Beyond member-checking: a dialogic approach to the research interview

Abstract

This article presents a dialogic qualitative interview design for a narrative study of six international UK university students' motivation for learning English. Based on the work of Mikhail Bakhtin, this design was developed in order to address the limitations of member-checking [Lincoln, Y. S., and E. G. Guba. 1985. Naturalistic Inquiry. Newbury Park, CA: Sage] as a means by which participants' responses to data and interpretation might be gathered. Through a personalized reflection on my design and consideration of attitudes to member-checking, I demonstrate that a more explicit co-constructedness is evident in both the design and the data generated, and I offer this design as a more collaborative, more ethical alternative to member-checking in particular, and as an approach to qualitative research interviews in general. © 2014 © 2014 Taylor & Francis.