Unexpected Moments in Qualitative Interviews: Potential and Possibilities When Navigating the Unexpected and Challenging in Interviewing

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Thursday 7:45 am - Gold 4
  In Roundtable Session: Method as Relational Disruption: Dialogue, Refusal, and Emergence in Qualitative Inquiry

Abstract

This paper explores the implications and possibilities of unexpected moments during qualitative interviews. While the advantages and limitations of qualitative interviews have been explored throughout scholarship, there is less attention on how unanticipated interactions and surprising responses from/by interviewers and interviewees might be advantageous rather than problematic to research processes and products. These unforeseen situations can serve as opportunities to revisit and revise study goals, encourage researcher reflection and reflexivity, and advance methodological approaches and concerns in qualitative interviewing. This paper briefly outlines applicable literature and then offers an example of an unexpected moment in an interview-based study. We conclude by emphasizing that not all unanticipated moments can be avoided, and that researchers may reframe these unexpected moments as opportunities.

Authors

• Stephanie Anne Shelton, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill

• Sun Gu, University of Alabama

• April M. Jones, University of Alabama