Exploring commonality and difference in in-depth interviewing: a case-study of researching British Asian women

This paper draws on the experience of researching British South Asian women's lives in London as a female British Asian researcher to explore how cultural commonality and difference is shaped by agency and interaction in the research process. It examines these issues through a discussion of how the shared cultural identity of the researcher and the interviewees emerged as both a point of commonality and difference in the research process; with the researcher being ;positioned' in terms of both as a result of the interviewees' agency in interpreting their cultural commonality. In particular, issues of 'Indianness' and religion emerged as points on which interviewees exercised agency and interpreted the researcher's cultural identity. This was the basis on which they claimed commonality or difference and this assessment consequently impacted on their interaction with the researcher. The article suggests that more attention needs to be given to how assumptions made by interviewees regarding the cultural identity of the researcher through their agency and interaction in the research process shapes interview dynamics.     

Staying safe: strategies for qualitative child abuse researchers

Undertaking interview‐based research with victim/survivors of child abuse can be difficult and challenging for researchers. Much has been written about the impact of research on participants, but researcher effects are less explored. This paper reviews the literature on sensitive interview‐based research and child abuse research. The theoretical underpinnings of researcher trauma are outlined and challenges identified and related to child abuse research using researcher reflections from the authors' interview‐based research with children who have been abused and young mothers who were sexually abused in childhood. Strategies and recommendations are developed to minimise child abuse researcher trauma. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Effect of Interviewer Experience on Interview Pace and Interviewer Attitudes

Traditional statistical analyses of interviewer effects on surveydata do not examine whether these effects change over a fieldperiod. However, the nature of the survey interview is dynamic.Interviewers’ behaviors and perceptions may evolve asthey gain experience, thus potentially affecting data quality.This paper looks at how interview length and interviewer evaluationsof respondents change over interviewers’ workloads. Multilevelmodels with random interviewer effects are used to account forthe clustering of cases within interviewers and individual interviewercharacteristics in the 1984, 1988, and 2000 National ElectionStudies. The 1984 and 1988 NES released sample in four replicates,minimizing the confound between order in an interviewers’workload and sample composition. We find that over the courseof the studies, both measures change significantly. Interviewerprior survey experience also was significantly negatively relatedto the length of the interview. These findings have implicationsfor interviewer training prior to and during studies, as wellas suggesting future research to reveal why these behaviorsand perceptions change.     

Reflexivity and ethical research practice while interviewing on sexual topics

Reflexivity is a multimodal research feature that relies on the researcher’s subjectivity and self-awareness. This paper discusses uses of reflexivity when carrying out qualitative in-depth interviews on sexual topics. Through extracts of a challenging interview, where the challenge comes in the form of sexualised provocation from one man to another, this paper considers the benefits of using reflexivity to address emerging complexities in the interview process. The discussion focuses on ethical research practice through the lens of three forms of reflexivity: (1) reviewing the values that underpin a research project, with emphasis on the tension between rationality and intuition; (2) emotional self-awareness and self-care; and (3) recognition of the power dynamics in the researcher-participant relationship. Reflexivity promotes an intuition-informed decision-making process as a means to achieve ethical practice and conduct interviews with sensitivity and proficiency.     

Child and Interviewer Race in Forensic Interviewing

The purpose of this study was to examine the potential effect of child race and interviewer race on forensic interviewing outcomes. The results of the regression analysis indicated that child race and interviewer race had a significant effect on interview outcome category (no findings, inconclusive, or findings consistent with sexual abuse). Furthermore, the results indicate that the interaction of child and interviewer race had predictive value for rates of findings consistent with sexual abuse but not in the direction predicted. Cross-race dyads had significantly higher rates of interview outcomes consistent with sexual abuse. These findings suggest that more research into the effect of race on disclosure of child sexual abuse is needed.     

Inside out: some notes on carrying out feminist research in cross-cultural interviews with South Asian women immigration applicants

This article considers a number of important issues raised in the growing literature with regard to the place of ethnicity in feminist research methodology and the woman-to-woman interview. Drawing on examples from the author's experiences of conducting interviews with South Asian women immigration applicants, the article firstly illustrates that because of a different ethnicity, a white feminist researcher is likely to be regarded as an outsider by the minority-ethnic interviewees, regardless of the sharing of gender. Secondly, using the ideas of 'personal' and 'structural' power the article discusses how the researcher's outsider status complicates the power relations between the interviewer and the participants.     

The Journey Around My PhD: Pitfalls,Insights and Diamonds

Embarking on postgraduate research involves making a transition from practitioner to researcher. While there is a well established body of knowledge to address research methodology, it is presented in a fashion that suggests the research process is straightforward and linear and fails to offer insights into the ways postgraduate students construct their researcher identities. This paper will draw on the authors' experiences as PhD students and highlight what was learned about the research process from involvement in a research project. The paper will highlight some of the challenges of undertaking postgraduate research as well as some of the insights gained.     

TWO SURVIVOR CASES: THERAPEUTIC EFFECT AS SIDE PRODUCT OF THE BIOGRAPHICAL NARRATIVE INTERVIEW

This paper draws a parallel between the biographical narrative life‐story interview technique and psychoanalytic therapy. It points out that this type of interview may, in some cases, assist with the re‐construction of a new narrative identity of the interviewee. Where there is practically no intervention by the interviewer it can do this just by providing the interviewee with a situation where there is someone who does not want anything other than to listen to her life narrative. Through this process there can be a therapeutic effect which is more than a joyful by‐product, which the interviewees not only unconsciously experience, but for which they overtly express their gratitude.

The paper features the case of such a woman, who was sterilised in Auschwitz. It also tells the story of a man where the interviewer experienced incredibly strong resistance and projective identification throughout the interview. This resulted in almost insoluble guilt in the interviewer. The paper tries to interpret the story of the interviewee, who is also a Shoah survivor, and is unable to make some things in his life story explicit. The interpretation suggests that he might have killed some Arrow Cross officers in order to take their uniforms to help others. He has lived for the last 60 years with feelings of insoluble guilt. The question is raised whether in this case the interview had a similar therapeutic effect to the first case or not.     

INTERVIEW MODE EFFECTS IN SURVEYS OF DRUG AND ALCOHOL USE: A FIELD EXPERIMENT

This research explores the impact of interview mode on respondents'willingness to reveal illicit or undesirable behavior and mechanismsby which interview mode influences response tendencies. A fieldexperiment was designed to control mode effects due to samplingand screening so that the impact of response anonymity (throughuse of self-administered questionnaires ([SAQs]) and socialdistance in the interviewer-respondent relationship (telephonevs. personal communication) could be tested. Respondents aged18–45 were randomly as-signed to interview mode: telephone,face-to-face, or self-administered. Admission of illicit druguse and alcohol use was most likely in the personal mode withSAQs, slightly less likely in personal mode without SAQs, andleast likely in the telephone mode. The magnitude of the modedifferentials was larger for blacks than for whites, and largeramong respondents who are more mistrustful of others. Resultssupport the notion that response effects due to mode of interviewderive, at least in part, from interview mode differences inability to assuage respondents' confidentiality concerns. Greatersocial distance between interviewer and respondent in the telephoneinterview, compared with face-to-face communication, makes itmore difficult for the researcher to make convincing confidentialityguarantees. The response anonymity provided by SAQs also appearsto increase respondents' willingness to reveal sensitive behavior,especially among racial/ethnic minorities.     

Class matters: interviewing across social class boundaries

In this paper, we explore the methodological implications of conducting qualitative interviews when researchers and participants come from different social classes. Singling out class on its own terms, rather than considering it as an auxiliary structural factor, we examine the unique challenges that arise during cross-class interviews. Such challenges, we contend, require researcher reflexivity about how researcher–participant interactions unfold and the ways in which knowledge is generated during the interview process. In our discussion, we draw on Bourdieu’s cultural view of social class to argue that cross-class dynamics between the researcher and the participant – along with the normalization of middle-class values often inherent in interview questions – create potential obstacles to establishing rapport and facilitating fertile conversation. We use examples from our own field research in a U.S. fast-food chain to illustrate these barriers. We also provide practical recommendations to researchers regarding how they can minimize class-based biases, reduce class saliency, and gain awareness of their own class positions during cross-class interviews.     

Post‐socialist language ideologies in action: Linking interview context and language ideology through stance

Changes associated with the post‐socialist period in Albania have complicated the legacy of language ideologies grounded in Ottoman‐era and socialist‐era politics. In this article, I analyze two metalinguistic interviews with young adults in the Albanian capital of Tirana in order to investigate the status of standardizing and anti‐standardizing language ideologies while also raising a methodological question regarding interview context and researcher role as persistent issues in sociolinguistic research. As acts of evaluation, language ideologies can be linked to interactional positionings and alignments via stance, which is significant for understanding aspects of identity and context in the interview. I argue that this framework provides a better understanding of interview dynamics than previous style shifting approaches, as any explanation of differences in interview interactions must simultaneously consider macro‐level influences of ideology and micro‐level interactional developments.     

Constructing ethnicity in interaction

In the present study, I continue ongoing efforts to incorporate social constructionist viewpoints into sociolinguistics by demonstrating how two interlocutors use linguistic resources to project and shape ethnic (and other facets of) identity in unfolding talk. The interaction is a sociolinguistic interview from a large‐scale sociolinguistic study of a rural tri‐ethnic community in the southeastern U.S. I examine a range of features and types of features and in addition use both quantitative and qualitative methods. Further, I examine the linguistic usages of both the researcher (the interviewer) and the research subject. The analysis confirms that identity is dynamic and multifaceted and is very much a product of ongoing talk, although pre‐existing linguistic and social structures also come into play. In addition, the analysis demonstrates that identity is dialogic as well as dynamic and that researchers play a large role in shaping the linguistic usages of those they study.     

Where are the children? Exploring the boundaries between text and context in the study of place and space in four different countries

In this article, we demonstrate how the cultural conceptions of a team of five researchers from different cultural and national backgrounds can be used as a source of knowledge during a collective, self‐reflexive analytical process. While collectively analysing texts describing daily life produced by first‐grade children and their parents in China, Norway, South Africa and the United States, the research team engaged in a collectively negotiated analytical process, which we refer to as an ‘analytic negotiating method’. The strength of this process rests on the ability to examine critically the boundaries between the researcher's contextual conceptions and conceptions derived from the texts. Engaging in this kind of negotiated analytical process contributes to scholarship by working towards a level of self‐reflexivity that makes the link between empirical data and researcher interpretation more transparent and produces a sensitivity to context that allows insights into the conceptions of childhood that operate cross‐culturally.     

Beyond interviewer effects in the standardized measurement of ego-centric networks

The effects which interviewers exert on the collection of ego-centric networks have recently come into the focus of methodological considerations. Studies consistently show that the size of networks varies depending on the interviewer. We would like to expand on this research strand by pointing to different aspects which have so far gone unremarked in the discussion. First, size is mainly analysed as a network measure which is influenced during data collection, while other common measures such as network density or composition have not received sufficient consideration. Second, large-scale surveys using face-to-face interviews usually allocate interviewers to a single sampling point. Differences between sampling points (locality effects) are attributed to interviewer effects. Hence, we disentangle the effects of the locality and interviewer. Third, the discussion on interviewer effects often follows an “actor-oriented” consideration of how data collection situations are structured by interviewers. Expanding this approach from a relational perspective, we consider the relationship between the interviewers and respondents and whether this relationship influences the collection of network data. To test our hypotheses about the influence of interviewers, the locality and the interviewer-respondent relationship on different network measures, we use data from the 2010 German General Social Survey (n = 2827 respondents, n = 220 interviewers). The multilevel analyses show that the relationship between the interviewer and the respondent is not very relevant. Furthermore, the analyses show that interviewers have an influence on the network size but not on measures of their composition. However, evidence on the prevalence of locality or interviewer effects is mixed. Finally, homophilous interviewer-respondent relationships have very little effect on network characteristics. We find evidence of training and fatigue effects on network size. However, much of the variation in network size caused by the interviewer still remains unexplained. We draw conclusions on how to organize interview situations in surveys.     

Producing Evaluative Knowledge: The Interactional Bases of Social Science Findings*

This paper examines the interactional underpinnings of social scientific research. Based on a detailed examination of a two-hour research interview, it describes aspects of the conversational practices through which social scientific knowledge is generated. Past critiques of interview research have been somewhat unilateral in their focus, typically examining how researchers impose understandings on their subjects' reports. This paper moves beyond the unilateral focus to describe how researcher and subjects interact to mutually develop procedures for doing the actual research and collaboratively assemble their product. The analysis treats evaluative knowledge as a locally managed, interactional achievement. It stresses the practical, in situ character of how knowledge is co-produced.     

The research pendulum: multiple roles and responsibilities as a researcher

Qualitative research on sexual identities has highlighted the use of oral narratives to understand the lives of lesbians and gay men. Feminist ethnographers, sociologists and queer theorists have further posed methodological inquiries to the issues of insider/outsider, the possibilities of an erotic subject and the matter of representation. Using interview data with Hong Kong lesbians, this paper discusses a researcher's multiple positionalities and its effects on both the researched and the researcher. Being self-reflexive requires a researcher to test her or his own boundaries and to take up social responsibilities as the interpreter of texts. This paper calls for further dialogue between a researcher's subject positions, research processes and the final presentation of findings. doi:10.1300/J155v10n03_02.     

The Collaboration as Empowerment Claim: The Case of Visual Social Research

This article uses the case of visually based collaborative social science research to explore the problem of inequality between researchers and research subjects in social science research. This dilemma is ever present for social scientists researching topics where the research subject represents a group experiencing social exclusion. The paper uses the claim of those social scientists that argue that collaboration between researchers and research subjects can diminish the inequality problem by empowering research subjects. Through this interrogation of the “collaboration as empowerment claim,” as an ideal type construction the paper argues that (i) it pays insufficient attention to the knowledge frameworks and incentive structures around which research projects are carried out and disseminated, (ii) it does not interrogate the fact that the claim of empowerment as outcome is made by those in the researcher role, and (iii) it does not explicitly document the research subject's own assessment of a collaboration/empowerment link. The paper moves beyond the insights drawn from the visual case to point to their implications for other areas in which collaboration research is claimed as a means to empower research subjects and by implication to diminish researcher/research subject inequalities.