Research Method: Walk-along Interviews
In walk-along, or go-along interviews, the researcher participant interaction is taken out of the more traditional sit-down context into a more active and conversational setting. The concept is based on the idea that the movement across different spaces, for example a neighbourhood or town centre, exposes both the participant and the researcher to changing infrastructures, meanings and relations which can stimulate conversations in varying ways.
Doing Walk-along Interviews means that the researcher gets immersed in the participants’ world and in their ‘journey’. In the process, the researcher-participant dynamic of asking and answering questions fades into the background in favour of a rather conversational encounter between two people. Walkalong Interviews are inexpensive and, in many ways, easier to set up than many other methods, including sit-down interviews. They are particularly useful to establish a holistic, in-depth understanding of how people relate or do not relate to the spaces that they inhabit and what their day-to-day experiences of inhabiting this place are like. Walk-along Interviews can be used alongside traditional sit down interviews and meaningfully combined with other methods such as photograph elicitation and diary writing.
![](https://aspect.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Walk-along-image-1024x724.jpg)
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