Phone it in: Reflections on the use of phone interview methods with college athletes

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.