Embedded, lengthy interviews gave researchers deep proximity to Ruhr steel workers.

Evidence

Their study was financed by the Rockefeller Foundation, and the second part of it dealt with the worker’s image of his own work, technological progress, economic and political problems, worker participation and society as a whole, based on interviews with 600 workers in an iron and steel works in the Ruhr. What was unique about this study was, in the first place, that the authors were far closer to the `objects’ of their research than had been the case in the Mannesmann study. The four authors themselves were among the team of interviewers, and they got to know each workplace in detail and spent nine months in the hostel for single people that belonged to the works. Six other interviewers also familiarized themselves with the workplaces of the workers they were to interview. The interviews consisted of discussions lasting at least two hours, and often considerably longer. The pattern of questions had been assembled on the basis of numerous conversations at the workplace, in the hostel, in private homes and in bars. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2098

Categorization

• XREF: Contrasts with the earlier Mannesmann study’s more detached interview design — the methodological self-critique thread of Frankfurt School empirical work.