Event-Centered Interviewing: Integrating Qualitative Interviews with Experience Sampling Technologies

The qualitative interview has been a core technique in the sociological methods toolkit for generations. Interviews provide essential insights into how participants experience the world around them. New opportunities have emerged to adapt traditional in-depth interview techniques through the use of evolving technologies available to interview participants. This article describes the integration of ecological momentary assessment techniques to augment qualitative in-depth interviews focused on specific events, which we term event-centered interviewing. By incorporating photo data captured systematically through smartphone apps designed for ecological momentary assessment, event-centered interviews can extend the strengths of traditional qualitative interviews. We describe the processes and procedures for conducting event-centered interviews, and we highlight how the approach may create opportunities for qualitative analysis and minimize certain limitations of traditional in-depth interviews. We also highlight the positive participant responses to the approach from a pilot study. Although traditional in-depth interviews may remain at the core of qualitative sociological inquiry, event-centered interviewing may be especially useful for interviews about behavior and experiences that occur during specific events.