Re-approaching interview data through Qualitative Secondary Analysis: Interviews with Internet Gamblers

This paper addresses two interrelated questions concerning what interview data are and how researchers might use them. The first considers the value of a shift from a predominant or exclusive focus upon how data are constructed and produced at interview, and towards how such data might be apprehended through different forms of research engagement. The second question relates to how and what qualitative secondary analysis (QSA) might be used to tell about the social world. In exploring this, we advance a critique of the divide between primary and secondary analysis, recasting the debate in terms of different degrees and qualities of ‘proximity’ and ‘distance’ from the formative contexts of data generation. We revisit a common assumption underpinning ethnographic approaches, that researchers are required to ‘be there’ in interview encounters to say anything of worth about the data generated. Instead we propose both proximity to, and distance from, the temporal, relational and epistemic contexts of data production offer their own distinctive affordances. Using QSA of interview data from a study of problem internet gambling as an empirical crucible, we explore these ideas, considering the kinds of participation that interviewees develop through their reciprocal engagement with interviewers. We illustrate how participants reflexively negotiate the limits to the ‘stock’ of narratives within which to frame and recount their experiences. Finally, we show how interview data can be used both to speak of the temporal, relational, spatial, epistemic contexts of their production, and also to speak to contexts and questions beyond these.