ABSTRACT

This article discusses anonymizing elite interviewees. Based on our experiences with interviewing professional elites and ultra-elites in different research projects, we describe how the types of conflicts involving analysis and publication change when interviewees are not promised anonymity. We discuss how contextualizing the elite positions of anonymized interviewees becomes increasingly difficult in interviews with persons who hold prestigious positions of authority and are interviewed in their official capacity. Masking interviewees can create conflicts with regard to the researcher’s presentation of results, the transparency of the research and the ability of interviewees to talk back. We show how working with non-anonymized interviewees – and even using excerpts from interviews on public radio – can be an option in qualitative research. However, non-anonymized interviews with elites should be considered only in some instances and may seriously hamper the validity of the material in other cases.

摘要

本文讨论匿名精英受访者。根据我们在不同研究项目中采访专业精英和超精英的经验，我们描述了当受访者不承诺匿名时，涉及分析和发表的冲突类型如何变化。我们讨论了在采访那些担任权威职位并以官方身份接受采访的人时，如何将匿名受访者的精英职位背景化变得越来越困难。掩盖受访者可能会在研究人员的结果呈现、研究的透明度和受访者的回话能力方面产生冲突。我们展示了如何与非匿名受访者合作——甚至使用公共广播采访的摘录——如何成为定性研究的一种选择。