I'll Call You Back on My Mobile: a critique of the telephone interview with adolescent boys

Abstract

The telephone interview is commonly associated with mass surveying and political and marketing polling. It is generally eschewed as a serious research tool by many qualitative researchers and particularly by those working within an interpretivist paradigm and its use with some groups such as children is clearly problematic. However, there appear to be some circumstances in which the telephone is a highly appropriate tool for eliciting qualitative data that provide thick description. This article reports on longitudinal research in progress examining adolescent boys' career decision‐making using telephone interviewing. Juxtaposing the self as both a respondent and a researcher employing the telephone interview, the telephone interview as a research tool is critiqued. It is concluded that, rather than a concern with the relative merits of the telephone interview as compared to the face‐to‐face interview, there is a need to clarify the semantic tools to better reflect the nature of the relationship between respondent and researcher that lies at the heart of the paradigmatic difference between positivism and the interpretivist approaches.