From Challenge to Opportunity: Virtual Qualitative Research During COVID-19 and Beyond

COVID-19 has required researchers to adapt methodologies for remote data collection. While virtual interviewing has traditionally received limited attention in the qualitative literature, recent adaptations to the pandemic have prompted increased discussion and adoption. Yet, current discussion has focussed on practical and ethical concerns and retained a tone of compromise, of coping in a crisis. This paper extends the nascent conversations begun prior to the pandemic to consider the wider methodological implications of video-call interviews. Beyond the short-term, practical challenges of the pandemic, these adaptations demonstrate scope for longer-term, beneficial digitalisation of both traditional and emergent interview methods. Updating traditional interview methods digitally has demonstrated how conversion to video interviewing proves beneficial in its own right. Virtual focus-group-based research during COVID-19, for example, accessed marginalised populations and elicited notable rapport and rich data, uniting people in synchronous conversation across many environments. Moreover, emergent interview methods such as the Grid Elaboration Method (a specialised free-associative method) demonstrated further digitalised enhancements, including effective online recruitment with flexible scheduling, virtual interactions with significant rapport, and valuable recording and transcription functions. This paper looks beyond the pandemic to future research contexts where such forms of virtual interviewing may confer unique advantages: supporting researcher and participant populations with mobility challenges; enhancing international research where researcher presence or travel may be problematic. When opportunities for traditional face-to-face methods return, the opportunity for virtual innovation should not be overlooked.