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The purpose of this paper is to explain and describe the use of presuppositional interviews as means of the researcher being able to expose their own, often unknown, assumptions about the phenomena of interest. Within this, we provide a philosophical and practical account for the development and use of a presuppositional interview from an insider perspective to expose insights which influence researcher reflexivity and directly impact on the research process. Author A's hermeneutic phenomenological study seeks to gain insights into the lived experience of children learning mathematics in outdoor environments, such as forests and woodland. The paper describes how the reflexive method of presuppositional interviewing helped him to understand more about his research position and find a clearing in his 'Being in the Wood.' A template for a presupposition interview schedule is presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Email is a born-digital form of communication, which can be studied in a number of ways using a variety of methods, as with any other socially and culturally mediated phenomenon. However, despite a great number of studies, the methodologies of the studies have attracted only little attention. In this paper, we wish to extend our knowledge regarding methodological challenges in studying emails. In particular, we will consider the methodological challenges, which any scholar will encounter when email in its digital form is transformed to and preserved as an object of study. Based on a review of existing studies' archiving strategies as well as our own study on email consultations in a healthcare setting, we will examine and discuss analytical and methodological consequences of different approaches to archiving and data management of emails. We demonstrate that the archived record is shaped by its context of creation. Since collection methods and archiving tools are not neutral, we call for a greater attentiveness to this part of the research process. We conclude by outlining implications for systematic empirical research into emails as a form of communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reflects on the value of diary methods in the context of a qualitative, longitudinal narrative inquiry exploring the higher education decision-making of further education students in England. Event-based diaries were used alongside interviews and focus groups over a 14-month period to gain in-depth insights into the reasons and influences informing their decision-making trajectories. I explore the challenges, successful approaches and advantages of employing diary methods with young people in this context. Challenges consisted of maintaining participant engagement, which was overcome by combining methods and incorporating a reactive co-participatory element. Yet, a number of advantages emerged from participants' engagement with diary keeping which enhanced the richness of the data; this inspired deeper reflections on decision-making and influences and provided a private space for participants to disclose personal difficulties that could not be obtained via interviews. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper points out some problematic aspects of qualitative research based on interviews and uses examples from mental health. The narrative approach is explored while inquiring if the reality of life here is forced into the formula of a chronological story. The hermeneutic approach, in general, is also examined, and we ask if the reality of life in this scenario becomes caught up in a web of interpretations. Inspired by ideas from Bakhtin and phenomenology, we argue for interview-based research that stays with unresolvedness and constantly question the web of interpretations and narratives that determine our experiences. This also chimes with certain dialogical practices in mental health in which tolerance of uncertainty is the guiding principle. Concludingly, we suggest that interview-based research could be a practice of 'un-resolving' in which researchers, together with the participants, look for cracks, contradictions, and complexities to prevent the qualitative fallacies of well-organized meanings and well-composed stories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of audio recordings has become a taken-for-granted approach to generating transcripts of in-depth interviewing and group discussions. In this paper we begin by describing circumstances where the use of a recorder is not, or may not be, possible, before sharing our comparative analysis of audio-recorded transcriptions and interview scripts made from notes taken during the interview (by experienced, well-trained interviewers). Our comparison shows that the data quality between audio-recorded transcripts and interview scripts written directly after the interview were comparable in the detail captured. The structures of the transcript and script were usually different because in the interview scripts, topics and ideas were grouped, rather than being in the more scattered order of the conversation in the transcripts. We suggest that in some circumstances not recording is the best approach, not 'second best'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Solicited diaries/journals are increasingly popular as an innovative qualitative method in the social sciences for better understanding people’s everyday lived experiences. In this article we create a framework for maintaining rigour while using such diaries. First, we systematically evaluate 43 research papers focusing on the method, drawing on Baxter and Eyles’ (1997) seminal evaluation of rigour in qualitative human geography research. We ascertain that significant improvements could be made to procedures for obtaining and analysing diary content. Second, we develop a framework to encourage rigour in diary research. We test our framework by evaluating research conducted by two of our authors who employed solicited diaries with street vendors in Vietnam. We propose that our analysis and framework can help social scientists improve the rigour of solicited diaries as a research method, and provide a model for enhancing rigour in other emerging qualitative approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This text discusses the relationship between ethnomethodology and ethnography and sketches what can be called an ethnomethodological ethnography. To do so, it shows that Garfinkel and his collaborators work ethnographically in order to adequately describe social phenomena and make their phenomenal field properties noticeable. To highlight the distinctive features of ethnomethodological ethnography, the text first discusses other ethnographic approaches. Differences between these approaches and the ethnomethodological ethnography become apparent through two argumentative steps: first, by discussing Garfinkel's reflections on ethnomethodology and ethnography, and second, by discussing actual ethnographies by Garfinkel's collaborators. The text concludes with a general reflection on the methodological principles of ethnomethodological ethnography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper details a narrative analysis strategy called critical resistance analysis (CRA). The aim of a CRA is to bring forward the kinds of subjects participants draw on when talking about themselves in narrative interviews and to make explicit how those subjects are resisted and desired. The CRA is distinguished from other narrative analyses of self in that it focuses on resistance in both its structural, anti-hegemonic and ‘poststructural’, self-refusal forms. The latter kind of resistance is what Hoy (2005) refers to as ‘critical’ resistance; the desire to undo oneself. A CRA looks for participant resistance in narrative and antenarrative (Boje, 2001) data. Antenarratives are incomplete stories that are often too fragmented to analyze using traditional narrative methods and can be seen as powerful examples of meaning-making in progress. A CRA newly brings an antenarrative understanding to the study of self in four analytic foci: deconstruction trace, discourse-argument, resistance and intersubjectivity analysis. Together these analytic foci reveal the subjects narrative participants seek (not) to be and afford a more complex understanding of how participants struggle with and against themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper describes the foundations, introduces a conceptual model, and discusses uses of the commonplace journey methodology, an innovative and mobile qualitative research and pedagogical approach based on existential hermeneutic phenomenology. Using this mobile methodology, the researcher placed a theoretical approach to human–environment relations from outside the scholarly field of outdoor recreation and education in dialogue with travellers’ lived experience, activities, and understandings during an extended canoe expedition. Examples from the data and findings are used to further describe the processes, benefits, and challenges of this phenomenological methodology. Finally, the author describes four analytical techniques used to anchor interpretation and written theoretical accounts in lived practice and physical context. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Social distancing and public safety measures enacted in response to COVID-19 created a surge in methodological "advice" for researchers facing disruption to fieldwork. Resources and publications frequently encouraged changes vis-a-vis digitally enhanced methods or employment of digital ethnography. For ethnographers, the establishment and maintenance of ethnographic relationships in pandemic contexts restricted to virtual interactions has not been thoroughly explored, leaving those trained in recruitment, rapport-building, and field engagement with fewer resources to navigate this integral topic. Here, we provide insights into how ethnographic relationships may be developed when there is limited access to the field and traditional relationship building is not possible. We argue that as ethnographic methods change and adapt, so too must perspectives on ethnographic relationship development. By closely examining ethnographic relationships confined to digital spaces in the context of the Tennessee tornado recovery amid the COVID-19 pandemic, this project sheds light on how to overcome this challenge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Qualitative research that focuses on social interaction and talk has been increasingly based, for good reason, on collections of audiovisual recordings in which 2D flat-screen video and mono/stereo audio are the dominant recording media. This article argues that the future of 'video' in video-based qualitative studies will move away from 'dumb' flat pixels in a 2D screen. Instead, volumetric performance capture and immersive performative replay rely on a procedural camera/spectator-independent representation of a dynamic real or virtual volumetric space over time. It affords analytical practices of re-enactment – shadowing or redoing modes of seeing/listening as an active spectation for 'another next first time' – which play on the tense relationships between live performance, observability, spectatorship and documentation. Three examples illustrate how naturally occurring social interaction and settings can be captured volumetrically and re-enacted immersively in virtual reality (VR) and what this means for data integrity, evidential adequacy and qualitative analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of diagrams to stimulate dialogue in research interviews, a technique known as graphic elicitation, has burgeoned since the year 2000. Reviews of the graphic elicitation literature have relied on the inconsistent terminology currently used to index visual methods, and have so far drawn only a partial picture of their use. Individual diagrams are seen as stand-alone tools, often linked to particular disciplines, rather than as images created from a toolbox of common elements which can be customized to suit a research study. There is a need to examine participant-led diagramming with a view to matching the common elements of diagrams with the objectives of a research project. This article aims to provide an overview of diagramming techniques used in qualitative data collection with individual participants, to relate the features of diagrams to the aspects of the social world they represent, and to suggest how to choose a technique to suit a research question. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on a photo-interview study of home reading practices with 35 children (ages 5–8) we examine how the ‘parent-effect’ influences research with young children. Not surprisingly, we find that parents influence reading practices and access to literacy resources. However, it is also clear that children’s reliance on parents affects data collection. Children who have more help from parents produce better photographs and a clearer narrative about home reading practices, but parents’ use of impression management influence the images that children produce and sometimes the photo-interview that follows. Rather than compromising children’s agency or the purity of the data, we argue that the parent-effect can be used an indicator of cultural norms about parenting; it can shed light into the dynamics of the parent-child relationships; and it can illuminate the degree to which children exert ‘child capital’ over home reading practices and the social construction of family life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When conducting qualitative research, the modern-day researcher has a variety of options available in order to collect data from participants. Although traditional face-to-face interviews remain prominent, innovative communication technologies, such as Skype, have facilitated new modes of communication. While potential research populations have become increasingly geographically dispersed, technological advancements and software have made communicating over large distances more feasible. Because of this, research is no longer limited to face-to-face accessible participants, as online methods have facilitated access to global research participants. This article presents the experiences of two PhD researchers using Skype to interview participants. While findings show that there are benefits and drawbacks to the utility of Skype, this article argues that synchronous online interviewing is a useful supplement or replacement to face-to-face interviews. Concluding comments acknowledge that more research is required to more comprehensively understand how technologies challenge the basic assumptions of the traditional face-to-face interview. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]