How to Analyse Interviews: A Documentary Method of Interpretation

Interviews are commonplace in HCI. This paper presents a documentary method of interpretation (DMI) for the analysis of the topical organisation of talk within a corpus of transcripts, topics that are endogenous to it and elaborate patterns of social reasoning about issues of relevance to research. The DMI reflexively enables endogenous topic analysis (ETA). We contrast ETA with established qualitative approaches, including qualitative content analysis, grounded theory, interpretative phenomenological analysis, and thematic analysis, to draw out its distinctive character and unique contribution. Unlike established methods, ETA does not require that the analyst be proficient in qualitative analysis, or have knowledge of underlying theories and methods in the social sciences. ETA relies on the DMI, which is a members method, not a social science method, and mastery of natural language; a competence most people already possess.