U NIDAD 3 R EPRODUCCIÓN

Selecting an interview site can be a complicated decision, especially when the content of the interviews may be of a sensitive nature. There are clearly pragmatic considerations of the interview location in research, Elwood and Martin (2000) argue that most texts offering researchers advice around interviews encourage researchers to find convenient, quiet, easy to locate and private interview sites. The texts,

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however, fail to offer guidance upon the social and political dynamics of the interview locations.

As Elwood and Martin (2000, p.649) argue, the interview site has a social and cultural context, the ‘interview site itself embodies and constitutes multiple scales of spatial relations and meaning, which construct the power and positionality of participants in relation to the people, places and interactions discussed in the interview’. There are therefore ethical considerations of the interview location as research aims to be conducted within ‘neutral’ locations. Some interviewees may be reluctant to conduct an interview in a public place for example where they are at risk of speaking within ear shot of others. There therefore needs to be a consciousness on behalf of both the interviewer and respondent about confidentiality in the research site, as different power and spatial relations may alter the contribution that participants make to the research.

Choosing a location for interview is not just a matter of convenience and comfort (Herzog, 2005), it provides a space for the constitution of power relations (Elwood and Martin, 2000). Different spaces will therefore leave participants in different positions in regards to the power that they hold within the research process. Five of the interviews for this study were performed in coffee shops, the location of all interviews was left for the participant to decide, I always offered to meet them at whatever location was most convenient for them given that most of the mothers had small children who would be present. The selections of these spaces also may reveal the cultural importance of these spaces to the neighbourhood and the social geographies of the place (Elwood and Martin, 2000). By handing the choice of where to locate the interview to the women interviewed aligned with the consideration that this left the participants more empowered. However as Herzog (2005, p.29) purports ‘the meaning of interview location does not, however, rest in the interviewees alone, rather, it is part of symbolic dialogue with interviewers, who themselves bring their own understandings of place to the interview’.

Giving participants a choice of interview location is conductive to improving the atmosphere for the research process and the sharing of personal information (Longhurst, 1996). The home is therefore a setting that provides intimacy, and enables emotional, sensitive or private issues to be dealt with (Herzog, 2005). Most

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of the women who I interviewed for this project chose to be interviewed at home. I think this is partly influenced by the reality that most had small children, or babies, who were often with them, which would influence their travel arrangements, especially in Edinburgh where city centre residents may not have had access to their own car, and also in Inverness where there is perhaps not reliable and regular public transport available. This therefore solved the issue of childcare and meant that they could fit the interview around feeds or sleeps.

My experience during the interviews was similar to that of Herzog (2005, p.37) who found that ‘the children were present in the home and wandered in and out during the interview’. This sometimes added a feeling of chaos to those interviews that were conducted within the home. In many of the interviews, children were present or were in other rooms in the family house. At times this meant that interviews had to be paused whilst nappies were changed or babies were breast-fed. It is questionable if this prevented women from reaching a true ‘gestalt’ as they always had to be keeping an eye on the baby. Also in a quarter of the interviews some children were keen on playing with the tape recorder during the interview or the participant’s husband, when present, interrupted the interview at times. The gestalt ‘is not a consciously constructed life narrative, nor is it an understanding of the place and use of narratives in social practice. Instead, it is a psychosocial subject, which is not consciously authored and cannot be articulated in conventional narrative form’ (Mason, 2002, p.233). The gestalt as defined by Hollway (2000, p.34) is ‘a whole which is more than the sum of its parts, an order or hidden agenda informing each person’s life’, therefore the gestalt gives shape of the story (Jones, 2004).

The interviewees were asked to choose where they would like to be interviewed and this resulted in the majority of interviews being conducted in a home setting (their own) or a setting which was familiar to them. By allowing the participant to set the location of the interview site, this helped to negate power relations between the interviewer and the participants by helping to remove a position of researcher as ‘expert’. It also gave the women within the study comfort and convenience and also enables a stronger relationship to build between the researcher and participant. Three interviews were also conducted over the phone as this was most convenient. The use of telephone interviews was not as favourable to face-to-face interviewing as the non-verbal communication was lost, but the use of BNIM still allows for

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biographical discussions and reflexivity and reflection by participants. The telephone interviews were only carried out due to the limited time frame of this research yet Jovchelovitch and Bauer (2000) argue that the method of narrative interview which may only rarely be accomplished. Frey (1983) argues that there is often a taken-for- granted assumption that participants will be reluctant to open-up to the researcher over the telephone or will resent the intrusion into the private spaces of the home. However I felt that participants were open with me in both interview scenarios. The time limitations and other issues in working away from home meant that these three were interviewed by telephone. This was particularly apparent in Inverness, when women were not always available to be interviewed as they lived in very rural areas, with poor public transport systems. The limitations of phone interviews in comparison to face-to-face interviews are well documented as traditionally the telephone has not been seen as suited to qualitative interviewing. The method has a lack of rapport or visual cues (Rubin and Rubin, 2005, Gilham, 2005, Zelner et al., 2012) and is more difficult with the BNIM approach as body language could not be read. However as Chapple (1999) and Irvine et al. (2013) argue telephone interviews offer greater anonymity around sensitive topics. People are used to communicate by telephone (Irvine et al., 2013), and Holt (2010) used telephone interviews for narrative data collection as a preferred alternative to face-to-face interviews. Telephone interviewing also was a practical option geographically and lead to the greater availability of participants. For example, I was able to call once the children had been put to bed at a time most convenient for the participant. This created no embarrassment at having to rearrange face to face interviews, and meant that I caused minimal interruption to the chaotic and busy lives of the women interviewed. As argued by Walkerdine (1990) the use of telephone may also reduce the intensity of the ‘surveillant other’ by not invading the participants home.

Telephone interviews inevitably led to women breaking their narratives from time to time to check ‘I was still there’ and I had to make more utterances to show I was in fact still listening. This made the second sub-session slightly more difficult in cases where it was difficult to ask for more details and led to the negotiation of a different relationship with participants, than those who were interviewed face to face (Wengraf, 2001). These interviews were also recorded with the participant’s permission and transcribed. Women had information and consent forms from the

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initial contact and extras were sent to ensure that they retained a signed copy for future reference.