Abstract
Social work grounds itself in a person-in-environment (PIE) paradigm, often centering Ecological Systems Theory in early coursework. However, there are limited methods in social work research for operationalizing PIE. This paper introduces geographic interviews as a method for understanding the relationship between people and their environments. Geographic interviews, a participant-driven qualitative geographic information systems (QGIS) method, combine go-along/walking interviews with participant markings on visual-spatial representations (e.g., architectural floorplans, neighborhood maps) to represent individual and collective experiences of a specific space. This paper illustrates a case example of using geographic interviews to understand the recently housed young adults’ experiences of a permanent supportive housing (PSH) setting from data collection through dissemination. As a method-in-development, this paper ends with key questions which may future advancement of the geographic interview methodology. Specifically, future work should explore the use of physical movement, map types, and technology/materials as variables in implementing the geographic interview methodology to understand the relationship between people and their environments.
Keywords
Introduction
Social work is a person-in-environment (PIE) discipline, wherein students, workers, and researchers alike are trained to understand people within (both impacting and impacted by) their environmental contexts. Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory (1979) is taught as a foundational concept to concretize the PIE paradigm early on in social work programs, cementing the theory as foundational to the discipline. However, place-based scholars have critiqued that very little within the social work discipline has been done to figure out how to do person-in-environment (Akesson et al., 2017; Kemp, 2009). While contextual and place-based frameworks are seminal to our research and practice, we do not have explicit practice and research methods to operationalize understanding the relationship between people and their environments.
To fill this gap in social work scholarship, Teixeira (2018) calls for social work researchers to engage with qualitative geographic information systems (QGIS) methodologies. Drawing upon critical and qualitative geographic methods, QGIS approaches combine spatial data with other qualitative data; these approaches include, among others, sketch mapping, walking interviews, go-along interviews, and participatory photo mapping (Boschmann and Cubbon, 2014; Teixeira, 2018). The present paper picks up Teixeira’s (2018) charge for social workers to use QGIS approaches to operationalize the person-in-environment paradigm in social work.
Paper aims
This article aims to introduce geographic interviews as an innovative and engaging methodology for operationalizing the person-in-environment (PIE) framework in social work research. The article begins with a grounding in the ‘place of place’ in social work practice, then describes the qualitative geographic information systems (QGIS) lineage upon which geographic interviews build. After positing a working definition for geographic interviews, we will move into an extended case example of using geographic interviews to understand recently housed young adults’ experiences in a permanent supportive housing (PSH) setting - from inception, through implementation, analysis, and dissemination. Finally, we will end with key implications and guiding questions for social work researchers who wish to build upon this methodology in their own work to understand the relationship between people and their environments.
Literature review
Place and social work
Place, as a constructivist notion, underpins much of social work theory and practice, yet is not often explicitly defined. It is helpful to look to the discipline of geography to formally define place. Contemporary geographer Tim Cresswell (2014) suggests that “places are never established. They only operate through constant and reiterative practice” (p. 70). Geographer Yi-Fu Tuan (1977) distinguishes between two commonly interchanged terms – space and place – and likens “space” to an abstract notion of movement and “place” to the pauses we find along the way (p. 6). For space to become place, we must add meaning.
What kind of meaning? Social work, as a discipline and practice, has long recognized that places shape people. We can trace this history back to Hull House in Chicago in the late 1800’s, wherein social worker Frances Kelley led residents in community mapping practices to draw links between poverty, race, nationality, and health outcomes (Hillier, 2007; Teixeira, 2018). These maps were foundational in helping to establish a relationship between structural conditions on resident health and wellbeing, thus replacing notions of individual pathologies of poverty with structural root causes (Teixeira, 2018).
In contemporary social work, scholars are increasingly recognizing that placing “place” within the social work dialectic needs to account for power dynamics inherent in social structures. Akesson and colleagues (2017) assert that inquiries of place need account for the ways that “underlying socio-political processes related to power (i.e., capitalism, ageism, political violence) shape individual experiences with place” (p. 372). Kemp (2009) furthers our understanding of reciprocity in these powered dynamics, honoring that while “people make places; places also make people.” Both Akesson et al.’s (2017) and Kemp’s (2009) assertions remind us that places are constantly constructed— both individually and communally, and through necessarily powered dynamics.
While our field is built on a person-in-environment paradigm (Bronfenbrenner, 1979), Kemp (2009) asserts that surprisingly little has been done to figure out how to actually “‘do’ person-in environment” in social work (p. 117). We tout the ecological theory paradigm and a person-in-environment approaches as seminal to the education of all social work practitioners, but pay little attention to the operationalization of the ecological systems endeavor in practice. Social work students are often taught Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory in early coursework and encouraged to map the ecological systems of themselves and their clients, yet they are not often taught how to integrate these constructs into ongoing social work practice and research. As such, our discipline needs methods which help us ‘do’ person-in-environment.
Qualitative geographic information systems (QGIS)
Using mapping to illustrate participants’ place experiences holds a longstanding tradition within Qualitative Geographic Information Systems (QGIS) approaches. QGIS approaches were born from critical and feminist geographic epistemologies and emerged out of critiques of GIS as unnecessarily positivist (Boschmann and Cubbon, 2014). While quantitative GIS methods often use digital technology to analyze and visualize spatial data, QGIS approaches tend to center inductive and participant-driven approaches to understand how participants interact with and experience places (Elwood and Cope, 2009). QGIS approaches often combine qualitative data with GIS digital technologies (e.g., plotting participant photos in relevant locations, overlaying qualitative interview data with census data in ArcGIS). They may also employ fully qualitative approaches to inquiry (Arpagian and Aitken, 2018).
Recent work has recognized described QGIS as an “untapped research approach for social work” (Teixeira, 2018: p. 9). Teixeira’s (2018) work has moved this QGIS and social work conversation and methodological integration forward, recognizing the need for social work to embrace such approaches. Not only do QGIS approaches align with social work values more broadly, but they also offer rigor for operationalizing our person-in-environment paradigm. Further, like other participatory and community-based methodologies, QGIS approaches align well with ‘bottom up’ approaches to research, which allow individuals to characterize their own experiences rather than imagining researchers as ‘experts’ (Talen, 2000). Such critical approaches are apt for privileging voices, bodies, and perspectives often marginalized by conventional research. The present paper takes up Teixeira’s (2018) charge for social work to ‘tap’ QGIS approaches. I offer a novel QGIS methodology – geographic interviews – which invite community members to partner with researchers to map (individual and collective; emotional and embodied) experiences of a particular place. In doing so, I offer social workers and social work scholars a practical and meaningful way of operationalizing the person-in-environment paradigm of social work.
Describing and defining geographic interviews
Geographic Interviews, which adapt and combine two well-known QGIS methods (sketch mapping and go-along interviews), offer a valuable contribution to qualitative social work research which seeks to understand the relationship between people and their physical contextual environments.
Sketch mapping
Sketch maps are a type of mental mapping approach in QGIS which rely on constructivist epistemological frameworks to combine cartographically accurate maps with the unique lived experiences of participants (Boschmann and Cubbon, 2014). The practice emerges from critical GIS traditions, which situate the lived experience of participants as valuable sources of knowledge (see, e.g., Blomley, 2006; Kwan, 2002). Sketch maps have generally been used as spatial data collection tools to understand, for example, the lived experiences of those seeking reproductive healthcare experiences (Fielding and Cisneros-Puebla, 2009), where low-income individuals access basic needs services (Matthews et al., 2005), and places in cities where individuals feel safe and unsafe (Fielding and Cisneros-Puebla, 2009; Pain et al., 2006; Wridt, 2010). This final example provides the basis for sketch maps as applied within the Geographic Interview method in our following case example.
Go-along interviews
In “go-along” interviews (Carpiano, 2009), researchers walk, drive/ride, or otherwise physically travel alongside participants to understand their experiences of place. Another similar method, “walking interviews,” (Clark and Emmel, 2010; Kinney, 2017) engages participants through conversation while walking to understand how they experience a place – often, their neighborhood. These methods have recently been used to understand, for example, community health priorities (Berg et al., 2023), across leisure research (Moran et al., 2022), and long-term residents’ experiences of gentrification (Lown, 2023).
In their comparison of walking and sedentary interview techniques (i.e., sitting down and interviewing participants, as is done in much qualitative research), Evans and Jones (2011) found that walking interviews facilitate much richer participant narratives – both in terms of interview length and spatial specificity of the area of study. These findings suggest that walking or go-along interviews are particularly valuable when seeking to understand the relationship between a person and a place where they spend time.
Bringing these methods together
Both methods (sketch maps and “go-along” interviews) tend to include opportunities for participants to lead or shape the interview experience in a participatory manner by literally leading the researcher, in comparison to traditional phenomenological qualitative interviews, where researchers tend to guide the course of conversation. In the context of the geographic interviews in the present study, the combination of sketch maps and walking interviews allowed for accessible opportunities for research team members to interview residents about the emotions and experiences they feel in the PSH setting, while physically traveling to these places and marking them on architectural floorplans. Often, QGIS approaches are employed at the neighborhood or census tract level; operating at the building level, as done in this study, is an expansion of conventional QGIS approach and offers insight into QGIS as a compelling methodology within hyper-localized housing research.
Geographic Interviews are a data collection tool for understanding the relationship between people and a place where they spend time. Geographic Interviews rely upon maps/floorplans of a space, as well as interviews with people who spend time in that space, to understand how it feels to spend time there. They are well-suited for understanding both an individual’s experience of a place, and a collective/composite perspective of that place.
Geographic Interviews combine an adapted form of sketch maps and walking interviews. In this case, instead of drawing on maps as often done in sketch mapping, participants marked different colored sticky dots on floorplans of LH. While many “walking” or “go along” interviews collect multiple forms of data from participants such as spatial markers or photographs (see, e.g., Kamarudin et al., 2022), these data are often treated as distinct - but complementary - methods which are later combined and analyzed by researchers (sometimes using GIS technology or software). The Geographic Interview method advances beyond the extant QGIS literature to treat spatial and interview data as intrinsically intertwined and participant-driven, allowing in-the-moment interpretation with participants at both the individual and collective level. The geographic interview method can be understood using the following working definition posited in recent (Littman et al., 2024) work: Geographic interviews, a participant-driven qualitative geographic information systems (QGIS) method, combine go-along/walking interviews with participant markings on visual-spatial representations (e.g., architectural floorplans, neighborhood maps) to represent individual and collective experiences of a specific space. Geographic interviews are analyzed in a multiphase process including visual-spatial analysis, descriptive analysis, and qualitative analysis.
Case example: using geographic interviews to understand young adults’ sense of place
Community partner context
In the following case example, I will illustrate how our research team used Geographic Interviews to engage young adults in understanding their experiences of their permanent supportive housing environment. As the first application of the Geographic Interview methodology, this case example offers insight into methodological possibilities and challenges. Later, I will discuss implications for methodological application and continued development.
Partners in the initial (2021-2023) pilot of the Geographic Interview methodology were young adult residents of Laural House (LH) a 34-unit permanent supportive housing (PSH) program run by the organization Karis, Inc. In Grand Junction, Colorado which serves formerly unhoused young adults. Grand Junction is a city of 66,000 people, and is the largest city between Denver, Colorado and Salt Lake City, Utah in the midst of an otherwise rural mountain region. Grand Junction is nearly 90% White and has a median household income of about $58,000 (U.S. Census Bureau, 2022).
LH leaseholders are between the ages of 18 and 24 when signing their leases, and are determined eligible for LH residence based on protective and supportive factors, substance use, mental health and a high score on the Transition-Age Youth – Vulnerability Index – Service Prioritization Decision Assistance Tool (TAY-VI-SPDAT; Orgode Consulting 2015), which assesses factors such as chronicity of housing instability, health, and service use. Permanent supportive housing, in this case, means that residents may stay indefinitely unless they violate their lease agreement. Although most units are occupied by one individual, a handful of units house an additional partner and/or dependent (child) of the leaseholder(s).
Shopworks Architecture, a Denver-based architecture firm designed LH. As experts in trauma-informed design (TID) for supportive housing, Shopworks aimed to realize the TID principles of choice, community, and comfort in their design of LH (Wilson et al., 2020). Building on their learnings that certain elements of housing design promote these principles, Shopworks integrated such elements into LH: natural elements both inside and outside of the building, multiple gathering spaces and types of seating, and colorful identity markers such as activity boards advertising goings on in the building.
Our research team, then based at the University of Denver, partnered with Karis, Inc. In the summer during which LH was being built. We began a three-plus-year evaluation and research partnership with Karis, Inc., shortly after LH opened. This ongoing partnership included conducting a 3-year mixed methods longitudinal study, as well as qualitative and mixed methods data collection through game-based inquiry, focus groups, and Geographic Interviews. Our Geographic Interview research team, comprised of this paper’s author and two additional research team members trained in the methodology, conducted Geographic Interviews during a 3-day visit to Grand Junction in October 2021. Note: empirical findings from this study can be found in greater depth as published in Littman et al. (2024).
A note on positionality: when describing this methodological development case example, I move between “I” and “we” statements when describing this work. While I have been the principal developer of this method, I worked with a team to carry out the research described in the case study. In doing so, I have worked to honor the contributions of those who have supported the development of this work, and have acknowledged these individuals in Acknowledgements.
Overarching methodological approach
The Geographic Interview methodology combines sketch mapping, through marks on maps or floorplans, with tour-based interviews alongside participants. Figure 1 illustrates the steps and attributes of the methodology, from data collection to dissemination. Following, we describe the steps taken to collect, analyze, and disseminate Geographic Interviews in partnership with Laurel House. See Appendix A for a more detailed protocol for conducting geographic interviews. Geographic interview methodology from data collection to dissemination.
Developing the method and interview guide
One of the aims of our parent study was to understand young adult residents’ experiences of the physical environment at Laurel House – both given its context as a newly opened program, and the architects’ intentions of creating a trauma-informed environment for youth who had endured chronic housing instability. As mapping or interviews alone would not adequately attend to our study aims, the Geographic Interview methodology was thus created to be able to holistically understand residents’ experiences of the setting.
Our team was interested in understanding inductive emotional experiences of residents throughout the setting (vs specific emotional experiences and/or specific places). As such, I created a semi-structured interview guide that captured a general range of emotions associated with trauma-informed practice and design – namely, safety, connection, and comfort.
Geographic Interview Guide.
The core interview questions aimed to capture residents’ inductive experiences of safety, comfort, and connection at LH. It is important to note that these concepts, in and of themselves, are complex. As inherently constructed concepts, we did not define for participants how we conceptualized these terms, but instead probed for residents’ insights to understand their understanding of these concepts and how physical and social elements of LH shaped their experiences with these concepts. Specifically, we asked for descriptions of their emotional experiences across the space, what they felt in various spaces, and what about these spaces made them feel that way.
Data collection
During one of our research team’s visits to Laurel House, our team invited all Laurel House residents to join for Geographic Interviews. We shared information about the opportunity to join in our research, and consented interested participants. In these interviews, researchers held binders with the interview guide on one side (with sticky dots notating a color associated with each question), and the floorplan on the other. In the spirit of participation and transparency, participants were invited to look at the binder alongside the researcher or hold the binder themselves. See binder setup in Figure 2. Geographic interview data collection setup.
To engage in these semi-structured interviews, residents were invited to physically bring the research team member to places within LH which evoked the emotional experiences named in the interview guide. Then, participants were asked to place a sticky dot on the floorplan location which corresponded to the color of – and answer to - each question. The research team also gave participants the choice to describe these areas without physically traveling to them if that was preferred, although this option was very rarely chosen by participants. At times, participants also made additional notes on the floorplans or chose to place dots of other colors (feelings) on the floorplans. Research team members asked probing questions about why each place elicited specific feelings, if there were specific memories of having the stated emotions in that space, and anything else important to share. The research team recorded interviews and transcribed them later on.
As many young people who have experienced homelessness are asked about their demographic characteristics for research or service program purposes with little agency over whether or how to share such information, our research team intentionally invited participants to share only what they wanted to about their social and demographic characteristics. Participants were invited to describe their positionality (e.g., race, sexuality, gender, how long they had lived at LH, and any other identities or experiences which were important to share) as well as how these identities shaped their experiences navigating LH.
Geographic interview analysis: three-step analytic approach
A three-step approach was used to analyze geographic interview data: (1) visual mapping, (2) descriptive quantitative analysis, and (3) integrate interview data via thematic analysis.
Step 1. Visual mapping
After individual maps were created during Geographic Interviews, three large format (24 × 36 inch) copies of the floorplans were placed on the wall of the common area with sticky dots placed (anonymously) where each resident had placed theirs, illuminating the emerging clusters, trends, and outliers from individual interviews. Each of the three large-format floorplans represented the three primary dyads of emotional experiences inquired about during Geographic Interviews. (comfortable/uncomfortable; safe/unsafe; connected/disconnected). While our research team was at Laurel House, staff were invited to engage with and discuss the patterns they noticed – both informally in dialogue, and formally through writing on sticky notes (Figure 3). Post-geographic interview floorplans on walls at Laurel House.
Step 2. Descriptive quantitative analysis
After placing dots on a collective floorplan, our team applied codes to the individual renderings to categorize space typologies (common area inside, common area outside [smoking area], common area outside [backyard], and apartment). Then, we tallied how many participants identified each feeling associated with each space by counting associated dots within each space type.
Step 3. Integrate interview data via thematic analysis
Our visual analysis in Step 1 found that third places (community spaces) at Laurel House (specifically, the common areas inside and outside the building) contained the most participant dots, yet that emotional experiences often contrasted (i.e., participants reported feeling both connected and unsafe in these spaces), the research team analyzed interview excerpts which highlighted participants’ experiences in these common spaces. We identified the most common feelings in each of these spaces, and developed codes to represent what aspects of the space contributed to those feelings. We then wrote summary memos for each space describing these specific feelings, the experiences and attributes contributing to these feelings. Finally, our research team noted the trends across these spaces, and identified the main themes and subthemes which captured experiences of participants across interview and map data.
Dissemination
Our team had the opportunity to disseminate our findings for community and scholarly impact, which met our research aims of both scientific and practical application of our Geographic Interview findings.
Community-facing presentations
The first two presentations of our findings were given to our key partners in this research – Karis, Inc. (the organization that runs Laurel House) and Shopworks Architecture (the architecture firm which designed Laurel House). These presentations had a dual aim – we hoped to member check our findings to with those who most understood these spaces, and we received confirmation that our findings represented participant experiences well. Further, these presentations had the aim of fostering conversation about actions which could help maintain the valuable aspects of these settings at Laurel House and in future designs, as well as discussion about what may need to change to better honor trauma-informed principles. For example, our finding that noise traveled loudly through the lobby space at LH in a way that made many residents feel uncomfortable led to discussions about adapting an in-progress acoustic plan for a future similar supportive housing program for youth.
Community-facing reports
After sharing our presentations with community partners, we drafted a brief report of our findings, with particular focus on policy and practice implications for youth homelessness organizations and permanent supportive housing programs. We disseminated this report to about 70 of our contacts in local, state, and national outfits across policy and practice realms, and offered to be available for additional presentations and discussion on our findings with these partners.
Scholarly journal articles and presentations
Finally, we shared both our methods and findings in peer reviewed journal articles (e.g., the present article, and Littman et al., 2024). We also presented our findings at juried academic conferences within our field of social work (e.g., the Council on Social Work Education Annual Program Meeting and the Society for Social Work and Research conference) and beyond. We were also invited to co-present with Shopworks Architecture at the American Institute of Architects Colorado chapter’s annual conference, which posed an opportunity to connect with architects and planners – an audience with the power to put our findings on trauma-informed design and ‘contested spaces’ into practice.
Discussion
The promise of the geographic interview methodology
This manuscript describes the application of the novel geographic interview method – a participant-centered constructivist approach to learning about the relationship between people and their environments. The first application of this method was described in the above case study – wherein researchers partnered with young adult residents in a permanent supportive housing (PSH) program to understand their experiences of safety, comfort, and connection in the space. Piloting the geographic interview method, our team collected interview and spatial data at the individual level. The analysis process included visual mapping, descriptive quantitative analysis, and thematic analysis of interview data based on spatial hotspots and trends. After completing analysis, we shared our findings with the PSH program, the architecture firm, and in various community and academic convenings. The findings have been able to shape tangible changes in the present PSH environment and, further, offer a roadmap for future similar programs and environments.
As an alternative to conventional qualitative interview methods, the geographic interview method offers an embodied, place-based approach to engagement with individuals and communities. Geographic interviews, in comparison to conventional interviews, elicit additional sources of data and means of data gathering; they also offer novel and expanded forms of engagement with participants. After learning how data collection worked, participants often took the research binder with the interview guide and map and led the interview completely as a tour – desiring or requiring very little direction from interviewers. Our team found reflected upon how this level of (and speed of) engagement felt unique from many other qualitative research methods, such as semi-structured interviews or focus groups, which place researchers in power positions and as guides of processes. Geographic interviews, conversely, embrace participants as co-creators of knowledge.
As a qualitative research method, geographic interviews draw upon – and expand – the lineage of qualitative GIS (QGIS) methods, such as “walking” or “go along” interviews. Similar to geographic interviews, these types of QGIS methods often collect multiple forms of data from participant (e.g., spatial markers, photographs) (Kamarudin et al., 2022). However, these data are often treated as complementary/adjunctive (but separate) methods which are later integrated and analyzed by researchers. As such, the geographic interview method advances QGIS methodology to treat spatial and interview data as intrinsically intertwined, which allows for in-the-moment interpretation with participants at the individual and collective level.
Implications and ethical considerations for social work research
Implications for social work research
While social work predicates itself upon a “person-in-environment” paradigm (Bronfenbrenner, 1979), our field has very few methods for operationalizing this paradigm in social work research (Texeira, 2018). The geographic interview methodology offers a compelling means of doing so. Social work and social science researchers who wish to partner with individuals and communities to systematically understand the relationship between people and their physical environments may consider this methodology as one of the few options available which considers and combines both narrative reflections (interviews) and embodied representations of experiences (spatial mapping).
Thus far, the geographic interview method has primarily been employed in the case example described here in this manuscript – in partnership with young adults in a residential permanent supportive housing (PSH) setting. The geographic interview method has also been tested as a community assessment tool in a master’s in social work course, wherein students used the method to gather information about (and alongside) a specific community, such as the social work building at a university, an office building, a residential neighborhood, a nature preserve, and more. Findings from this pilot exploration will be shared in future work, but initial analyses suggest the value of expanding the geographic interview beyond singular residential buildings (as seen in our case example here) and towards other geographic scales. We encourage social workers and social work researchers to use this paper as a guide for replicating and adapting the geographic interview methodology for future use – and hope that interested researchers will contact the author for tools and guidance.
Ethical considerations
When implementing the geographic interview methodology, certain ethical factors should be considered. Foremost, researchers should critically consider the implications of their presence in the environment they seek to study – how their identities and experiences do/do not align with participants’ and the ways their (our) mere presence may shape (or inhibit) participant engagement and responses. In the context of our study, we had developed long-term relationships with the permanent supportive housing (PSH) setting and residents through a longitudinal study when we began geographic interviews. Geographic interview recruitment occurred about a year and a half into a 3-year study, which allowed for some relationships and rapport to be built prior to consenting participants. Having these relationships already built meant that we did feel comfortable conducting the interviews ourselves. That said, in future work, researchers may consider including community-based co-researchers who either share identities with those involved in the research, including those who are current or past participants in the research.
Further, it is important to note some specific bounds we placed on our interviews to anticipate and avoid potential ethical gray areas. While conducting geographic interviews in our study, we communicated to participants that we would not be entering their personal apartments during the study. If a participant wanted to share their apartment as one of the spaces on our ‘tour,’ we would go to their front doors and not enter, expressing that this was their personal space and we did not need to see it. This choice was largely due to our team’s concerns that we would have needed to report anything we might have seen in their spaces that would have violated our mandated reporting standards and/or the rules of the PSH setting. To avoid this ethical gray area, we chose not to enter personal spaces. Future applications of the methodology may make similar decisions; either way, we urge researchers to center transparency as a value when sharing the bounds of the interview process.
Limitations & directions for future methodological development
Limitations
While this manuscript outlines a compelling new method for understanding the relationship between people and their environments, certain limitations should be noted. As a method in development, it is likely that the definition and protocol posited here is going to shift and adapt as the method continues to develop. The present definition and protocol are based on one main case example, and have also been explored in the MSW classroom setting to teach community assessment. As such, specific suggestions or implications for other settings are limited at this moment. The choice to publish this method now, rather than wait for future testing and exploration, emerges from a desire to bring other scholars into the development process – to be in conversation and collaboration.
Questions guiding future methodological development
Is it necessary to physically go to places during geographic interviews?
In the case example described here, an important part of the geographic interview process was physically moving through the PSH setting with young adult residents. While residents were given the option to stay in a single place (and/or a private room) for the interviews and talk through the map as an alternative, this alternative was not taken up much, suggesting a value and depth in physically traveling during geographic interviews. Physical locations can jog memories emotions in ways that conventional stationary interviews may not. However, there may be valid reasons why it is preferrable to travel during interviews. First, there may be privacy concerns around talking out loud while moving through spaces where other people are present. In this case, alternatives may be to limit who can enter a space during geographic interview times, or physically going on a tour, and then conducting the interview portion in a private space. Secondly, researchers may be unable to be physically present in a space with participants – due to ethical or logistical realities. In this case, it may be possible for researchers to join participants on the phone or a video call for interviews, and for participants to mark up maps and send them to researchers when the interview is done. Future research may explore these alternatives to engagement across different settings and contexts.
Is it necessary to use a cartographically accurate map?
In our focal case example, we were able to access an actual accurate floor plan of the PSH building from the architecture firm which designed the building. We found this to be an ideal scenario, as the floorplan images were readily reproducible and simple enough for researchers and participants to engage with easily. In other scenarios, an accurate map or floorplan may be very detailed or complicated, or difficult to impossible to access. Some maps may be easy to create – such as printing out a specific area on Google Maps (adding landmarks may be helpful), using publicly available municipal maps, campus maps, building maps, etc. If maps are not available, researchers may need to create a simple map or image to represent the physical space. In this case, it would be helpful to partner with members of the community of study so that important landmarks are represented. Future research may explore the differences between interview experiences of those using provided, versus research-team-created maps – with a particular eye towards accessibility and engagement of participants.
What is the role of software and technology versus mapping by hand?
We invited participants to engage with the floor plans during interviews using different colored sticky dots to represent different emotions. The tactile nature of these tools seemed valuable for participants – allowing for a literal hands-on approach to research. While many GIS and QGIS methods use digital software like ArcGIS, the hands-on approach offers very little barrier to entry in terms of technological access and knowledge. However, there may be value in exploring how the geographic interview method may interface with GIS software – especially if combined with other spatial methods and/or working on a larger geographic scale than a single building (as in our case example). For example, someone may wish to use the geographic interview method to explore college students’ experiences on a college campus, or residents’ experiences in their neighborhoods. In this case, it may be helpful to use GIS software during geographic interviews, or to transfer participant dots from interviews into software during analysis. Future work may explore these applications of the geographic interview method – tracking both the benefits and challenges of using software versus by-hand mapping.
What is the role of pre-defining (vs. leaving open ended) interview concepts?
In our case example described here, we interviewed residents about their experiences of safety, comfort, and connection. We intentionally chose not to define these concepts, instead leaving them open-ended and seeking to understand residents’ definitions of these concepts and how design elements shaped such definitions and experiences. Inherent in this choice is the reality that such complex concepts are ‘slippery,’ and this method as conceptualized does not attend to residents’ varied definitions of such concepts in the maps themselves. Future scholars may consider weighing the pros and cons of pre-defining (vs leaving open ended) such complex concepts. Pre-defining concepts for participants (e.g., “comfort is the experience of being at ease”) may offer more clarity for participants in how to answer open-ended questions. However, some of the richest conversation can come from wrestling with these concepts during interviews. Depending on the study goal (e.g., expansion vs convergence of understanding), scholars may choose to offer specific definitions during interviews, or leave concepts open ended.
Conclusion
While social work firmly grounds itself in a person-in-environment (PIE) paradigm, there are limited methods in social work research for operationalizing PIE. This paper introduces geographic interviews as an innovative and accessible method for understanding the relationship between people and their environments. This paper posits a working definition of geographic interviews, and offers a case example of using geographic interviews to understand the recently housed young adults’ experiences of a permanent supportive housing (PSH) setting from data collection through dissemination. As a method-in-development, this paper ends with key questions which may spur future advancement of the geographic interview methodology. In particular, future work should explore the use of physical movement, map types, and technology/materials as variables in implementing the geographic interview methodology to understand the relationship between people and their environments.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The author would like to honor the contributions of those who supported the development of geographic interviews, from conceptual inception to dissemination. Dr Kimberly Bender and Dr Jennifer Wilson: thank you for supporting the initial development the ideas and interview guide. Dr Jennifer Wilson, Brendon Holloway, and Colleen Cummings Melton, thank you for supporting data collection and analysis. Dr Samantha Teixeira, thank you for supporting the overall conceptual and methodological processes. Dr Greer Hamilton and Dr Josh Lown, thank you for being in-process with me along the way and sharpening this work towards the worlds we build.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
