Doing Data: The Local Organization of a Sociological Interview

We review the ubiquitous remedial perspective evident in methodological discussions of the interview and we explicate the presuppositions of such discussions. We contrast this perspective with a view of interviews as interactional events, the organization of which is locally managed and practically accomplished. We then examine a transcript of an interview between a sociological researcher and an educational psychologist, in which psychological referrals and the 'work problems' associated with them are discussed. The analysis is divided into two main parts. In the first we consider the sequential ordering of the cases discussed in the interview. In the second we examine some formulating work through which recognizably sociological data is produced. We show how the 'logic' of educational psychological work is incarnate to the interview and the practices through which it is accomplished.