ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the methodological and ethical issues that a secondary analysis of interviewer notes suggests. It presents data from the interviewer notes to explore the interviewers' experiences of data collection for the Adjustment of Young Workers to Work Situations and Adult Roles project. The chapter examines how the researchers' preoccupations with social class, income and wealth, the home environment, the physical appearance of the respondent, and respondent's family and friends, may have affected the research process. It reflects on the importance of secondary analysis for educational and sociological research. The chapter argues that if secondary analysis is to be effective then where researchers have access to project documentation such as interviewer notes should be subjected to the same secondary analysis process as the main dataset. Hammersley suggests that the audit model could be taken to imply that the efficiency and competence of researchers can be assessed on the basis of archived material.
