Interviews

The research question that I am exploring is “how would you as a Latina/o immigrant describe your experience in relation to the protection that you receive from racial nativists operating in the United States?” I was able to recruit information-rich subjects by searching online for Latina/o immigrants who are situated in areas where racial nativists have been known to operate and/or have encountered such nativists. Interviews with two information-rich participants were required for the task. After contacting several potential participants, I convinced two to partake in the study. I gave the pseudonyms Sofia and Samuel to the two subjects that I interviewed. Privacy and confidentiality is a crucial ethical consideration in my research, hence the use of pseudonyms to refer to the participants. I promised the participants that I will protect their identities and that I will not include personal information that can be used to identify them on the research report or any other document.

The scheduling for the interviews was done over the phone. The interviews were also conducted over the phone. Before the scheduling was done, I emailed the two participants invitation letters and a consent form. The first interview took 32 minutes to finalize while the second took 37 minutes. I had requested for 45 minutes from the participants, but the interviews ended ahead of time. Both participants were cooperative and that aided in the collection of relevant and rich information. They were passionate about improving the lives of Latina/o immigrant, and they shared their experiences regarding the safety of members of their ethnicity. One challenge that I encountered when conducting the phone interview was getting to understand the participants given their accent. One way of dealing with the problem was to ask the participants to repeat what they just said if it was important information. Since I recorded the conversations, I will be able to play back several times if necessary when transcribing the same if there will be something that I will find hard to understand.

Although I recorded the two interviews, I had a pen and notebook that I used to take note on crucial points. The points that I took usually aided me in the crafting of follow-up questions. I would ask the participants to elaborate on some of the critical points that they had made earlier on. The notes will also be of crucial importance during data analysis as they will help in the identification of essential points to seek in the interviews transcripts. I promised to send the interviewees pictures of the notes that recorded in the notebook and their respective interview’s transcript so that they can verify whether the data contained in the two is the one that they provided during the interview or otherwise. The promise to share the interviews’ transcripts and notes boosted the confidence of the interviewees with the study and my transparency in conducting the research.

Overall, the two interviews went smoothly and I obtained information that is crucial to the answering of the research question and solution of the research problem. Problems emerged during the course of the two interviews, but I was able to overcome the same. Data analysis will help generate useful insights from the data collected from the two interviewees.