tacting the potential interviewees, I briefly introduced the project and made candidates feel comfortable about not participating if they would not like to for any reasons. Luckily, all the four peers I contacted were happy to take part in the research.
With regards to some socio-demographic characteristics of the respondents, I interviewed two males and two females from very different parts of the world: The United States, Germany, China and Italy. Their parents still live in the country of their origin. All of them are from traditional families, one of them is an only child, while the other three interviewees have one sibling each. They all have been living in London since late summer/early autumn 2018, and all of them are studying at the postgraduate level.
Luker’s (2008) suggestions on constructing interview guides, to which I am referring through this paragraph, immensely helped my work. Firstly, I phrased questions in a simple way that could be easily understood. Further pursuing naturality, I avoided the use of jargon as much as possible. For instance, instead of using the expression nuclear family I asked about those family members whom they grew up with. Developing the guide, I started with the outlining of the main topics which would come up during the interview, i.e. general introduction, family relationships and family contacting habits. Logical ordering of these topics in the interview was crucial because it established a natural flow of conversation. After starting with basic questions, like How did you get to LSE? I went into more specific ones about family. Finally, I asked them more concretely about the central topic, family communication habits, such as how often do you contact them? or do you have a preferred channel? To link the topics mentioned above, I applied so-called ‘turn signals’, for example, “Now I would like to talk about how you contact your family when you’re here in the UK.”. The reason to use these signals was to steer the interview in the right direction and guide participants. At the end of the interviews, I asked ‘cooling down’ questions that focus on the near future, on upcoming holidays or starting term, because they allow the interviewee to return to the real world.
Having recruited the interviewees and developed the guide, I started conducting the interviews in December 2018 in the study rooms at the LSE Library due to its easy accessibility and quietness. Reflecting on the first interview, I could have let the content drive the process a bit more as opposed to forcing the structure on the interview said by my questions. The learning from the first interview made the second one more relaxed and organised at the same time.
However, I transcribed the interviews only a week later and not at the earliest opportunity. Luker (2008) argues the necessity of immediate transcription because reading written transcripts work differently for the mind than just listening back the records, and early transcription leaves a higher chance of capturing key takeaways. With hindsight, I would transcribe the interviews immediately because, while transcribing the first two interviews, I grasped that there were many spaces to improve both my question and my interviewing style.
Reflecting on my interviewing style in the first interviews, my interactions could have
