Using the lifegrid in qualitative interviews with parents and substance abusing adolescents

This article describes the usability of a retrospective data collection tool called the lifegrid (LG) in exploring adolescent substance abuse from the perspective of mothers and their substance abusing adolescent. We found the LG approach useful in building researcher-participant rapport, enhancing participants' depth and range of recall, and cross-referencing and comparing of events between participant accounts. These advantages are discussed in detail in this article, while we also unpack some of the challenges we faced in using the LG approach in our qualitative study.