Using Informal Conversations in Qualitative Research

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to promote a greater use of informal conversations in qualitative research. Although not a new innovation, we posit that they are a neglected innovation and a method that should become more widely employed. We argue that these conversations create a greater ease of communication and often produce more naturalistic data. While many researchers have written about the use of informal conversations in ethnography, as part of participant observation, we are advocating that these conversations have an application beyond ethnography and can be used in more general qualitative exploration that occurs in everyday settings where talking is involved. They can be used as the main method but also to complement and add to more formal types of data created through interview. Sometimes informal conversations are not only the best way, they are the only way to generate data. We use examples to show how we have used informal conversations in our research, which we interrogate and use to raise a number of, mainly ethical and methodological, issues. We discuss the main advantages and disadvantages of using this method, including the status and validity of data produced.