Yeo Sarah, Ehiri John, Magrath Priscilla, Dawson Angela, Ernst Kacey, Alaofè Halimatou
The University of Arizona Cancer Center, Tucson, AZ, USA.
Health Promotion Sciences Department, Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA.
Int J Qual Methods. 2024 Jan-Dec;23. doi: 10.1177/16094069241308543. Epub 2024 Dec 11.
The go-along method is a way of interviewing people in situ. Combining participant observation and interviewing, the method capitalizes on the advantages of both approaches. This places study participants in context and allows researchers to elicit the interpretations, practices, and experiences of those participants within the contexts. Based on a refugee maternal health study that involved the go-along method in the United States, we reflect on the specific research questions that this approach can help answer, the advantages and limitations of employing this methodological approach and delineate the process of conducting the go-along. The go-along method has numerous benefits in studying refugee health. It can assist in identifying the needs and challenges of people with limited language skills or low educational levels, as well as providing a more nuanced understanding of life skills and language proficiency. It can aid in the observation of interactions between study participants and people around them and provide more detailed information based on spatial cues. It can assist researchers in observing how services are delivered on the ground. More importantly, it can facilitate researchers' vicarious experiences for those who may struggle in their lives. In doing so, it can facilitate contextualized understanding of refugee and their experiences. Although this method has several limitations, such as being more time-consuming and labor-intensive compared to traditional sit-down interviews and being susceptible to external conditions, the go-along method has significant potential for exploring the health of refugees.
随行法是一种就地采访人们的方式。该方法将参与观察和访谈相结合，利用了两种方法的优点。这使研究参与者处于特定情境中，并允许研究人员在这些情境中引出参与者的解释、做法和经历。基于一项在美国涉及随行法的难民孕产妇健康研究，我们思考了这种方法有助于回答的具体研究问题、采用这种方法的优缺点，并描述了进行随行研究的过程。随行法在研究难民健康方面有诸多益处。它有助于识别语言技能有限或教育水平较低者的需求和挑战，以及更细致入微地理解生活技能和语言能力。它有助于观察研究参与者与周围人的互动，并根据空间线索提供更详细的信息。它可以帮助研究人员观察实地的服务提供情况。更重要的是，它可以让研究人员体验那些生活中可能面临困难的人的经历。这样做可以促进对难民及其经历的情境化理解。尽管这种方法有一些局限性，比如与传统的坐下来访谈相比更耗时、劳动强度更大，并且容易受到外部条件的影响，但随行法在探索难民健康方面具有巨大潜力。
