Going back: ‘Stalking’, talking and researcher responsibilities in qualitative longitudinal research

Abstract

This paper explores the process of going back in qualitative longitudinal research (QLR) to gather later accounts of unfolding personal experiences. The design of interview-based QLR is usually premised on collecting data, over-time, around an unfolding experience or event. This design facilitates the establishment of an on-going research relationship and ‘rapport’ and the accessing of fluid and time-sensitive accounts of individual experiences, leading to more nuanced understandings of temporal subjectivities. However in practice maintaining a sample in QL research, which may span a number of years, can be challenging and the process of going back, complicated. This paper reflects on issues and responsibilities which can arise when researchers try to access and go back to participants, especially where experiences once optimistically narrated and future-oriented have unfolded in unplanned and personally unwelcome ways. Using researcher experiences and the data from later phases of two UK based QLR studies on transition to first-time motherhood and first-time fatherhood, the practical steps of maintaining contact, reconnecting with participants and going back are documented. How does the passage of time and changes in participant’s lives alter research relationships, interpretations of data and researcher responsibilities?

Keywords:

• QLR
• going back
• time
• narrative
• motherhood
• fatherhood

Acknowledgements

With thanks to the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper. Thanks also to the participants in the studies who have shared their time and experiences with me.

Notes

1. Sample details are described elsewhere in detail. See for example Miller (2005).

2. Sample details for this study are reported in detail elsewhere (See Miller, 2010).

3. After the first interview and at the start of each subsequent interview, I would begin by talking about what they the participant had said in their last interview. For example, ‘when we last met you said …, you were thinking about …, you said you were concerned about’, etc. … Clearly this approach prompts a particular type of reflection (see Miller, 2010, chapter 7).

4. All names used to refer to participants are pseudonyms.

5. I remain hopeful a future interview will take place.

6. I was interested that although the invitation email had talked about an interview, this participant used the word ‘survey’ in her response, suggesting she may not have recalled the details of the earlier phase and format of the study. I was also aware from another participant in this study that this participant had divorced and remarried since the original study, which also may have been a reason for her reluctance to be interviewed again – although this was not the case for others whose lives had changed in similar ways.

7. What has become clear in going back in both studies is the number of participants who are no longer married or in the partnership they were during the first phase of interviews.

8. Gatekeepers were used in the original phase of the Motherhood study to approach women they knew who met the study criteria and ask them if they would be interested in participating in the study. If they expressed an interest they were given my contact details and asked to contact me.

9. It is interesting to ask what constitutes ‘the data’ in this technologically rich age when even in research which does not have a longitudinal component, various contacts by email and mobile phone may have been made in advance of and following an interview. What exactly is ‘the data’ in these circumstances, the recorded interview alone? And how/will the other interactions around the interview have influenced how it is conducted and subsequently analysed?

10. See Miller (2005) Chapter 1 ‘A storied human life: a narrative approach’ and Chapter 7 ‘Conclusions and reflections: making sense of motherhood’.