Reciprocity in Interview Research :

The issue of reciprocity in the interviewing relationship can be trou­bling. The more the interviewing relationship is charged with issues of race, ethnicity, class, and gender, the more complicated the problem of reciprocity can be. Patai (1987) in her study of Brazilian women, most of whom were poor, agonized over what could be perceived as inequity in her research. She wrote a book (Patai, 1988) based on her findings and gained the benefits that usually accrue from such publication. On the other hand, she felt her participants gained little tangible benefit from their cooperation with her. Rowan (1981) talks about the lack of reciproc­ity that can lead to alienation in research. He sees it as alienation because the researcher is separating participants from their words and then using those words to his or her own ends.

This is the most problematic aspect of interviewing to me. I am sym­pathetic to the argument that the researcher gets more out of the pro­cess than the participant. I know, however, and others write about (Patai, 1987; Yow, 1994) the type of listening the interviewer brings to the inter­view. It takes the participants seriously, values what they say, and honors the details of their lives. The reciprocity I can offer in an interview is that which flows from my interest in participants’ experience, my attending to what they say, and my honoring their words when I present their experi­ence to a larger public. Although at the conclusion of the interview I do present my participants with a small gift, that gift is only a token of my appreciation in the fullest sense of the word token. I use it to say thank you and to mark the conclusion of that part of our interviewing relationship. (See Marshall & Rossman, 1989; Yow, 1994, for a fuller discussion.)

Source: Seidman Irving (2006), Interviewing As Qualitative Research: A Guide for Researchers in Education And the Social Sciences, Teachers College Press; 3rd edition.

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