Data collection issues

I've been conducting some interviews for my PhD. I'm hoping to interview each of my particiants three times, so that the first interview is very open and exploratory, and subsequent interviews are more reflective (hermeneutic), even with jointly constructed reflection. That feels so much more of a challenge, and is something I'm struggling to do well. I'm taking this approach from the work of van Manen, whose work has been influential in helping me to visualise how the data collection will work. I also keep returning to Cohen, Kahn and Steeves 'Hermeneutic Phenomenological Research: A Practical Guide for Nurse Resarchers', which offers very good practical advice for carrying out interviews to meet different research needs. They talk about a different questioning approach according to whether you are asking about retrospective experiences or prospective (or ongoing) experiences. I feel I am doing both in my study, which can be a source of confusion for me when justifying my interview techniques.

One thing that is clear is that any time I have tried to experiment with questioning that is at all derived from hunches, say, from the last thing I read (I'll just throw it in and see what happens), it has really killed the flow of the interview and, I think, done some damage to the researcher-participant relationship. I think this is to do with asking a question that the participant cannot answer. It is a good lesson to learn early on. I must keep on telling myself that the best interview data is that which is meaningful and important to the participant. The interpretation and sense-making will be all the richer when participants are free to talk about their experiences on their own terms.

Another thing that I have stumbled over is how to get real narrative and 'anecdote' if participants have a tendency to talk in more abstract ways: 'what I tend to do is this, and sometimes that happens, and it makes me feel....' These are descriptive accounts in terms of general behaviour, but it calls for drilling down for examples. Sometimes, I don't know when to stop asking for examples, and I did push too hard on one occasion. If people are talking energetically, it can be difficult to keep track mentally of what has been illustrated in passing, and calling for further illustration might make it look as though you haven't been listening. I sometimes think I'm trying too hard.

Between the first and second/third interview, I'm asking participants to keep an event diary - just three events that occur in relation to being a mentor. I'm asking for a description of the event and a score on well-being scale. I hope that this will maintain a focus on feelings that can be reflected on in a subsequent interview. I'm also trying out rich pictures as a way of facilitating emotional expression (awareness and articulation).

Bracketing and interviewing

I've gone back to Linda Finlay's writing to try to unravel my ideas about bracketing and what exactly phenomenological methods can tell us. Whereas Schutz seemed to be saying that ontological judgements about the nature and essence of of experiences can be bracketed and suspended leaving the researcher free to examine the lifeworld in an uncontaminated way, Finlay reminds you that there is no question of setting our preconceptions aside. Moreover, if we make ourselves more transparent as researchers we can begin to disentangle the fused horizons (using Gadamer's language) between our own experiences and those of our participants. The key to all of this seems to be that the researcher should be continually and reflexively aware of how s/he is responding to the data and the literature and their own 'knowledge' of the phenomenon.

Strategies to do this successfully must include writing up one's understanding so far of theoretical concepts that influence one's thinking, relating this to the phenomenon being studied, and being very cautious (and reflexive) about its influence in the data gathering process. I think my priority in doing the interviews is to be led by the accounts being offered up and only to probe the theoretical concepts I have been studying if they appear in the conversations anyway. These concepts are, however, broadly based, in the sense that I'm not making any particular assumptions about the kind of emotions people will express - only that I'm interested in getting people to talk about their 'emotion experience' in the life world of being a mentor. My interpretivist assumption is that emotions are not material but are constructed, or perhaps negotiated, by people during interactions with others. Emotion is mediated to a large extent by language and therefore may be constructed in the interviews as well as in other aspects of the lifeworld. Perhaps the key is to focus on probing devices rather than have a head full of concepts. I feel myself going round in circles.

Concepts for interviewing

What's challenging me at the moment is pitching the interviews right. As I wait for official confirmation from the R&D departments of the organisations in which I am recruiting, I'm refining my interviewing technique by practising on colleagues and reflecting on what worked well and what didn't. I've tried a number of different ways of framing interview guides, topic guides and am moving towards the idea of a concept guide. Although the idea of phenomenological interviews is to allow the participant to lead the way through a conversation, it is probably also true that going into an interview situation naively could result in data that is less useful than if the researcher was able to steer the participant through the conversation in a way that would enrich the data. I'm thinking here of getting myself into a position where I am able to probe emotional states, emotional labour, identity talk, motivation, job satisfaction and so on. Without being conversant in aspects of these concepts that I suspect to be applicable to the mentor experience, I'm not sure whether I might miss opportunities to pick up on these in conversation.

Using phenomenology

I've decided to use hermeneutic phenomenology for my PhD research in the field of pre-registration education in nursing. It would be useful to be in touch with other researchers using the same or similar methodology