From the Outside Looking in: How an Awareness of Difference Can Benefit the Qualitative Research Process

While much has been written on the problems that can arise when interviewing respondents from a different social group, less attention has been paid to its potential benefits for the research process. In this paper we argue that, by being conscious of one's outsider status, an interviewer can use it as a tool through which to elicit detailed and comprehensive accounts from respondents, and ensure rigorous and critical analysis of the data produced.