7th June. Watching novelty: considering the use of video recorded interviews

At this week’s PHaR, a temporarily shrunken group considered Kitzinger & Kitzinger’s 2018 paper. Their work sought to understand family experiences of relatives’ deaths; relatives who had been in vegetative or minimally conscious states and whose death followed the withdrawal of artificial nutrition and hydration. Video clips of some of the interviews have been made available online and this method of presentation of data was to be the focus of our discussion: in terms of reporting data, could this be some sort of ‘future’ for qualitative research?

Given our phenomenological interests, we were struck by the empathetic resonance evoked by the video recordings: the contrast between reading the written extracts and the effect of seeing interviewees as they described their experiences. In particular the non-vocal expressions of the interviewees, the facial expressions that ‘said’ so much. This was most felt in the recordings of David and Olivia: the sadness of loss, but also their joy-infused relief when a change in care environment (from a hospital setting to a care home) bought dignity and reassurance. Their story caused us to consider the (perhaps unanticipated) effect of a patient-centred approach to care of individuals in minimally conscious states: talk of David’s mother as if she were present and ‘there’ had disrupted his process of understanding (“she wasn’t there”).  

On a slight, but relevant, detour we thought about arts-based methods of data collection and presentation. Specifically the works of Professor Victoria Tischler as well as the ‘power’ of poetry (Peter Willis and Kate Leeson’s collection of reflections on Havi Carel’s Illness: the cry of the flesh). In comparison to the videos watched, there is a different quality, perhaps type, of emotions produced by these works. We wondered if the lifeworld component of ‘mood’ could be a way to understand these different responses: the more ‘direct’ empathy evoked by the videos, seemingly linked specifically to the narratives of the interviewees, compared with the personal, less tangible, reflections brought about by the reading of a poem.    

In a fitting ‘call back’ to our first PHaR meeting, we had expected the videos to play a greater role within the analysis of the data presented in the paper. We wondered that possibly this may be the focus of another article, making use of the added ‘richness’ provided by the visual recordings, possibly through a phenomenological approach or via conversation analysis (particular the, at times, ‘performative’ approach to storytelling shown by interviewees; exploring the impact the camera [and wider contexts] will have had). Thinking about the process of choosing quotes that best illustrate identified themes, we reflected on the potential impact of novelty: might the availability (or not) of a videoed interview play a part in the selection process, privileging the accounts of those who waiver anonymity over those who don’t?

Enjoying the conceptualisation of “jig-saw identification” (identification through the piecing together of information from the paper with court documents or media reports) we drew upon the work of our colleague Lydia Aston: how her use of vignettes, composed together from participant narratives, has minimised the risk of identification whilst maintaining the salient features of experiencing life with a severe and rare metabolic disorder (Niemann–Pick disease Type C).

References: 

Carel, H. (2016). Illness: The cry of the flesh. Routledge.

Kitzinger, J., & Kitzinger, C. (2018). Deaths after feeding-tube withdrawal from patients in vegetative and minimally conscious states: A qualitative study of family experience. Palliative medicine, 0269216318766430.

Willis, P., Leeson, K., & Leeson, K. M. (2012). Learning life from illness stories.