Getting the goods out of industry: Using interactive discussion tools as a form of strategic questioning when conducting in-depth interviews

Research into travel and tourism involves much hands - on interaction with industry members. The results of a recent series of interviews of airline management and personnel revealed that the use of interactive discussion tools in an interview can be an effective method of obtaining rich and in-depth information from industry by allowing the interviewer-participant to reach a deeper level of dialogue. In this particular case, in addition to a series of unstructured interview questions, a diagram was shown to participants to provoke discussion of the internal and external influences on the environmental performance of an airline. The diagram was presented to participants as an interactive tool that they were free to change, write on and mark the areas they felt were most relevant. The diagram not only succeeded in requiring participant to 'go beyond' the usual line of thinking, it was also useful in overcoming some of the hurdles of semi -structured interviewing such as remaining focused on the issues being discussed and drawing information out of 'non-talkers'. Feedback from the participants revealed that the diagram also left them with some 'food for thought' - illustrating that interviews can be used as a two-way street by informing the participants while at the same time gaining valuable information for the interviewer. This strategy adopts the notion of post-positivist theory in the sense that the researcher-participant relationship goes beyond simply 'mining' information from the participant by giving something back to the person being interviewed. This paper reflects on the use of interactive discussion tools as a strategic interview technique to obtain enriched description and discussion of the issues being investigated. Strategies for effectively using the diagram with various types of participants are considered and the constraints and opportunities of this technique are discussed.