The problem with truth in qualitative interviews: reflections from a narrative perspective

Abstract

This paper considers the narrative complexity of the telling–listening process that unfolds in qualitative interviews in sport and exercise sciences. Acknowledging the narrative complexity of memory itself, it critiques the perhaps implicit assumption in many researchers’ minds that interviewees’ responses to interviewers’ questions are to be taken as ‘the truth’ in some simple, straightforward manner. By the same token, it concludes by arguing that truth is ultimately no less problematic an issue in quantitative research than it is in qualitative research, merely problematic in a different way.