Participants’ home as an interview context when studying sensitive family issues

Abstract

This article considers the meaning of the participants’ home as an interview context when studying sensitive family issues. The article is based on two qualitative family studies by the authors on foster children’s perspectives on their home and their family relations and client families’ experiences of preventive family support. Both studies address sensitive family issues, in particular Finnish child welfare. The first author’s interview data consist of interviews with foster children, social network maps and diaries and the second author’s data of interviews with six client families. Most of the interviews were conducted at the participants’ homes, but in the second author's study two interviews were conducted at the university. In this article, an analysis about the meaning of the participants’ home as an interview context is based on the extensive field notes of the authors, as well as wide-ranging reflections and discussions about the interviews. The aim of this article is to offer a fresh insight into interviewing about sensitive family issues at the participant's homes, and the issue of sensitivity is present throughout the article. The comparative aspect is also at the core of the article due to the different focus groups of the two studies: children and adults. The home as an interview context is also compared to other settings in this article, e.g. the university. The main research findings concerned different aspects that the authors found in the course of their home interview studies such as differences between home and university, the possibilities and challenges of home and comparisons of adults and children as focus groups.