You are here

Research resources

Book launch: Elicitation Strategies for Interviewing and Field Work

The book 'Elicitation Strategies for Interviewing and Field Work' by Rodney Clarke was launched with an event sponsored through the UOW Global Challenges Program with support from the Challenge Leader, Living Well Longer Professor Lorna Moxham.

About Elicitation Strategies for Interviewing and Field Work

Speaker 1 [00:00:04] My name is Rodney Clark, I'm the author of the book Elicitation Strategies for Interviewing and Field Work. This is a book that's about the art of interviewing from the perspective that you want to communicate with the person that you're interviewing with. And so I use a series of patterns which can be used by the interviewer, to elicit information and experience from an interviewee. And the idea is that you can design the interview using these patterns of communication and you can help understand what the interviewee is saying by listening out for stages in those patterns.

Speaker 2 [00:00:52] This is a really exciting occasion, as I'm sure a lot of you can appreciate, a book is a huge amount of work, and when you're an academic, you've got lots of other things that you could be doing. So to commit to a book and to see it through is really a huge achievement and we're very proud of Rod today, so congratulations.

Speaker 3 [00:01:11] I believe this book, after reading it and thinking about it and even pondering the ways how I could use it in my own practice. I consider it to be a gift to our community.

Speaker 1 [00:01:26] The benefit of the book is that it's quite practical in the sense that you can plan and actually execute an interview, both traditional interview, which is a face to face interview and also what's called a go along interview where you move through a space. Could be you're interviewing somebody that works on a factory floor or maybe who is walking you through their town and they're recounting to you what experiences they've had of that town. So we cover both of these interview types and show how we can plan and execute those interviews using these patterns of communication.

CROP Research Resources

A Case Study in Cambodia

The Village Hive project, initiated by the Cambodian Children’s Trust (CCT), exemplifies a groundbreaking approach to localising child protection services in Cambodia’s Battambang Province. This evaluation report assesses the project’s effectiveness through a rigorous thematic analysis of qualitative data collected via interviews, direct observation, and secondary sources such as policy documents and financial records. The analysis follows Baguios et al.'s (2021) localisation framework, focusing on dimensions of agency, ways of being, and resources. This approach enables a nuanced understanding of how CCT’s localisation efforts empower communities to independently manage social protection initiatives and overcome systemic challenges in the Cambodian context.

At its core, the Village Hive initiative addresses child protection through a strengths-based model that prioritises prevention and early intervention over crisis response. Collaborating with local authorities, social service providers, educators, and healthcare professionals, CCT has established Village Hives in the Ou Char and Svay Pao Communes. These communes deliver essential services, such as education, healthcare, and social support, to help vulnerable families achieve self-sufficiency and reduce reliance on institutional care.

The project’s “upstream accountability” model fosters community empowerment by transferring decision-making authority to local stakeholders, who co-create, manage, and sustain child protection services. In 2023 alone, the project successfully prevented the separation of over 1,100 children from their families, handled 344 cases through a dedicated child protection hotline, and strengthened community trust in local governance.

Key recommendations include further digitisation of financial processes, enhanced policies for local decision-making, fostering a culture of anti-corruption, and ongoing capacitybuilding initiatives. CCT envisions that by 2032, local communities will sustain these services independently, establishing a resilient and locally-led social protection system in Cambodia.

Download the full report (PDF: 587 KB) 

A Case Study in the Illawarra Region

This research was conducted by Dr Freda Hui and Dr Mona Nikidehaghani in conjunction with One Door Mental Health (ARAFMI Illawarra) and reports on ways to improve the wellbeing of mental health carers in the Illawarra and to evaluate the outcomes of the current programs. Interviews were conducted with the ‘hidden workers’ in the sector and many of the carers indicated that they felt isolated with limited support, faced financial burdens, and lacked an understanding of mental illness. Alarmingly, more than half of them developed a mental health disorder. This study demonstrates how services, such as education programs and the use of technology can improve a mental health carer’s social life and mental health.

Download: Who Cares for the Carers Report

Hard to Reach: Examining the National Disability Insurance Scheme Experience - A Case Study of Wollongong

A report in collaboration with the St Vincent de Paul Society (Wollongong Central Council)

This report considers the narratives, ideas, and experiences of people with disability and their carers’ in Wollongong NSW. A sample of socio-economically disadvantaged people living with a disability, who had sought and received assistance from the St Vincent de Paul Society between July 2017 and June 2018, were profiled and analysed. The research presented in this report is not intended to provide a comprehensive analysis of issues related to the NDIS, but rather has a deliberately narrow focus on the experiences of a particular group of potential participants one year after the roll out of the NDIS in the region.

Download: NDIS Experience Research Report

The public encounter the death-care industry, like many other "care" based industries, at their most vulnerable. The following report is the findings of a study, supported by CPA Australia, to investigate the current costing and pricing practices of funerals in Australia. The report has generated significant interest from a wide range international and national stakeholders wanting information about a range of packaged products and services that limit the transparency of costing information and subsequently consumer choice. We have followed up the report with targeted engagements with consumers, industry, advisors and government via articles in the Conversation, interviews for the print, TV and radio audiences and submission to the recent Financial Services Royal Commission.

Download PDF: It's Your Funeral Research Report

In 2019, Rodney Clarke published a book on a functional communication-based approach to interviewing that overturned the implicit use of information theory for planning and undertaking traditional static and go-along interviews. The key to developing these new interviewing practices was the identification of language resources that enabled interviewers to plan and ask questions designed to elicit responses from interviewees organised into mutually expected conventional communication patterns called canonical genres. By understanding how to request or elicit various canonical genres, interviewers could more reliably understand if answers were complete, whether the responses needed further elaboration and if so how to ask appropriate follow-on questions to further disambiguate answers.

Clarke, R. J. (2019) Elicitation Strategies for Interview and Fieldwork: Emerging Research and Opportunities, Advances in Linguistics and Communication Studies (ALCS) Series, Research Insights, IGI Global Research, 130pp. DOI: 10.4018/978-1-5225-6344-0

 

Launch Event

A launch event for the book was held on Wednesday 3rd July 12:30-2:30 in the Foyer of Building 6, the SMART Infrastructure Facility at the University of Wollongong (UOW), NSW Australia. The book was launched by Professor Olivera Marjanovic, Professor of Information Systems in the School of Professional Practice & Leadership, Faculty of Engineering and IT at the University of Technology Sydney. The launch event was sponsored through the UOW Global Challenges Program with support from the Challenge Leader, Living Well Longer Professor Lorna Moxham. The author wishes to thank Professor Marjanovic, Professor Randle and Professor Moxham for their energy and enthusiasm, support, time and best wishes.

 

Video Resources

A lecture on this topic was given to the Centre for Responsible Organisations and Practices (CROP) on Tuesday 9th April 2019. The talk was entitled Elicitation Strategies for Interviewing and Fieldwork: New Theory and New Methods. A series of videos explaining this approach have been developed from functional communication principles and emphasises the use of commonly available communication patterns called canonical genres.

Explore our centre

More about CROP