Ethical issues in interviewing as a research method in human geography

Interview methods are becoming increasingly popular in human geography. The establishment of ethics procedures in Australian universities forces most interview-based studies into an empirical-realist framework of scientific enquiry, usually as adjuncts to quantitative methods. Ethics procedures, while offering some safeguards, generally fail to cope with issues of power and gender relations in interviewing and with issues of representing others through language. Interviews with lone fathers are used to exemplify some of the ethical issues in the use of interviewing as a research method.