Annually, our client commissions a vital study around their refugee resettlement programme; interviewing 1,500 recent immigrants, across a quantitative and qualitative study, in relation to their new life in the US.  The refugee study covers a variety of positive aspects including work, education and their children’s future, but also covers distressing topics such as reasons for their displacement and the traumas of local conflict. Interviews can be up to 40 minutes long with multiple open ended questions.

Interviewer recruitment is complex; with the refugee respondents speaking languages such as Sgaw Karen, Amharic and Rohyinga, it requires the interviewers to be native in these languages.  RONIN trained male and female interviewers (due to cultural sensitivities), speaking 21 lesser-known languages. Recruiting innovatively: contacting religious organisations, refugee community groups, universities and embassies. We developed our most comprehensive face-to-face training programme, designed to be interactive from the start, an important factor in building confidence within the interviewer group swiftly. This increased confidence was integral to ensuring that the interviewers could get the best out of the refugee participants. Throughout the training significant emphasis was placed on MRS rules relating to vulnerable participants. Interviewers were trained in how to interview empathetically and understand when a respondent is becoming distressed recounting past experiences, so given the confidence to use their discretion as to when to move on.

To ensure high quality data - training and development was continuous throughout the three months of research. Client Project Lead - RONIN were very forward thinking and thorough in their preparation for this research. They needed a qualitative approach to an international quantitative telephone project. We brought together the multi-lingual telephone interviewers prior to the project, challenging them to open their quantitative minds to qualitative techniques and how to handle a sensitive subject empathetically.

Phone interviewing (CATI) provides an opportunity to ask semi-structured questions and record open-ended answers that can be probed for maximum information and insight. The discussive interview still remains the most efficient way to collect meaningful and relevant insight.