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The aim of this article is to address some aspects of a cross-cultural interview study conducted in a PhD research project. This is done by reflecting on and discussing the influence of language and culture on the research process, as experienced by the researcher.

The experiences have been taken from an interview study with fifteen American participants in which the researchers were Norwegian. The interviews were conducted in English.

By offering insights into experiences of the research process in a cross-cultural interview study, the article connects the discussion to the concepts of positionality and reflexivity. These concepts are found to be especially relevant when managing differences between the researcher and participants in cross-cultural studies, and for improving the trustworthiness of the research.

The experiences and reflections discussed in the article may be useful to other researchers in similar (cross-cultural) research contexts and situations.

This article has been inspired by the experience of conducting research in a second language and in a different country. By drawing on a researcher’s point of view, this article reflects on these aspects when working as a visiting researcher doing international research.

This chapter draws upon our experiences of using materials in research interviews. We build on the work of Woodward (2016, 2020) by reflexively exploring how our use of material objects; in this case, Lego enabled both participants and researchers to connect more fully with the entrepreneurial phenomena under investigation (Williams et al., 2021). In doing so, we unpack how our use of objects reveals the research interview as a more complex phenomenon than is typically represented (Gubrium et al., 2012).

Elite interviewing is a well-established area of interview research methods. Nevertheless, the actual casting of an “elite” has been generally conducted in a prima facie or broad manner. A consideration of entrepreneurs and owner-managers as “elites” has been less profiled and received less attention, therefore the paper views the entrepreneurs and owner-managers as constituting a form of “local elite” within given and varying sectorial, regional and community boundaries. The authors argue that a consideration of entrepreneurs as “local elites” and transferring knowledge from an elite interviewing perspective may strongly support scholarly research in the entrepreneurship field.

The study conducts a comprehensive narrative literature review of elite interviewing literature and transfers key methodological insights to the entrepreneurship field. The methodological contribution based on literature is complemented by experiences and observations from an extensive inductive interview study with over 30 entrepreneurs of German manufacturing Small and Medium-sized Entities (SMEs) and are used to reflect on, and refine, interview research approaches with entrepreneurs.

The reflections and discussions in this paper provide valuable insights for other researchers conducting research in entrepreneurship domains regarding the power dynamics of negotiating access, procedural issues of interviews and thereby enhancing the quality of data.

The contribution to knowledge is mainly of a methodological nature. While the paper takes a novel act of recasting elite interviewing in the SME and entrepreneurship context, the paper methodologically contributes to the entrepreneurship and elite interview literature thereby facilitating higher quality interviews.

This collaborative paper presents three case studies on four scholars' experiences with remote data collection. The authors highlight the challenges and strengths of online qualitative research across three disparate projects: an interdisciplinary exploration of matrilineal heritage, an examination of Irish women's sexual identity and an investigation of dress practices among Tz'utujil-Maya.

Qualitative researchers traditionally go into the field to explore and understand social phenomena. At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, while people faced the daily realities of a worldwide crisis from within their homes, remote data collection became a necessary strategy to pursue knowledge. As a result, researchers adapted to unknowns regarding recruiting, scheduling, technology, interviewing and analysis.

Participant and researcher experiences during the adaptation to remote interviewing yielded important lessons on research strategies.

Outcomes from these studies highlight the potential value of online data collection alongside the necessity for flexibility in designing and conducting qualitative research.

This study aims to describe key elements that are critical to virtual qualitative research especially while working with practitioners as participants.

This paper takes a reflexive researcher approach using a case study to explore how researchers adopted a qualitative research approach using digital technology. We use five principles suggested by Boland et al. (2022) as a framework to consider and reflect on our experiences as researchers and those of our participants.

We highlight the gatekeeper’s support, trusted relationship with the organisations, interpersonal skills of interviewers, stringent measures of securing data and shared experiences of interviewee and interviewers helped complete virtual research. We recommend that four key factors such as digital competency, feasibility, flexibility and resilience should be considered while undertaking or commissioning virtual, qualitative research studies.

Social care practitioners and qualitative researchers increasingly negotiate with digital technologies to undertake their work. In this paper, we evidence how online qualitative approaches can be effective provided challenges are dealt with diligently in each stage of the research process.

In this study, we illuminate how techniques can be incorporated into interview protocols when conducting research with educational leaders who are being asked to discuss their experiences in crises.

We interviewed seven researchers about their role as a researcher in collecting data on a crisis event from participants. Our analysis concentrated on several key components of the interview.

In presenting our findings on how scholars can adopt a caring and just approach to interview studies with leaders regarding crises, we portray how this approach can be melded into research design, interview protocol and interview techniques.

We illuminate that specific interview techniques are required when interviewing participants who have undergone and survived crises in their work, and we recommend the use of this protocol especially when an interview requires researchers to “handle with care.”

This study aims to describe and evaluate various visual and creative tools for supporting the in-depth biographical interview aimed at analyzing educational communities and their stakeholders.

Researching educational spaces today requires new ways of understanding, analyzing and studying. The complex characteristics, functions and realities demand research that responds to educational singularities. It is a matter of deeply understanding the educational phenomenon's peculiarities. For these purposes, instruments and research paradigms are needed to extract data and reach information saturation regarding the data obtained from the proposed objects of study. With this in mind, the following paper suggests reflecting on data collection tools that can complement the interview and biographical-narrative research approach. The authors highlight the use of photo-elucidation, the biogram-based timeline, the organigram and the flight of the geese, all of which are instruments endowed with a visual character that allows a deeper understanding of the object studied.

The main contribution of this paper is to unpack the uses and applications of four visual tools that support the interview technique. First, photo-elucidation is presented as a sensory strategy to stimulate the narrative during the dialogical exchange of the interview. Next, the timeline is described as a visual concretization of the traditional biogram widely used in educational research. Next, the authors unravel the uses of the organizational chart in educational research, which, due to its nature and utility, provides a glimpse of the organizational functioning of an institution and is particularly suitable for research in institutional frameworks. Finally, the tool known as the flight of the geese is presented. This tool is recommended for use in educational leadership and teamwork studies due to its simplicity and high representativeness of the hierarchy of roles and functions.

Researching educational spaces today requires new ways of understanding, analyzing and studying. The complex characteristics, functions, and realities demand research that responds to educational singularities. It is a matter of deeply understanding the educational phenomenon's peculiarities. For these purposes, instruments and research paradigms are needed to extract data and reach information saturation regarding the data obtained from the proposed objects of study. With this in mind, the following paper invites us to reflect on data collection tools that can complement the interview and biographical-narrative research approach. The authors highlight the use of photo-elucidation, the biogram-based timeline, the organigram, and the flight of the geese, all of which are instruments endowed with a visual character that allows a deeper understanding of the object studied.

Access to unbiased self-reported (primary) data for a normative concept like social sustainability has been a challenge for construction project management (CPM) scholars, and this difficulty has been further amplified by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. This paper aims to address this issue by asserting the suitability of secondary data as a methodologically sound but underutilized alternative and providing directions for secondary data-based research on social sustainability in a project setting.

By drawing on a framework for social sustainability and using “project-as-practice” approach as its point of departure, this conceptual paper identifies possibilities for utilizing multiple secondary sources in CPM research.

The paper provides a roadmap for identification of secondary sources, access to data, potential research designs and methods, limitations of and cautions in using secondary sources, and points to many novel lines of empirical enquiries to stimulate secondary data-based research on social sustainability in CPM.

Indicated secondary sources and empirical opportunities can support research efforts that aim to promote societal welfare through construction projects.

The presented guidance will assist researchers in identifying, accessing and utilizing naturalistic, secondary data for designing and conducting empirical research that cuts across social sustainability and CPM. This, in turn, will facilitate methodological pluralism and “practice turn” in such research endeavors.

This study draws on the author's experiences building rapport through online chat for data collection for the author's doctoral dissertation. The author contacted ten Korean women via online chat to recruit and faced the most challenging situation; building rapport. As the Millennial generation is known as being tech-savvy or digital natives, the author actively used emoticons (pictorial representations of facial expressions using characters) with potential interviewees and completed ten interviews. Therefore, this paper offers a new qualitative interviewing method in feminist research.

The paper briefly reviews the works of literature on interviewing women on sensitive topics and building rapport before the interview. Then, the author introduced using emoticons to create rapport during the data collection process and how a non-traditional approach positively impacts the interviewer and interviewee before, during and even after the interview.

Women participants' responses and behaviors differed after building a rapport through an online chat. They were willing to share their personal stories and memories with the interviewer even though the interviewer did not ask.

This study provides a stepping stone for developing an account of the new qualitative methodological approach, specifically feminist qualitative research.

Few studies have described how qualitative researchers create a rapport in virtual space, specifically using emoticons. Also, this study suggests a new methodological approach since nonverbal communication in online chat is inevitable when interviewing people in qualitative research.

Qualitative research that involves the use of human participants calls for the need to protect those participants to give their honest view during data collection. This is an important part of every primary data collection in qualitative studies using interviews. This paper aims to investigate all available ethical considerations that need to be observed by the researcher when conducting primary data collection through interview and to explore the theories that underpin the ethics in qualitative studies.

This paper systemically reviewed existing qualitative data on ethics and gathered information that were analysed and presented on the topic area.

The findings show that ethical considerations deal with the various approaches adopted by the researcher to make the participants feel safe to participate in any given researcher. During an interview process in qualitative research, the findings show that anonymity, voluntary participation, privacy, confidentiality, option to opt out and avoiding misuse of findings are ethical considerations that must be observed by the researcher. The outcome of the investigation also shows that deontology and utilitarianism, rights and virtue are the main theories that underpin ethical considerations in research.

The rights of the research participants need to be respected in qualitative research to assist in gathering accurate information to achieve the objectives of study. This and other ethical principles such as anonymity, privacy, confidentiality, voluntary participation and option to opt out guide the researcher to systematically adhere to data collection approaches that yield valid results in qualitative data collection using interviews.