Interviews often yield data enabling scholars to develop hypotheses for future analysis. Interviews can also elicit material that supplements, confirms, validates, or invalidates data obtained elsewhere. Intensive interviews can also be carefully structured to function as main tools for research, for sometimes the origins of significant political decisions are known to only a few people. Interviews can function as interactive observations similar to those espoused by Charles Fenno. When studying political decisions made by a small group of decisionmakers, interviewing those individuals can be an important element in discerning how the political process works and how political decisions are made. 19 footnotes.