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Introduction
The interview is one of the key tools for the qualitative researcher, and indeed a large proportion of social science investigations rely on interview data ([25] Roulston et al. , 2003). Given this significance, a number of authors have dissected the interview process from a range of different perspectives. One approach has been to critique the interview from different theoretical approaches, for example, feminist critiques ([21] Oakley, 1981); critical theory critiques ([18] Kezar, 2003); and those based on the linguistic turn and deconstructive processes ([8] Cuff, 1993; [24] Rapley, 2001). Other writers have focussed on the nature of the interviewee and have reported on, for example, their experiences of interviewing particular groups such as "ultra-elites" ([29] Zuckerman, 1972); women ([21] Oakley, 1981); men ([19] Lawthom, 1999); and recreational drug users ([24] Rapley, 2001). Additionally recent critique has focused on the notion that the interview is not a static event, but an active, dynamic, process where both the interviewer and the interviewee are co-constructing meaning. As [16] Holstein and Gubrium (1997, p. 114) suggest:
Both parties to the interview are necessarily and ineluctably active . Meaning is not merely elicited by apt questioning, nor simply transported through respondent replies; it is actively and communicatively assembled in the interview encounter.
This paper is set within that tradition and is concerned to explore the processes at work when researchers are interviewed about the research process. The impetus for engaging with this issue arises from three main experiences. First, each of the authors has a sense that in recent years there has been a growing use of this kind of interview, which we will call the researcher interview. For some time, social researchers with an interest in social studies of science have interviewed scientists about their practices ([11] Gilbert and Mulkay, 1984), but in this case, while the parties to the interview may be peers in a general sense, they do not participate in the same or even cognate research fields. Instead, we have in mind researcher interviews in which both parties have an understanding of the research process and they function in the same or adjacent fields. It is striking that the first round of twenty projects funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council...