Creativity in ethnographic interviews

The article discusses interviews as participatory reflexive observation. It is based on experiences of interviewing policymakers and researchers about knowledge and evidence in health promotion. This particular group of informants challenged an approach to interviews as getting informants to describe their everyday work life. By employing a methodological framework focusing on reflexive processes, interviews became consensual interactions, and the content of the interviews turned out to be analyses, interpretations and meaning making, that is, knowledge production. Interpretation and meaning making drew on ideologies, norms and values central to the field and thereby the strategies employed by the informants as well as by the researcher could be seen as wayfaring strategies; creating the paths in the field as they go along. Such an approach to interviews opens up the creative character of knowledge production and points out the role of the researcher as an active participant in the creative process