Key Informant Interviews

Key informant interviews are crucial to obtaining information from experts or advocates in a particular research area.  For my key informant interview, I chose Professor Allen Sanderson, a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Economics at the University of Chicago.  He is both my thesis adviser and an expert in Olympic economics.  Going into the interview, I was nervous about getting permission to record the conversation or encountering a technological mishap with the recording app. 

After the interview, I transcribed the entire conversation and was extremely pleased with both the quality of sound in the recording and the responses my probing questions received. I learned a lot about the economics of hosting a mega-sporting event like the Olympics and interesting facts about Chicago sports.  Recording the interview made it very easy to revisit points that Professor Sanderson had made and quote them directly. Overall, my key informant interview was very eye-opening at how useful talking to experts in person can be for researching a particular policy.