Interviews were conducted with three women survivors who had experienced sexual violence since the age of 60. All three had experienced rape. The women lived in three different geographical areas of England. One interview took place at the premises of the support agency through which the woman was currently accessing support. This interview was conducted by the support worker at the organisation and was audio recorded and then sent via email. The survivor had requested the support worker conduct the interview as she felt more comfortable with this. Moreover, the woman had mild learning difficulties and as the support worker had built a relationship with her, it was more appropriate for the support worker to conduct the interview. One interview was conducted at the survivor’s home; a flat within a residential living block. The third interview was conducted in a holiday caravan at a caravan park where the survivor and her friend were holidaying.
A loose interview schedule was designed (Appendix 3) and was developed using examples adopted in previous qualitative research with rape survivors (Campbell et al., 2011) and research involving older people (Wenger, 2002; Minocha et al., 2013). The schedule was intentionally broad with quite general open questions allowing for participants to shape the direction of the interview but had probes and discussion points to give the interview some direction and to ensure the relevant information was collected in order to address the research objectives. In-depth unstructured or semi- structured interviews ‘offer researchers access to people’s ideas, thoughts and memories in their own words, rather than the words of the researcher’ (Reinharz and Davidman, 1992, p.19).
Minocha et al. (2013) suggest that older women in particular may prefer an open conversation approach opposed to structured interview methods and this underpinned the schedule. With this in mind, and to build rapport, the interviews began with ‘small talk’; the first section asked the survivor about themselves, whether they had lived in the local area for a long time, whether they had children/grandchildren before moving on to ask them how they had come to be involved in the support service through which they had been contacted and invited to participate in the research.
The remaining interview questions were centred on their experiences, in particular the impacts of sexual violence on their life and challenges they faced reporting or accessing support services, and whether age affected these experiences. Koss (1993) suggests two key strategies for facilitating disclosure of violence in the research interview. First, giving the participant multiple opportunities to disclose her experiences throughout the interview, allowing the woman time to think about her experiences and to build up enough trust to make the disclosure. The second strategy is using specific questions about behaviours rather than asking general, subjective questions such as ‘have you ever been abused?’. The former approach was taken, asking quite broad questions about how the woman had come into contact with the support service she had been recruited through, how long she had been engaging with the counsellor or support practitioner and so on, until the woman felt comfortable providing detail about the rape. No questions asking the woman to directly discuss the rape were asked.
Whilst there are some specific considerations in conducting research with older women, it is important not to homogenise older women and assume they will have difficulties that younger people would not. As others have pointed out, it is important that those who interview older women
try not to become preoccupied with age; they should not assume that everything under consideration is age related (Duffy, 1988). Some of the specific methodological considerations relevant to this study are discussed in 3.4.5.
All three survivors were provided with an information sheet about the study and a consent form which they signed. Two of the survivors were spoken to about the research by telephone prior to the interviews and the survivor who was interviewed by her support worker was provided with information about the study through discussions with the support worker prior to the interview. The purpose of the study was explained at the beginning of the interview and survivors were invited to ask questions or stop the interview for a break at any time during the interview. They were also informed that they could withdraw from the study at any point. Participants chose a pseudonym and any identifying information about them or third parties were removed from the transcripts.
Interviews lasted between an hour and three hours, which was led and ultimately determined by participants who were be given as much time as they wished to talk about their experiences and perspectives (Campbell et al., 2011). One of the key concerns of feminist research is the power relationship between the researcher and the researched, often referred to as a ‘hierarchy’ in qualitative interviews. Feminists in sociology initiated the discussion on power relationships in women interviewing women in the 1980s and called for a non-hierarchal relationship (Tang, 2002). Oakley (1988) was one of the pioneers in encouraging feminist researchers to reduce the hierarchy by giving more control to participants. For Oakley and others (Stanley and Wise, 1990; Maynard, 1994) this is important to ensure participants are not simply ‘used’ for the research purposes and that participating in research empowers participants (DeVault and Gross, 2007; Hollway and Jefferson, 2008).
With this is mind, I willingly answered questions asked by participants about my own life and experiences, and offered information about myself throughout the interview. Prior to interviews commencing with survivors, I built rapport with general chit-chat and shared information about myself. For example, one participant noted my accent was not local and asked about where I was from. These initial conversations helped to establish the open dialogue that continued through the interviews.