Virtual Methods

46 • Joëlle Kivits
with each participant, and ready to turn to an offline mode of interviewing, if
required.
Timing the Interview to Produce Qualitative Data
If time can be a threat to the online interview situation, it is also its principal ally.
The production of in-depth qualitative data gathered via email can, in fact, be successful
only if the interview process involves several email exchanges that engage
interviewers with interviewees for an extended period of online communication.
The timing of the interview is therefore crucial and requires from the researcher
the ability to manage the interview rapport over the duration of the process.
It is first of all important to give a tempo to the interview process, based on the
freshly established relationship. In this study, in order to embed the interview in a
shared and evolving time frame, each question–answer exchange was accompanied
by personal information: family, holidays, work, even the progress of the research,
were generally discussed at the beginning or the end of an email message. Whereas
this type of information is aimed at setting the rhythm of the relationship and helps
the maintenance of a close rapport with the respondent, it enables, in turn, increasingly
dense and personally orientated questions to be dealt with, albeit with sensitivity
and caution (Mann and Stewart 2000). The intimacy progressively shared
with several interviewees allowed me to deepen my knowledge of some sensitive
aspects of their experience, only briefly mentioned in one of the first emails, but
developed at length towards the end of the interview. Though I was unsure of how
to handle the question at the start of the interview, the topic could be discussed
freely towards the end of the exchange. For example, after conversing for some
weeks, Caroline and I both felt comfortable enough to discuss Caroline’s depression:
I in asking the question, Caroline in elaborating on her experience. After communicating
about the previous few days, Caroline at first expressed some doubts
about how to talk about her depression, then started writing and detailing her experience
at length, uncovering one of the crucial aspects of our interview.
Extract 6: Deepening the Relationship, Handling Sensitive Questions
Email exchanges 10 to 12 with Caroline 29 years old.
Joëlle:
Hi Caroline! Back in London . . . I arrived on Sunday and was quite
desperate when the plane landed in the mist! I spent my last
Saturday in Marseille, climbing, near the see, on white cliffs
and in t-shirt . . . I always need two days of acclimatization when
I come back! . . .
Now, my second question regarding your depression: can you just
develop how it helped you? . . .