Chapter 5 Qualitative Part 3: Interviewing the Interviewers

In this third of three chapters summarizing Project RISE qualitative data streams, we present our capstone empirical investigation of interviewing-the-interviewers. These interviews came at the tail-end of the Project and served as a check of completeness and depth for our documentation of the rituals and key behaviors that accompany the perinatal journey. It also allowed for ‘follow-up’ questions with the women most qualified to answer them. The ‘interviewers’ in this case are the PCI investigators who conducted the FGDs, KIIs, vignettes, and quantitative surveys. In addition to extensive subject matter experience, they are also Bihari women and mothers who also have personal knowledge of local maternal dynamics and hence have a great deal of expertise on the topic.

The main output from the information obtained by interviewing-the-interviewers is becomes the basis for the ritual narrative, or the thorough overview of the perinatal experience in Bihar (Chapter 11). For this reason, this chapter is a little different from the other on Project datastreams in that it focuses on the raw data collected in the interviews. Here we cover the methods, present a coded raw data table, and offer a few observations on new behaviors identified by interviewing-the-interviewer, but comparatively less on interpretation and discussion as that is presented in the synthesis chapter.