Irvine, A. & Drew, P. (2012) ‘Am I not answering your questions properly?’ Clarification, adequacy and responsiveness in semi-structured telephone and face-to-face interviews. Qualitative Research, vol. 13(1), pp.87-106.

Shuy (2003: 179) contends that, ‘face-to-face interaction compels more small talk, politeness routines, joking, nonverbal communication, and asides in which people can more fully express their humanity’. (Irvine & Drew, 2012, p.89)

Shuy (2003: 181) notes that visual signals from the researcher are important in encouraging interviewees to elaborate or clarify what they have said, and suggests that this can lead to more ‘thoughtful’ responses. (Irvine & Drew, 2012, p.90)

Opdenakker (2006) draws particular attention to face-to-face interviews’ distinct advantage in providing ‘social cues’ such as voice, intonation and body language. Opdenakker notes that these aspects can ‘give the interviewer a lot of extra information that can be added to the verbal answer of the interviewee’ (2006: 7). However, like Novick (2008), Opdenakker recognizes that the importance of these non-verbal cues may vary depending on the research objectives. (Irvine & Drew, 2012, p.90)

Being able to see an interviewee may give more ready access to any signs of confusion, reticence, discomfort or distress provoked by a line of enquiry (e.g. Gillham, 2005; Rubin and Rubin, 2005; Shuy, 2003). (Irvine & Drew, 2012, p.90)

Visual cues supplied by the researcher may serve a role in indicating attention and interest to an interviewee. Stephens (2007: 211) observes that, in face-to-face interviews, the non-verbal cues and ‘small utterances’ play a larger role than we might anticipate in continually shaping and guiding the interview (Irvine & Drew, 2012, p.91)

the researcher sometimes completed an interviewee’s utterance for them or helped them to find a word they were struggling with. In conversation analytic terms, this is described as a ‘collaborative completion’ (Lerner, 1996, 2004). There were also occasions where the researcher rephrased what an interviewee had just said in order to show understanding, a phenomenon described as ‘formulation’ in the conversation analytic literature (Drew, 2002; Heritage, 1985). (Irvine & Drew, 2012, p.94)

Acknowledgement tokens (also known as receipt tokens) include such things as: yeah, mm hm, uh huh, mm::, okay, right and oh. These are utterances that take a turn at speaking but do not take over the conversational floor (Drummond and Hopper, 1993). As discussed in the literature review above, such vocalized tokens may be important in signalling the researcher’s interest and attention during interview (Irvine & Drew, 2012, p.97)

Collaborative completion is an affiliative action (Lerner, 1996, 2004) and it may be that in the face-to-face interviews, the more social nature of the encounters engendered a relationship whereby the researcher sensed more scope to collaborate in the co-production of data. (Irvine & Drew, 2012, pp.100-101)