communication. Weiss’s (1994) points on helping the interviewees develop information on internal events contributed to my success in this mission. Asking about the feelings in certain situations, like “And how do you feel when you video chat them?” allowed me to gain entry to this dimension. Thus, applying these ideas not only strengthened the quality of the responses but also developed my interviewing style. Furthermore, during my third and fourth interviews, I paid particular attention to wait for full responses and to avoid self-reporting as much as possible. While preparing for these interviews, I memorized the most relevant questions. This strategy enabled me to concentrate more on the interviewee during the interview and be more flexible on the questions.
Even though the development of the second-round interviews is notable, I acknowledged further skills to improve as a researcher. To help capture the emerging themes earlier, next time I should write down my impression right after the interview – what surprised me, what made me worried or upset, what were the circumstances. Luker (2008) argues that this technique considerably shapes the research and facilitates the analytical procedure.
Reflecting on a remarkable issue concerning insider knowledge, I should also consider some elements of research design more carefully in future research. A participant of the research was involved in qualitative research and informed me after the interview that they could acknowledge the interview structure. Thus, this interviewee gave rather short answers to the warming-up questions. Although this time it did not have any significant impact on the interview neither structure nor content-wise, in future research I should pay attention to the background of participants in qualitative research and not just to my insider situation in the researched topic.
Following the research ethics protocol, I shared an information sheet (see Appendix I.) about the project and asked for written consent of the participants prior to the interviews. During the course of the research, I faced an appearing ethical dilemma. In one interview I asked the participant to walk me through the last time they contacted their parents. They rejected it because they found the discussed topic too sensitive to share: “The last time, maybe it’s too personal to share with you, but, I mean, I can recall another one”. I acknowledged it was my ethical competence to deal with this kind of ‘conflict’ (Edwards and Mauthner, 2002). I believe my decision should serve the best interest of the interviewee because I highlighted in the information sheet that participants can withdraw – including withdrawing from answering particular questions – anytime with no consequences. Inckle (2015) argues that one o
