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Stimulated Recall Interviews in Ethnography

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Abstract

This article describes the use of stimulated recall interviews as a technique for investigating how people approach interactions in a number of different situations. In general, the technique I describe involves interviewing individuals by playing them audio or audiovisual recordings of their own behavior in social situations and discussing different aspects of those recorded interactions. Doing so can help us to understand what signals interactants understand as important, what signals they try to convey to others, and how they choose from various options to act upon the information they receive in interactions. Using the example of jazz jam sessions, I ask why it is that interactions can sometimes go smoothly and uneventfully, or sometimes break down completely. The stimulated recall interviews provide a valuable tool in helping the ethnographer to answer these kinds of questions.

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Notes

  1. Burgoyne and Hodgson (1984) seem to have coined the term “stimulated recall.”

  2. “The book” is the Real Book, a clandestinely-produced collection of jazz sheet music that is uncopyrighted and does not provide composers with royalties, but is widely used as a reference by musicians.

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Acknowledgements

I gratefully acknowledge the helpful comments of participants of the 2007 ASA Culture Section Roundtable on The Production of Culture and the Culture(s) of Production, the 2008 Couch-Stone Symposium at the University of Illinois, Andrew Abbott, Michael Flaherty, Andreas Glaeser, and Michael Silverstein. I also acknowledge the insightful guidance provided by Javier Auyero and the anonymous reviewers from Qualitative Sociology. Any errors of omission or commission remain my own.

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Correspondence to Nicholas P. Dempsey.

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Dempsey, N.P. Stimulated Recall Interviews in Ethnography. Qual Sociol 33, 349–367 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11133-010-9157-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11133-010-9157-x

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