Geographic interviews: A qualitative geographic information systems (QGIS) method for understanding person-in-environment

Social work grounds itself in a person-in-environment (PIE) paradigm, often centering Ecological Systems Theory in early coursework. However, there are limited methods in social work research for operationalizing PIE. This paper introduces geographic interviews as a method for understanding the relationship between people and their environments. Geographic interviews, a participant-driven qualitative geographic information systems (QGIS) method, combine go-along/walking interviews with participant markings on visual-spatial representations (e.g., architectural floorplans, neighborhood maps) to represent individual and collective experiences of a specific space. This paper illustrates a case example of using geographic interviews to understand the recently housed young adults’ experiences of a permanent supportive housing (PSH) setting from data collection through dissemination. As a method-in-development, this paper ends with key questions which may future advancement of the geographic interview methodology. Specifically, future work should explore the use of physical movement, map types, and technology/materials as variables in implementing the geographic interview methodology to understand the relationship between people and their environments.