The doing of interviews is personal, transactional, and emotional. It is embodied work that can have implications for the researcher as well as the researched.
How does the researcher present him or herself? How is the interaction embodied? How are feelings presented and managed?
(Kong et al 2002: 250)
This comment succinctly captures the very essence of life story interviews. Life story research, according to Hesse-Biber and Leavy (2005), is an inquiry involving collecting personal stories from an individual over his or her life course. They add that life story is a specific method of interviewing which requires the researcher and respondents to invest lengthy periods together in a process of telling and listening to life stories.
The choice of an interviewee/participant (the term participant will be used in place of interviewee) will depend on the research use I as the researcher will have for the life story. For this study, the life story will serve the purpose of gaining insight into the life of an HIV-positive educator. It was extremely important for me to be honest with the participant. I had an obligation to explain the purpose of the interview, assure the participant that confidentiality will be respected at all times, and request permission to use a tape recorder during the interview. I had to comply with the wishes of the participant so that the participant would be at ease, and would feel that support is at hand, which is crucial for success in this process. The secret to establishing rapport is to be able to find a balance between guiding and following, and knowing when it is more important to let the pace and direction of the process be set by the participant. A very important quality in a life story interview is the ability to be humane, empathetic, sensitive and understanding, rather than formal and scientific.
The researcher prepared for an interview by getting to know the interview questions and the tape recorder respectively. The interview will be successful if the participant is
allowed time to prepare, as he/she might want to freshen his/her memory and get his/her thoughts organised.
During my interviews with my HIV-positive educators, I did a sample interview for approximately ten minutes, to let the participant get the feel of the interview and relax.
Photographs are good memory joggers, they help a participant recall the stories and events of their lives; favourite photographs help the participant look back and relive the memories and experiences that the photographs rekindle. While this data is being collected, it could also be analysed, Denzin and Lincoln (2000) argue that grounded theory consists of systematic inductive guidelines for collecting and analyzing data to build frameworks that explain the collected data.
The venue where the interview took place is also very important, as a familiar setting such as the participant’s own home was often most suitable: it offered security and comfort and gave the participant a sense of hosting and control. An individual’s choice of venue may also hold many emotions and memories which help steer the interview in the right direction. I requested my participants to choose the venue for our interviews.
My first participant chose her home; the second chose her office and the third and fourth chose the Botanical Gardens because they felt that their homes in the townships were not conducive for interviews. The Botanical Garden was chosen for the serene, beautiful and natural setting and away from the noise and prying neighbours. The fifth participant chose to be interviewed in my office.
During the actual recording of the interviews, I allowed my participants to hold the floor for as long as possible without interruption on a given topic. This allowed for free association of thoughts and therefore deeper responses. As the flow wound down, I asked questions that I had prepared to draw on other aspects. As the interviewer, I had to be a very good listener and guide so that I got all the details and also made sure that the interview did not lose focus. Listening well also meant having openness to the participant’s personal wisdom. Thus a bridge of trust is built between the interviewer and the participant.
Chapter Four Indrashnee Devi Appalsamy Methodology: Mapping out an Introspective Journey of educators living with HIV and AIDS
D.Ed Thesis: An insight into the experiences of educators living with HIV and AIDS in the context of schooling
and beyond 103
Interviewing an HIV-positive educator is very a sensitive issue and is heavily loaded with ethical constraints. I had to be very careful how I asked difficult, emotionally-laden questions. I was fortunate in that my participants appeared to trust me and felt that they could discuss sensitive issues with me. During some of my interview sessions, some of my participants would break down and weep. I had to play counselor, and be patient until we could resume the interview. Although time was a crucial factor, I had to be very careful not to push the participant further than she was ready to go with the topic, as respecting the boundaries the participant presented is very important.
The interviewer’s primary task is to help the participant create and convey his/her story, hence an informal approach, eliciting open-ended responses and in-depth comments is what is recommended. An informal approach helps draw out the participant’s personal feelings as well as deep reflective thoughts on life. Both the interviewer and the participant were involved in meaning-making work, and thus turned the interview into an active process. The type of questions in an interview are very important for the success of the interview, as a closed question with a yes/no response could lead to a dead end, while open ended, descriptive, structural and contrast questions encourage more thoughtful, developed answers. The majority of the questions I asked were open-ended, which gave the participant a chance to really 'speak her heart'.
An interview which involves sensitive issues, explains Hesse-Biber and Leavy (2005:
119), is generally referred to as an intensive or in-depth interview, and is most commonly used by qualitative researchers. They further explain that, within this method, it is assumed that people have particular and essential knowledge about the social world that is obtainable through verbal messages, and which is accessed through “active asking and listening”, such as the “lived experiences” of the participants in this study. Schoenburg et al (2005: 93 cited in Liamputtong 2007: 96) share a similar view. They believe that intensive interviews allow researchers to access complex knowledge from an insider
“without the preconceived biases inherent in using existing structured instruments that may contain items irrelevant to local populations”.
Intensive interviews, according to Johnson (2002: 103), usually connote a face-to-face and one-on-one interaction between a researcher and her participant. He adds that intensive interviews “seek to build the kind of intimacy that is common for mutual self disclosure”. An intimacy and sense of trust needs to be established before a participant can openly speak about his/her HIV status. On this issue, Hesse-Biber and Leavy (2005:
123) argue that in-depth interviews are valuable for “assessing subjugated voices and getting at subjugated knowledge”, hence their suitability for collecting stories from vulnerable and marginalized people. Johnson (2002) echoes these views, suggesting that the researchers who use in-depth interviewing techniques are searching for great depth of information and knowledge from the participants. He (2002) contends that the information often concerns “personal matters, such as an individual’s self, lived experience, values and decision, occupational ideology, cultural knowledge or perspective”. Life stories and personal narratives are increasingly being used in a wide range of disciplines and settings, and serve as an excellent means for understanding how people see their own experiences, their own lives and their interactions with others.