The Discourse-Based Interview: Forty Years of Exploring the Tacit Knowledge of Writers

Neil Baird, Bowling Green State University, and Bradley Dilger, Purdue University

SIGDOC 2023

We’re at SIGDOC 2023! Attend our talk, “Supporting Discourse-Based Interviews: Developing a Methodological Resource for Researchers & Students Using Design Thinking” (Friday, 1:15pm, Eola 1). Follow along with our slide deck. Interested in helping us with our DBI project before or after the conference? Fill out this form or email dbi@dtext.org.

Thanks to everyone who helped us with this project so far!

Composition Forum special issue

We guest-edited the summer 2022 special issue of issue of Composition Forum: “The Discourse-Based Interview: Forty Years of Exploring the Tacit Knowledge of Writers.” This special issue explores issues related to the discourse-based interview (DBI), an method for interviewing that has been used by hundreds of writing researchers.

The special issue includes a retrospective interview with Odell, Goswami, and Herrington, a reprint of their 1983 article, and much more. We hope you find it useful, and we welcome your feedback: dbi@dtext.org.

Our methodological interest in the discourse-based interview arose from a study of writing transfer, starting in 2010, in which the DBI was very important for us.

News

Oct 27, 2023: Our SIGDOC 2023 paper was published, the same day we presented at SIGDOC! Read Supporting Discourse-based Interviews: Developing a Methodological Resource for Researchers and Students Using Design Thinking. We are grateful Purdue was able to support open access for our work.

Apr 12, 2023: We are designing an open-access web-based resource to help researchers interested in using discourse-based interviews or similar text-based interviews in writing research. Learn more. If you can help by sharing materials or participating in a focus group, let us know!

Sept 15, 2022: Our special issue is live! Thank you to our contributors, the CF editorial staff, and especially Lee, Dixie, and Anne.

May 3, 2021: Composition Forum has published the call for proposals. The deadline is September 1, 2021. We will review and comment on draft proposals shared before July 30, 2021.

Special issue call for proposals (for archival purposes)

Contact

We welcome questions and comments about our study, our web-based toolkit, or the special issue. Contact both Baird and Dilger.

Copyright © 2005–2023 Bradley Dilger.