I interviewed one of the Inspectors at British Transport Police today for Dwell Time. We discussed mental wellbeing and suicide prevention – quite fitting for World Mental Health Day. The interview started off quite guarded but through the course of the dialogue it loosened up and became more conversational and relaxed. Once the recorder had been stopped and off record the conversation became even more candid and this brought into focus the impact of audio recording dialogue where there is a record and consciousness of that. When the Dwell Team team debriefed the interview afterwards we agreed that more informal dialogue per-interview can be beneficial to relax interviewee’s guards but making notes of anything relevant they say to ask them to repeat would be necessary in case they don’t naturally repeat those points on record.
