the likes of a kid

[beeb69]

i interviewed an 8 year old boy; we shall call him Arnold.  i'm friends with his father and have met the lad on numerous occasions, so i figured that would make things a little easier.  his dad was with us as i asked questions, which proved useful.  when Arnold would be shy or noncommital about some answers, a verbal prodding by dad ("how about

Comments

[jill547fall08]

First of all, you hit on a bunch of features of interview technique here, which I mostly skipped over in the interest of time. Is it an advantage, or a disadvantage, to have a parent around when interviewing a child? In your case it was an advantage, but some opposing arguments say otherwise. (I think that in the case of children, interview-technique arguments are trumped by safety concerns: leaving a child alone with an unknown adult is likely to set off too many alarm bells.) Also, running your entire results by your subject - er, the preferred term is 'participant' - is considered to be ideal interview practice these days. (I didn't insist on running anything but the pure answers by subjects/participants/interviewees in this case because I wanted to keep the 'rules' minimal on this one