A chain of command was constructed in which the co-investigators were responsible for communication with interviewers, collection and transport of data, disbursement of interviewers' salaries and study location review visits at the end of data collection.
During interviews, the lead researcher was in constant communication with interviewers to provide support, to share information, and to assess if there were any issues.
We became aware that the principal barriers to a study would not be the very real difficulties in reaching parts of this mountainous country, with its tough terrain and unreliable transport, but the potential barriers to communication between interviewers and prospective participants, which would be less linguistic (in a country with more than 100 languages) than sociocultural.
Productive communication between the interviewer and the researcher is essential.
To minimize the difference between the verbal and non-verbal communication of the interviewers, a protocol was used for each of the interviews.
These technical problems impeded communication between the interviewers and interviewees.
Similarly, in situ personal interviewing may depend on the communication skills of the interviewer.
Field notes were recorded to describe the context (e.g., participant's non-verbal behaviours, communication processes) and the interviewer's perceptions of the interview.
Beyond this list of basics, however, there is a whole world of communication between narrator and interviewer that surrounds the words that are ultimately recorded for posterity.
Given that the communication skills of an interviewer could influence comprehension of the information, it was important that we used experienced native speakers to interpret the English version of the questionnaire to Gambian local languages that were understandable to the participants in rural and urban settings.
