Bracketing interviews: addressing methodological challenges in qualitative interviewing in bereavement and palliative care

Abstract

A major challenge for researchers using qualitative methods is to explore how their assumptions and experiences may be influencing the construction of knowledge. In a study of UK childhood bereavement services, “bracketing interviews” were used to explore the impact of the researcher's personal and professional experiences during data collection and analysis. Bracketing interviews provide an important research-focussed relationship that adapts the skills of clinical supervision in the context of research. While other forms of activity offer opportunities for reflection, the presence of a skilled “bracketer” contributed to the production of knowledge by increasing objectivity and amplifying the researcher's own reflexive capacity. Without entering the researcher's material therapeutically, bracketing interviews enabled the researcher to hold the tension of the dialectic process of investigating the nature of the participants' experience, at the same time as holding her own experience. It enabled the researcher's experience to be used in the service of the research, and contributed directly to the development of a theory about the emotional work of UK childhood bereavement services. Bracketing interviews require an experienced bracketer who understands the nature of a supervisory relationship that differs from both academic and personal supervision, and who also has an understanding of the demands of research.