Reflections on Researching With Children Using “Family Group Interviews” as Part of a Qualitative Longitudinal Study

Abstract

Family sociologists often conduct research which generates and compares parents' and children's perspectives as a way of ensuring children's voices are heard and building an understanding of family practices and cultures. It is far less common, however, for children to be interviewed in the presence of parents or to interview families as a group. Primarily, this is a response to concerns that, given generational power relations, the presence of parents may serve to influence, police, or silence children's voices. However, by making such methodological assumptions and, in turn, not generating group accounts with parents and children, we may be missing opportunities to add further methods to our toolkit and additional analytical dimensions to our explorations and understandings of families' and children's lives. In this article, we reflect on our experiences of conducting family group interviews as the second wave of a qualitative longitudinal study, involving parents and children who gave individual accounts at the first and third/final waves. We explore the factors involved in designing this method into a research project, the challenges of conducting family group interviews, and of analysing the data produced. In so doing, we contribute to the methodological debate on researching with children in the context of families.

Living with uncertainty and hope: A qualitative study exploring parents’ experiences of living with childhood multiple sclerosis

“…defined by a beginning, middle and end) and the time-constraints of an interview, and thus appear as a set of seamless, linear events. 19 Furthermore, parents’ reports can be shaped by their perceptions of what is and what is not permissible to discuss during an interview, 13 particularly when children and/or other family members are present, 14 as well as the continual reinterpretation of past memories from a present-day perspective. 31 Nonetheless, there are similarities between our findings and literature discussing the experiences of parents of children with rare chronic conditions.…”

“…Parents could chose to be interviewed alone or with their child present (Table 2) and we acknowledge the effect joint interviews might have on data generation. 14 Data collection continued for 12 months (February 2013–2014) until we had achieved theoretical saturation and had fully developed the categories. 11,15…”

“I'm not what I used to be”: A qualitative study exploring how young people experience being diagnosed with a chronic illness

“…Young people were given the opportunity be interviewed with or without their parents present. Eighteen of the 21 young people chose to be interviewed with their parents present, which may have influenced data generation (MacLean & Harden, ; Table ). Interviews were semistructured and guided by a topic guide (Figure ).…”

Displaying good fathering through the construction of physical activity as intimate practice

“…Tasks included drawing my dad and responding to discussion prompts containing images and statements about fathers and their roles in everyday life. Participants chose whether they were interviewed separately or in pairs (Kirk, 2007;Maclean and Harden, 2014). 16 interviews with adults were undertaken, 12 with individuals and 4 with both parents together.…”