The Sociological Confessional: A Reflexive Process in the Transformation From Face-To-Face to Online Interview

Abstract

This aim of the article is to reflect on a new quality in the researcher-participant relationship caused by the transformation from a face-to-face to an online interview (on the Zoom platform during two first waves of the COVID-19 pandemic). It reports methodological learnings from autoethnography. The concept of an interaction order (Goffman) provides a theoretical lens through which the researcher-participant encounter is being analysed. The study is based on the reflections referring to 31 online in-depth interviews with women (mothers in an ‘empty nest’) conducted by a team of five female researchers. Online research was depicted in literature as an option of a second choice for conducting qualitative studies before 2020 and an online methodology as one in need to be tested. In order to provide the context of our methodological learnings, we will present an overview of our study. Our study consisted of 31 online in-depth interviews with women (mothers in an ‘empty nest’) and was conducted by a team of five female researchers. After having reflected on our experience from the field, called ‘the sociological confessional’, we claim that online interviews have potential to be the option of the first choice to conduct in-depth interviews. We do not see the lack of immediate presence in remote interviews as a setback. On the contrary, we believe that thanks to introducing practices of care about the participant, the revised methodology not only meets the criteria of the qualitative IDI standards, but diminishes emotion work ( Hochschild, 1983 ) on the part of the researcher as well. We find our ‘report from the field’ unique: (1) our study was not planned to be conducted online and (2) it has succeeded in gathering equivalent data during the first stage of the pandemic.