CAN INTERVIEWS BE DESCRIBED OBJECTIVELY?

Study of the various papers on social work interviews shows that their writers have had in mind two fairly distinct purposes. Some have aimed quite directly at the improvement of case work technique, while others have undertaken primarily an analysis of the interview as a bit of social interaction. The majority have clearly been concerned with the technology rather than with the sociology of interviews. Yet it is a curious fact that the Minneapolis-St. Paul group, whose immediate objective is frankly improved teaching of how to interview clients, has made one of the most significant contributions to the analysis of interviews. A comparison with the work of the Kansas City group may be of interest. It has been concerned primarily in studying the interview as a type of social interaction, but so far has failed to discover any means of generalizing its data. It took the interview apart and identified certain constituent elements, but it did not succeed in producing a set of concepts by means of which to describe and lable recurring processes. Some people do not think that the Twin-City group has been altogether successful either, but it has pointed the way. Its attempt to classify phases of the interview as techniques, processes and purposes is quite significant and the effort to find suitable names for these also deserves credit.