Interview context

A topic in research methodology

In some studies the researcher may be constrained in where interviews need to take place. However, when given a choice there are factors to consider.

This may include ethical and child-protection issues

• does the participant need to be sure that no one (e.g. a teacher, another pupil) can overhear, or perhaps even know they are bring interviewed?
• is it best for the interview to take place somewhere where the researcher and participant are not out of public sight?

Naturalistic settings

Interviewing participants in their own familiar surrounding, without artificially manipulating conditions.
• The participant may be more at ease.
• Being in situ may aid recall (see the Adey quote below)
• This may avoid undue perceptions of a power imbalance between researcher and researched (‘subject!)

Clinical settings

Setting up an artificial (like a laboratory or clinic) where the researcher has control over the conditions.

• May be useful to keep a participant isolated form others during the interview.
• The participant may be removed form potential distractions.
• Recording conditions may be managed (e.g. away from background noise)

Choices made here will often reflect paradigmatic assumptions underpinning the chosen methodology: the decisions made in an experiment are likely to be different to those undertaken in an ethnographic study.

The importance of context

It is worth giving consideration to a choice of interview context, when the researcher has some control over this:

"There is a currently powerful body of opinion in education which maintains that the context in which a learning activity is set is so important that it completely over-rides any effect of either the logical structure of the task or the particular general ability of individuals. 'Context' here is given a broad interpretation. It includes not just the particular subject matter that is used to set a problem but the whole milieu in which the problem is set"

Adey, 1997: 51-52

Source cited:

• Adey, P. (1997). It all depends on the context, doesn't it?: Searching for general, educable dragons. Studies in Science Education, 29, 45-92.