'They Had Horrible Wallpaper': Representation of Respondents and the Interview Process in Interviewer Notes

The role and content of interviewer notes in social research has traditionally received little attention. This, in the main, is due to the fact that the interviewer notes were often written by the researchers themselves for their own use and have not become available for secondary analysis. However, a secondary analysis of interviewer notes can provide a great deal of insight into the research process and the attitudes, experiences and expectations of those working in the field. Using interviewer notes from a little known research project on youth transitions carried out in 1960s Leicester, this paper aims to explore the interviewers' experiences of the research process and considers how the interviewers own perceptions and experiences are documented in the interviewer notes.