Valtasuhteet tutkimushaastattelussa

Författare

• Sonja Kosunen
• Jaakko Kauko

Abstract

The article sets out to analyse power and its relationality and negotiability in the relation between the interviewer and the interviewee in research interviews. Power is understood as relational and embedded in cultural and physical world. The authors draw on their field notes and experiences in 135 interviews with policymakers in Finland and England (n=38), and with parents of school-aged children (n=97). The article describes the interview situation with the help of two trichotomies. The first tricothomy is the pre-interview, interview and post-interview situation, in which the power relation changes in interaction in different ways. The second trichotomy is the construction of ‘us’, ‘them’, and ‘you’ (in plural) in the discourse, by which is meant, how these concepts get constructed in the interaction at different stages of the interview as a process. Observing the relation between the interviewer and the interviewee and understanding the power invested in their mutual relation as changeable, negotiable and context-dependent, are important factors in the construction of interview material in qualitative research.