Coping with Distrust in a Study of Intergenerational Puerto Rican Families in New York City

This paper discusses the way in which a research team coped with the problem of respondents' distrust during a field study of intergenerationally linked Puerto Rican families in New York City. Distrust was mitigated by the presence of bilingual and bicultural interviewers who had a genuine interest in the Hispanic community, the opportunities given to skeptical interviewees to test the veracity of the research team's statements, the efforts to make the interviews enjoyable to the interviewee, the interviewers' adaptation to generational differences, and compliance with cultural amenities. The presentation of the field team's experiences in coping with distrust is intended as a contribution to an understanding of how to solve certain problems specific to data collection in urban-based field studies and as a means of stimulating informed discussion of the topic.