The first interview
This whole interview process has ben making me kind of anxious if i'm honest. It feels strange to be interviewing important people (directors/medical directors/physios) who are pretty much always super busy and I guess I'm worried that I am wasting their limited time.
Conducting my interviews via zoom seemed like the best option for my inquiry. It allows me to interview people in a wide range of places and get perspectives from a lot of different people. It also makes the interviews easier to schedule since I don't have to organise travelling to meet people and factor that into a time frame.
That being said technology has been testing my patience recently. I completed my first interview last weekend and it didn't run quite as smoothly as I had hoped. I set up the zoom meeting in advance and sent the invitation link to my participant but for some reason when it came to the day of the interview when I started the scheduled meeting the meeting ID and passcode were different to the one on the auto-generated invite so my participant and I wasted about 10 minutes trying to get on the same call. My wifi has also been patchy recently (much to my annoyance as it costs a fortune) meaning the call would occasionally freeze disrupting the flow of the interview. My participant also chose to do the interview in a public library (as their wifi has also been patchy lately) so had to keep their voice down so as not to disturb others which made it difficult to hear some of what they were saying.
In terms of the interview itself I think it actually went pretty well. It helped that my first participant was a very close friend of mine so I wasn't nearly as apprehensive as I am sure I will be for some of the other ones. The interview itself lasted about 35 minutes in total and I covered pretty much all of the topics I had planned to. This participant fell into the "dancer" category of my interviews so is part of the group I can relate to most. I noticed during my interview that a lot of the questions I had initially thought of for dancers are based upon previous injury experience and I felt kind of put on the spot when this participant answered that they had never experienced an injury. That took the conversation in a slightly different direction as we discussed injuries they have seen others sustain and how observing colleagues sustain injuries has helped motivate them to work to avoid injury. We discussed how often dancers, especially young and lower ranked dancers are sometimes scared to admit being injured to ballet masters/mistresses for fear of seeming unreliable and there is somewhat of an expectation that they should be invinsible. I was encouraged to hear that the company this dancer is a member of implements a lot of injury prevention techniques and provides a lot of resources to aid their dancers in injury prevention.
Some of you may be wondering why I am writing and publishing this blog at 7am? My next interview was supposed to be at 7am my time (noon UK time) as my participant is based in the UK so I got up and ready for work early but then my participant ( a director!) had to postpone due to the wifi at their establishment being down causing meyhem for everyone currently working remotely... I thought I may as well make use of the extra time...
I’ve found the same thing, my wifi completely cut out mid way through an interview this morning but thankfully it came back! And another one was constantly freezing. Bit of a stress but I do still think in terms of time management it’s still better for the participants to not have to travel somewhere.
ReplyDeleteHi kirsty interesting blog! I had to completely change my interview style to face to face since being on the ship as there was no way I could rely on the unstable Internet connection, but its interesting that even with people living on land it has caused problems! You're right about how it cuts out the travel time and makes arranging the interviews much easier! I think you should be confident that your participants don't feel like you're wasting their time as they have agreed to take part in your inquiry so you should remember that they are taking part my choice always! Good luck with the rest!
ReplyDeleteHello! Interesting blog about the start of your interview process, I think it's really good that you chose the first one to be with a close friend. It seems both of our inquiries are linked to injury, it would be lush to have a conversation with you at some point about your findings. Looking forward to reading more :) and good luck for the rest of your interviews (don't be worried about taking up others people's time, your project is important and this information is incredibly useful and interesting)!
ReplyDeleteGreat post Kirsty and like yourself I was anxious about my first interview. And same thing I thought that their time in-between lessons or before they start teaching was being interfered with. But they all seemed really happy to help. However unlike you all of mine are close colleagues and friends so it's a little less formal for me.
ReplyDeleteI hope the rest go a bit easier for you.
How interesting that you came across someone who hasn't witnessed first hand what your inquiry is about. But I'm sure they would have some opinions on their thoughts of injury prevention or even the recovery/time off someone should receive? Maybe it's worth finding some questions that could ask something like that if you come across it again? Just a thought.
Hi Kirsty, great that you've got your first interview done and even with the technical difficulties it sounds like you got some great stuff to think about for your next one. I was only checking my Zoom settings today as I'm not 100% confident with recording the meetings yet. Good luck with your remaining interviews! At least you have one under your belt already, and they stumped you and threw something new your way and you still thought on your feet which is amazing!
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