Hi Lisa,

Can anyone recommend any good books/journal articles/websites on doing qualitative interviews online, i.e. using one-to-one synchronous exchanges in some kind of chat environment (or whatever) for qualitative research? Has anyone on the list ever done this? Any thoughts anyone??

You might find some good advice from the following people, either in articles they've written, or by contacting them directly. About interviewing generally: I recommend reading J. Spradley's book called _The Ethnographic Interview_. It was published in 1979 and has excellent interviewing strategies. The best part of this book is the specific advice about how to ask questions. About problems and special considerations of online interviewing: Kate Eichhorn raises some key issues in her article: "Sites unseen: ethnographic research in a textual community" _International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education_ 14, no. 4 (2001): 565-578. In my own work, I discuss various issues and problems associated with synchronous and anonymous interviews online. You could look at my book _Life Online_ (AltaMira) or a couple of recent articles that are forthcoming: *Representation in Online Ethnography: in Sarina Chen (et al) _Online Social Research: Methods, Issues, and Ethics (Peter Lang, forthcoming) draft here: http://ascend.comm.uic.edu/~amarkham/writing/chen.htm *Internet as Research Context: in Clive Seale's book _Qualitative Research Practice_ (Sage, forthcoming). draft here: http://ascend.comm.uic.edu/~amarkham/writing/Seale.htm Chris Mann and Fiona Stewart's book _Internet Communication and Qualitative Research_ is also useful in providing specific advice and strategies for online interviewing of various types. Both authors have conducted different types of interviews using online media. Anne Ryen conducted a long term interview study online. It was more based on email than synchronous chat, but she might have some more recent work to share with you. (I heard her at a couple of conferences. She also published results of her study in _Qualitative Inquiry_ with David Silverman in 2000). Shani Orgad gave an interesting talk about interviewing online (addressing why she decided that she needed to interview offline as well as online) at the 2002 AOIR conference. Hope this gives you something to work with, Annette ********************** Annette N. Markham, Ph. D. University of Illinois at Chicago Department of Communication 1007 W. Harrison St. m/c 132 Chicago, IL 60607-7137 amarkham@uic.edu http://ascend.comm.uic.edu/~amarkham/ **********************