Using qualitative methods can ultimately expand your insights into how students experience and derive meaning from participation in your center. This chapter provides a structured interview that can be used to generate students’ reflections on a particular program or center experience as a whole. We also discuss practices for qualitative data collection and analysis, with a specific emphasis on making sense of students’ responses.

Character InTERVIEW: A Structured Approach

Structured interviews follow a pre-determined set of questions that all interviewees are asked to be able to compare and contrast responses to the same question (see Hesse-Biber, 2016^[1]). The following interview guide can be used as a formal qualitative tool, capturing students’ perceptions and experiences about your center or certain offerings that you provide. We encourage you to use this entire list for a full qualitative interview: it will provide much general data about students’ experiences with your center, as well as information specific to character formation.

Advice from Qualitative Researchers

Qualitative interviews can reveal individuals’ experiences and reflections. The researcher should not interrogate, talk over, or overly direct the interviewee. As you have a conversation with center students, we encourage you to honor the humanity and dignity of the person talking about their thoughts by listening well and creating a space to share. Like all types of research, interviews should be voluntary. Consider these additional qualitative techniques.

Collecting Interview Data

A foundational step in conducting qualitative interviews is determining who you want to participate in research interviews^[2]. If you are interested in learning more about a particular program or event (e.g., residential fellows program), you could ask to interview all fellows. Alternatively, you may decide that interviewing leaders of certain events could lend special insights into the program. In assessing the work of your study center, you could interview both sophomore and senior students, comparing responses to see how responses are similar or dissimilar across classifications.

Next, you will also want to consider how you are capturing the responses students share with you in the interview. Two primary options include:

1. Note-taking: During the interview, you could take notes of student responses, including short quotes that seem significant or salient to the topic at hand. This form of data collection is better suited for more informal assessment.
2. Audio recording: In longer and more formal interview settings, a recorder or recording device is typically used to capture audio responses. These responses can then be replayed or even transcribed for later data analysis.

Positionality

Qualitative researchers acknowledge that interviewing is not an objective form of assessment; rather, it is a subjective one, in which the researcher can guide conversations and questions based on their own interests. This subjectivity is not a limitation to qualitative research, however, as qualitative assessment is foundationally co-constructed; researcher and interviewee share in the meaning-making process together^[3][4]

Therefore, it can be helpful to reflect on your own subjectivity before engaging in conversation. These questions can help you understand the expectations and experiences you bring to the table, even as you seek to hear from the reflections and experiences of others:

1. What are my assumptions about virtues broadly or a particular virtue specifically?
2. What do I expect to hear from the student I am talking with? What would I want to hear from them? What would I not want to hear from them?
3. What experiences do I have related to this topic or virtue? How might they be similar or dissimilar to the student that I am meeting with?

Ongoing reflection on these personal interests and experiences can help you distinguish between what you are hearing directly from the student and what you hoped or expected to hear.

Good Listening

The key to using qualitative methods is good listening. To do so, try to practice the following:

1. Pause after your questions to allow the student time to think and respond. Silence in a qualitative interview is not a bad thing!
2. Nod or verbally affirm students as they share without interrupting their train of thought or response. Doing so shows your interest and investment in the student.
3. Use students’ own language in the interview. Phrases like “So what I’m hearing you share is…” reflect your careful listening and engagement.

Removing other distractions from the interview space also allows you to listen well to the student in front of you. The sound of an email or text ping can throw off an interviewee.

Asking Follow-Up Questions

Asking follow-up questions is at the heart of interviewing. You use your set of interview questions as a strong guide but are also free to follow the conversation in more organic ways. In the set of questions listed above, we have provided examples of what these follow-up questions might look like—many expand upon the core of the original question. Follow-up questions can also take the interview in a new direction based on what the interviewee has shared.

Storing Interview Data

For qualitative researchers, protecting student confidentiality is a major concern. Although you cannot promise anonymity to any interviewees, you can still endeavor to protect any identifying information about those who have agreed to speak with you. Practices to pursue confidentiality include:

1. Removing students’ real names from any documents or recordings and replacing them with pseudonyms.
2. Blinding or excluding from your findings any particularly identifying demographic information or experiences.
3. Storing notes and recordings from interviews in a locked location (e.g., filing cabinet or password-protected computer).

Analyzing the Data: Theming

Once you have collected qualitative data, you may be wondering how to make sense of the variety of student responses and experiences that you have gathered. To analyze or evaluate the responses you have captured from students, you can engage in a qualitative practice called theming. Think of theming as drawing core, shared ideas or experiences from your entire data set. The example below shows this process in action.

You’ve just completed interviews with four leaders of your residential fellows program, using the structured interview guide provided above. When asked How would you talk about the purposes and goals of our center?, the students respond:

Student 1: I would say the purpose of our center is to be a space for Christians on campus to learn more about their faith, or for people interested in Christianity to learn more about what a life of faith looks like. Since we aren’t at a Christian school, our center is a dedicated and safe space to talk about my faith and beliefs.

Student 2: Hmmm….I think the goals of the center are to be a light on campus. I haven’t met many other Christians since coming here, so the center is a place where I can find other people who share my faith.

Student 3: That’s a good question. To me, our center embodies hospitality. We welcome anyone here. We have coffee, we have study rooms, we have places to hang out – and again that’s for any student on our campus.

Student 4: Yeah, I would say that our center is a place where academics and faith come together. There are grad students, undergrads. Really the door is open to anybody. So, I think the center leaders want this to be an intellectual place, especially when we think about religion.

Looking across these responses, two key themes emerge:

1. Our center is a place where faith and learning intentionally collide.
2. Our center is an ecumenical, hospitable space for any student on campus.

There is no “right” number of themes to derive from a project. Moreover, there is not a certain threshold of responses needed to identify a theme: the response of a single student, even as an outlier, is still compelling under a qualitative approach.

Interpreting the Data

From your list of themes, you can begin to think about how students themselves perceive and experience your center or a certain program that you offer. These responses may be surprising, different from your expectations or goals; or they may match your intended outcomes for a particular event

A central interpretive question for qualitative researchers is What’s the ‘so what’? That is, having garnered students’ reflections and analyzed them through a process of theming, you can begin to question the significance of these responses as a whole. Have students’ narratives provided a new way for your staff to think about a program? Have students’ input and insights provided affirmation that a program is working? Do students’ reflections illumine a particular virtue or goal that your center is intentionally forming?

By answering the “so what” question, you can demonstrate the significance of your findings, which can then inform future measurements and practices in the context of your study center.

Data-Informed Practice

More than mere anecdotes, the results of qualitative research are meaningful sense-making about virtue, formational experiences, purposes, and faith. Students’ reflections and responses can ultimately inform your work as a practitioner and leader in a center, as this empirical data can shape future programming, policies, events, and conversations in this space. For example, students’ insights about an orientation program offered by your study center may influence your decision to broaden this effort in the following year.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES