Abstract

This paper reports key processes in interviewing children in a highly constrained setting in which many features of effective interviewing children were either absent or were contradicted, and in which many aspects of the interview situation rendered them potentially uncomfortable for the children. The children left feeling positive about themselves and the interviews, having given frank and useful research data. The paper reports the strategies used by the interviewers to bring about these positive outcomes. It reports 10 steps, which the interviewers took whilst working within the constraints, to make the interviews effective and positive by rendering the strange familiar and by attending to the all-round quality of the qualitative interviews. The paper makes recommendations for interviewing children and how researchers can operate within children?s frame of reference and their expectations of adult behaviour and the interview situation