to explore new issues about emerging marketing phenomena.