“If I Can Offer You Some Advice”: Rapport and Data Collection in Interviews Between Adults of Different Ages

Abstract

Reflexively analyzing interactions between myself (young adult woman) and 150 adult research participants, I explore how interviewees responded to the interviewer's perceived age in combination with other social identity categories. Addressing a gap in scholarship on adult-adult interview interactions, this article examines how age gradations, in combination with other axes of similarity or difference, affect researcher-interviewee rapport and data acquisition. Racial similarity, regardless of age, unlocked access to the topic of race/ethnicity. Age intersected with gender such that women within a decade of the woman interviewer's age assumed similarity and were communicative. In interviews with similarly-aged heterosexual men, awareness of sexuality inhibited answers around intimacy. With older interviewees, gender similarity bridged the age chasm with women. In contrast, age and gender difference inspired older men to act paternalistically and give unsolicited advice. Even among adults, interviewees' classification of the interviewer's age contours the interactional dynamic, impacts data acquisition, and reproduces social distinctions.

Latino/a Citizen Children of Undocumented Parents Negotiating Illegality

“…I believe my "insider status" (Collins, 1991) of having an immigrant family background, Latina identity, and my ties to the CSU were factors that helped me garner trust with participants who otherwise could have been hesitant to share their experiences. Recognizing that age gradations among adults matter, I believe my proximity in age to my interview respondents also helped provide a rapport (Vasquez-Tokos, 2017). Similar to the rapport reported in Enriquez's (2015) study, I, too, found a level of trustworthiness among interviewees as evidenced by their volunteering of sensitive information pertaining to illegal activity, abuse, and emotional feelings of regret, shame, and guilt.…”

Do Latinos Consider Themselves Mainstream? The Influence of Region

“…Do you feel that you have experienced racial/ethnic discrimination (If yes, could you describe the situation)? My positionality as a Latina woman likely facilitated access to interviews due to shared racial status (Vasquez-Tokos 2017b). Bearing light skin, dark hair, a Hispanic surname, and a research interest in race, I believe I am read as someone to whom recollections of racial discrimination could be safely surrendered.…”

“They Want the Spanish but They Don’t Want the Mexicans”: Whiteness and Consumptive Contact in an Oregon Spanish Immersion School

“…Perceptions about race and other embodied characteristics shape the interview process and may influence how respondents discuss racial matters (Gallagher 2003;Vasquez-Tokos 2017). Because I am a light-skinned, multiracial person with Southeast Asian and white European ancestry, respondents may have coded my race in a variety of ways.…”