The Social Dynamics of the Interview: Age, Class, and Gender

Researchers have paid only limited attention to how social structural factors influence the course and content of interviews. Speech, comportment, and values inherent to gender and other social, structural, and contextual factors, such as age, socioeconomic positioning, and ethnicity, all influence the direction, flow, and content of interviews, informing how we might interpret the information collected in the process. Drawing on interviews conducted within an Australian study on chronic illness and disability, the authors explore the performative nature of the interview and how interviewers and interviewees respond to the structural factors shaping the social dynamics of the interview to produce accounts of social life.