The "truth" value of research interviews
Talking about “truth”, we are familiar with two types of truth which are “absolute truth” and “relative truth”; in my opinion, the “truth” of research interviews is the relative one. Rosenblatt (2002) reveals the belief in truth from both angles of interviewees and interviewers. Firstly, from the interviewees’ side, they tend to feel that it is their “almost scared obligation to provide the truth” (p. 4), therefore, they try their best to convey their memories or events to the interviewers as accurately as possible. Some interviewees even contact the interviewers after the interview to provide further information to clarify the truth they mentioned. However, the interviewees might attempt “deception” (p. 4) if they are not comfortable with the interview’s atmosphere, for example, when the interviewee doesn’t trust the interviewer, or when they are in the group interview and they don’t want to…show more content… But most of the time, the interview is “driven by truth and essentialism”, the interviewees usually “try hard to deal with the truth” (p. 3), so the author states that he writes his social science reports “in ways that honor their real realities” (p. 4). On the other hand, Rosenblatt (2002) reveals that before the interview, interviewers construct the “imagination of who the interviewees are, what is going on with them, and how they will react to various things we might ask or do”, and that might lead the interviewers to become “fictional”. Therefore, in order to have a good interview, the author advices the interviewers to be “open-minded” (p. 5) and “to question recurrently and determinedly the fundamental philosophical
