Grasping the experience of the other from an interview: Self-transposition in use

Abstract

This article describes a part of the interview process that is never usually reported. Listening to what people say is the key to increasing our knowledge of human existences. Procuring knowledge about human experience is much more challenging. Although good sources on how to prepare and conduct an interview exist, the process of the interviewer's perception of the interviewee's message and meaning is less examined. Beyond the role of eliciting the data, the researcher endeavours to reproduce the interviewee's narration and not the voice of the researcher. By illustrating the process during the interview, further transparency and thereby validity may be achieved. To exemplify this, the perception of the interviewer is explored, and here Heidegger's work on self-transposition has proved to be helpful. © 2013 S. Angel.