Friendly, But Not Too Friendly? Sexual Politics, Ethics, and Troubling Rapport in Qualitative Interview Research

While building and maintaining rapport have become synonymous with good qualitative research practice, researchers have rarely interrogated how the ethics of rapport building are complicated by the sociocultural context in which the research is conducted. Indeed, while research methods like the semi-structured interview have become dominant ways of carrying out qualitative research, the complexities of rapport as influenced by sexual politics have rarely been addressed in academic literature generally (and not at all in psychology). The current article aims to fill this gap, offering a series of critiques of the popularity of using rapport in interview research in ways that ignore the gendered and heteronormative discourses which are invariably present within all interview encounters. Specifically, this article reviews literature focusing on gender-congruent and gender-incongruent research, interviewee sexualisation of the interviewer, the ethics of researcher deception as part of building rapport, and researcher complicity in interviews with difficult interviewees. The article questions whether the belief that researchers should be “friendly” with interviewees is always practical, prudent, or safe, and discusses how shifting assumptions between rapport and good research practise in qualitive interview research may lead researchers towards the enriched data, deeper analysis, and produce room to develop new qualitive interview research frameworks.