Social Research Interviewing in Work

I worked for a government sponsored social reseach organisation; a well-respected one whose reports grace many institutions’ bookshelves.

The survey interviews I was doing were for the NHS and Health and Social Care Research Institute so the questions were about health, wellbeing and lifestyles. I interviewed one woman who would only be interviewed alone and not while her husband was present. She told me that she understands the reasons for the research and is quite happy to answer all questions honestly. All good so far. During the alcohol questions, she estimated that she drinks a bottle of spirits a day and said, “You’ll soon be thinking I’m an alcoholic, but I want to be honest, otherwise there’s no point.”

Umm… “soon thinking”? How about “already thinking”?

I managed to remain impassive, but it was fascinating because there was no way to tell from her demeanour that she was a drinker and in fact, had already had a drink that day (interview was 10.00am).

Another interview was with a retired couple; lovely, lovely people who were happy to answer anything once I’d convinced them that their information was safe and would definitely not be shared with anyone else. All went perfectly until I got to the last couple of questions. They both responded “very satisfied” when I asked how satisfied they were with the NHS nowadays. Then I finally asked, “Is there anything else you’d like to tell us?” Wow! The floodgates opened!

“Make all them bloody foreigners pay for their treatment; we’ve paid into the NHS all our lives and it’s not so all them bloody foreigners can come over to have babies and operations, they shouldn’t be allowed to get through the borders. We’re the laughing stock of the world the way we give everything to foreigners.”

And more. And more. Same message, more colourful words. Right up until that point they’d been thoroughly proper and not a single swear word between them.

A driving instructor I interviewed told me that he used to allow one of his pupils to vape in his car, thinking that as no smoke was produced, only vapour, that it would be ok. He said that at the end of the lesson he was sky high on the vape fumes and ended up not being able to carry on working as a thumping headache developed. I had no idea that vaping could do that.

It’s amazing what people will tell to a stranger. Or maybe it’s more because they are just happy to have someone listen to them. I interviewed a single bloke who admitted to a gambling problem. He told me that he does it because the rush of anticipation takes his mind off his painful bone disease (he did tell me what it’s called, but I’ve forgotten), but that he has borrowed and stolen from friends and family to pay debts and now has clinical depression as a result of the worry and stress that has arisen from it all. He is an ex-boxer and has done six years inside for robbery or burglary or something.

It was weird though, because despite his less than adequate housekeeping (the place was really, really untidy and grubby and he’s a borderline hoarder) and colourful history, I never felt at all unsafe working with him. He was entirely respectful to me throughout.

I started on another project; this one was early years and involved giving 3-4 year olds cognitive testing as well as asking the parent/s questions about their child’s progress and behaviours. The same children are being tracked over four years (I was doing year three) and the aim of it is to get trend data to see whether the paid for childcare for children does improve outcomes as it’s intended to. It all relates to the children’s centres work I was involved in when at the local authority, so it felt nicely comfortable.

An interesting observation - which is based on a miniscule sample and so not robust enough to count for anything - was that the children who had a parent who didn’t work at all scored better at the cognitive testing than children whose parents both worked and were sent to children’s centres. I tested a child whose parents were a lawyer and a doctor and their daughter tested at a much lower level than children from single parent families with stay-at-home-on-benefits mums. The only exception was a working family who employed a full time nanny. Maybe meaningless, but interesting.

The pay for this work was not particularly good or predictable, although not awful either – but I did like being in complete control of my own diary. Then I got my real job.