Hi,

long time ago you posted a question about the length of your interviews. You were planning to do 20, but the first couple of questons were only about 20 minutes long so you were wonderning if that is sufficient for a PHD.

Being in a similar situation myself now, I was wondering if your later interviews were actually longer than 20 minutes? If not, how many did you do and were there any problems with that.

Thanks so much

Otto

If she posted a thread, write something on it as it might send her an email.

cheers, I'll give that a try

Hi Otto!
In the end, i did 17 interviews, ranging from 20 minutes to 3 and a half hours (to be fair, that one wasn't really an 'interview' at all - the interviewee hijacked it, never really answered the questions and i don't think i dealt with it well). The average length was about 40 minutes - with experience, i did find ways of getting the interviewees to elaborate. Nevertheless, none of my supervisors thought that short interviews would be problematic, given that the quality of the content was relevant & good. Also, i still decided to stop at 17 interviews as i realised that i had plenty of data for analysis (although i haven't started this yet!) and feel that there are ethical concerns regarding 'over-collecting' data, and then not using it.
Hope that helps - give me a shout if you need to know anything else!
Best Wishes, Z

Thank you very much. That is very useful!

Bloody hell - Ive just read last year's posting which you brought up - reading everybody's responses, it has put the fear of God back into me!!!
Maybe i haven't got enough data.....(goes off to quietly whimper)

LOL - that pesky self-doubt...