Virtual Methods

Online Interviewing • 45
your answer, I prefer to send it again! Best regards.
Joelle
Peter, 58 years old, email 32:
Dear Joelle, I did receive your last email and put it in the
folder; fatal mistake.
Joëlle:
Hi Elizabeth . . . I’m contacting you about the interview, I know
that I’m insistent! . . . Just let me know if you still want to
participate.
Elizabeth, 36 years old, email 10:
Hi there sorry not been in touch I had a lovely Easter but hard
work with the kids but then I was looking forward to getting them
back to school when my youngest came down with Chicken Pox!!! He
was off school for two weeks then my eldest came down with them!!!
AARRGGHH!!
Joëlle to David, 65 years old:
Hi David . . . I’ll be away for the next 3 weeks from tomorrow. I’ll
be reading my emails from time to time but won’t probably be able
to continue the interview during this period. I’ll answer to you
at the end of April then … Have a nice Easter time. Regards Joëlle
Finally, a significant risk of long-term interviewing is participants terminating
the process of replying to questions and reminders. Asynchronous email communication
makes the whole research study dependent on, and vulnerable to,
the commitment of interviewees who can easily disappear from the project. In
this study, some participants dropped out after several email exchanges.
Withdrawals were sometimes overtly justified and explained, for instance by
interviewees being submerged by personal and/or professional duties and
unable to pursue the interview. In such cases, one or two emails can help to conclude
the interview, without ending it abruptly. By contrast, for the researcher,
unexplained absences may be difficult to deal with, as well as to accept (Mann
and Stewart 2000; Bampton and Cowton 2002). The dilemma is not only to
decide whether or not to include the unfinished but rich interview material in
the final set of data, but also to be left not knowing the reason for the withdrawal.
More importantly, withdrawals uncover one of the limits of email interviews:
the achievement of the interview by email does not depend only on the
online presence of the interviewee. Whereas all participants were email users
and, at the start, email was a promising way of communication, the few withdrawals
I experienced illustrate that email cannot be regarded as the most
appropriate mean of interviewing simply on the grounds that participants are
users of email and the Internet. This also emphasizes the complementarities
between the online and the offline modes of interviewing: the online interviewer
must be sensitive to the appropriateness of the online communication