Interviewing Adolescent Females in Qualitative Research

In no other field has the qualitative interview become so heavily used as educational research (Seidman, 2013). Such interviewing is based in an interest in understanding the lived experience of other people and the meaning they make of that experience. The experience of those interviewed is the means by which research can investigate the educational process. In fact, interviewing has been described as "the ability of people to symbolize their experience through language" (Seidman, 2013, p. 8). Qualitative interviewing offers several advantages that other methodologies do not. Quantitative methods such as surveys can be used, but Tierney and Dilley (2002) point out that they lack the depth of understanding that a qualitative interview provides. Another advantage of interviewing is that the researcher can go beyond the rudimentary information that is often gained in using quantitative methodology and gather data directly from the participants in their own words to learn the rationale behind the results. Seidman (2013) says that if the researcher's goal is to understand the meaning that educators make of their experience, then interviewing provides a necessary mode of inquiry. A third advantage for interviewing is its use with other research methods. In combination with quantitative methods such as surveys, for example, the researcher gains an even wider perspective from the participants than from either method alone. The qualitative interview has become popular in a number of fields. Because of its usefulness and benefits it has been widely used across many fields of study with different population groups. However, interviewing different population groups requires different approaches. Previous studies have indicated that interviewing different populations such as the prison population (Lintonen, Vartiainen, Aarnio, Hakamaaki, Viitanen, Wuolijoki, & Joukamaa, 2011) and the hospitalized population (Angstrom-Brannstrom & Norberg, 2014) necessitate different approaches. Unfortunately, examples for this kind of information are very limited, and more work needs to be done. Research to determine the best interview techniques for a specific group in a general setting, which would work well for educational purposes, has yet to be completed. "Baseline" research is clearly needed so that further studies can target specific groups such as adolescent females. Currently, the research that focuses on techniques to interview adolescent females is very limited. The literature available describes very specific situations that are too focused for general qualitative research. For example, there are articles focusing on interviewing adolescent (male and female) suspects (Lingwood & Bull, 2013), interviewing adolescents within psychotherapeutic situations (Boyle, 2007), and interviewing adolescents about their health information (Sacks & Westwood, 2003). However, the researcher only found one article about interviewing adolescents in a general manner that would apply to any form of qualitative research (Beyer, 2013). Some general guidelines were proposed that could be applied to most interview research, but there is currently no research that focuses only on how to interview a group of adolescent females. When proposing to interview adolescent females, researchers must have many concerns, including how the researcher protects the research participant when interviewing minor children, effective interview techniques, and deciphering what unique information can be gained by interviewing this population group. The purpose of this article is to describe an approach to interviewing adolescent females for research that involves their experiences in an educational setting. Since the best approach to interviewing adolescent girls has not been widely studied, guidelines remain to be established. After reviewing the current research available on interviewing children, the researcher started examining interview methodologies such as narrative research, phenomenology, grounded theory, ethnography, and case studies (Miles, Huberman, & Saldana, 2013). …