Using vignettes in qualitative interviews as clues, microcosms or provokers

Abstract

Purpose

Recent studies have introduced new productive theoretical orientations to the vignette studies. There is not, however, sufficient analytical discussion on how the vignettes can be used in qualitative interviews for different functions. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

Design/methodology/approach

Whatever theoretical framing the researcher decides to apply in qualitative interviews using vignettes, the paper proposes that it is always important to consider in what way the chosen vignettes refer to the object under examination, whether they represent it as clues (metonyms, symptoms, enigmatic traces), as microcosms (icons, metaphors, totems, ideal types, homologies) or as provokers (anomalies, taboos, controversies).

Findings

When vignettes are used as clues in interviews, they can be introduced as puzzling traces, tracks or indexes which together with the interview questions carry out the interviewees to metonymic reasoning. When vignettes are used in interviews as microcosms, the interview questions are built so that they encourage the interviewees to consider the vignettes as icons that mimic reality or realities, their actors, situations, acts, events and processes. And when vignettes are used as provokers, they are selected and produced so that they challenge the forms, boundaries, meanings and habits of the well-known and plausible realities of the interviewees.

Originality/value

The paper demonstrates with examples how vignettes function in the interviews as clues, microcosms or provokers and shows why it is important to pay attention to this.

Citation

Törrönen, J. (2018), "Using vignettes in qualitative interviews as clues, microcosms or provokers", Qualitative Research Journal, Vol. 18 No. 3, pp. 276-286. https://doi.org/10.1108/QRJ-D-17-00055