“People’s representations on corrupt practices and the construction of a new moral order: in-depth interviews and answers to open-ended questions in a middle-class survey”

RUTH SAUTU; PAULA BONIOLO; IGNACIA PERUGORRÍA

Amsterdam

Congreso; “Recent Developments and Applications in Social Research Methodology”, ISA Research Committee on Logic and Methodology; 2004

ISA Research Committee on Logic and Methodology

The objective of this paper is to evaluate the validity of a methodological strategy based on in-depth interviews to study people’s representations of corruption and their beliefs about its effects on the working of a democratic social order. The study was conducted among a purposeful sample of professionals and businessmen and women who had information about mechanisms through which corruption operates in both the public sector and private activities. The testimonies content consists in the description of cases of their own experience and in their own interpretations and value judgments of the causes and consequences of corruption.