ABSTRACT

College athletes’ narratives of their own pathways and the meaning they make of them are vitally important to research on the population; however, accessing college athletes to collect in-depth interview data can be challenging. Through analysis of research literatures on interview methods and college athletes, as well as reflection on an earlier study using phone interviews, I explore the potential efficacy of phone interviewing techniques for eliciting meaningful narrative data from college athlete populations. I situate college athletes within literature about interviewing elite and vulnerable populations, arguing that college athletes display characteristics of each and may be uniquely positioned for the appropriate use of phone interviewing methods. Telephone interviews have traditionally been considered a last resort data collection method; in contrast, phone interview methods may be among the preferred methods for rich qualitative data collection with college athletes, by addressing their elite and vulnerable characteristics and mediating interviewer-interviewee dissimilarity.

摘要

大学运动员对自己的道路的叙述以及他们对这些道路的理解对于人口研究至关重要；然而，访问大学运动员以收集深度访谈数据可能具有挑战性。通过对采访方法和大学运动员的研究文献的分析，以及对早期使用电话采访的研究的反思，我探索了电话采访技术在从大学运动员群体中获取有意义的叙事数据的潜在功效。我将大学运动员置于有关采访精英和弱势群体的文献中，认为大学运动员表现出每个人的特征，并且可能在适当使用电话采访方法方面具有独特的定位。电话采访历来被认为是最后的数据收集方法；