“I Just Totally Forgot About it”: Methodological and Ethical Reflections on use of a Mobile Ethnography app for Responsive Interviews in Qualitative Longitudinal Research

This article offers a reflexive account of my use of a digital ethnography app to prompt ‘responsive interviews’ during an 18-month qualitative longitudinal study on the topic of mental health, welfare and employment. The intention was that participants would use the app to alert me to relevant changes concerning their health, work or welfare benefits, and that this could trigger a brief, focused interview in between the three main interview waves. Whilst on a technical level, the app was highly functional and user-friendly, take-up and use by study participants was minimal. Participants gave varied reasons for limited or non-use of the app, including forgetting its existence, not perceiving there had been relevant changes to report, not knowing what to report, not feeling comfortable providing sensitive information via the app, favouring more familiar channels of communication, and not finding the app personally beneficial. Some of these obstacles may be amenable to change, in that they reflect a need for greater clarity from the researcher on why and how we wished participants to use the app. However, others may be impossible or unethical to seek to modify, as they reflect personal preferences and boundaries. A number of unanticipated ethical challenges also arose relating to use of a digital platform when studying sensitive topics. These pertained to the severity of participant disclosures via the app, difficulties in maintaining temporal and relational boundaries when utilising an effectively 24/7 communication channel, and the fundamental ethics of responsive interviews at times of vulnerability and heightened distress. This article offers a critical and reflexive account of these methodological and ethical experiences, contributing learning points which may help shape decisions in determining appropriate tools, methodological contingencies and ethical safeguards, for future digitally-assisted qualitative studies.