In this brief methodological appendix I describe: (1) my data-gathering approach and (2) the way I selected my sample of respondents.

THE APPROACH: ELITE INTERVIEWING

Of the many ways to study lobbyists and lobbying, I employed elite interviewing as my principal method of inquiry. In this section, I discuss the pros and cons of elite interviewing and how I attempted to minimize problems associated with this method.

The Basic Approach

Elite interviewing is defined as “a specialized case of interviewing that focuses on a particular type of interviewee. Elite individuals are considered to be the influential, the prominent, and the well-informed people in an organization or community and are selected for interviews on the basis of their expertise in areas relevant to the research.”

I chose elite interviewing primarily because of the enormous amounts of data it produces. As mentioned in Chapter 1, ultimately I conducted a total of 34 interviews, 33 over the telephone, and 1 in person. I tape-recorded (with respondents' permission) and later transcribed 32 of the 33 telephone interviews. I transcribed the remaining 1 telephone interview and 1 in-person lobbyist interview on the spot. In all, my interviews produced 248 single-spaced pages (more than 120,000 words) of interview transcripts.