Utilising vignettes as prompts in semi-structured interviewing for employment relations research

Abstract

This article illustrates how vignettes were utilised as prompts in a semi-structured interview study of multiple job holders during the Covid-19 pandemic, to overcome challenges created by the latent nature of the topic under investigation and the atypical situation created by the pandemic. Our illustrative qualitative study sought to understand how multiple job holders identify their ‘main job’. Three key benefits of using vignettes are outlined. The first of these was the ability for vignettes to encourage participant reflexivity (introspection) in a way that was conducive to ‘unpacking’ a tacit research problem to produce rich data. The vignettes also enabled efficient use of participants’ scarce time, helped significantly by providing an interesting experience rather than a laborious one. Lastly, focusing participants’ attention on the hypothetical vignette situations helped to enable some sense of normality in an atypical context which could have otherwise considerably skewed the data. On this basis, we present vignettes as a useful research tool that other employment relations researchers may wish to employ.