The salience of a prior relationship between researcher and participants: Reflecting on acquaintance interviews

Abstract

<p>This article aims to contribute to the discussion on interviews in qualitative research. More specifically, we focus on acquaintance interviews (Garton & Copland, 2010), that is, interviews in which the interviewer and interviewees have already established a prior relationship. By using data from both authors’ doctoral studies in applied linguistics (Iikkanen, 2020; Roiha, 2019), we illustrate how this prior relationship becomes salient and is made use of in interviews. In this article, we focus on two themes, <i>frame shifting</i> and <i>building rapport</i>. The data excerpts presented in the article exemplify the types of frame shifts that took place in our acquaintance interviews. The findings also suggest that acquaintance interviews can offer researchers a fruitful arena for utilizing the already existing common ground between them and their research participants; a prior relationship serves as a resource to build rapport with interviewees. The ethical aspect involved in acquaintance interviews is also briefly discussed.<br></p><p><br></p>