Routine Performance in evaluation
Behind the Chair: Using Hairdressing as a Research Interview Technique
This research project investigated how embedding qualitative interviews inside a familiar, care-based activity could help participants disclose information on deeply sensitive topics. The researcher, a trained hairdresser with over 18 years of professional experience, conducted semi-structured interviews while physically doing participants’ hair in a private salon in Northern Ireland. The study worked with 18 women on culturally sensitive topics that previous research had found extremely difficult to access through traditional interview formats. The hairdressing encounter, with its built-in trust, physical distraction, mirror-mediated conversation, and flipped power dynamic, produced dramatically richer and more honest data than a face-to-face pilot interview had achieved.
What Is a “Routine Performance”?
The sociologist Erving Goffman argued that everyday life is made up of performances. We all play roles, and we all know the script. When you walk into a hair salon, you know how to behave: you sit down, you chat, you let someone touch your hair, you tell them things about your life. The hairdresser knows their role too: they listen, they care, they do not judge, they make you look good. Neither of you needs to be told how to act. You have both done this before. Goffman called these familiar, rehearsed interactions “routine performances.”
Every routine performance comes with its own setting (the salon chair, the kitchen, the car), its own props (scissors, ingredients, a steering wheel), and its own conversational contract (what is normal to talk about, how much silence is acceptable, where your eyes go). These elements work together to tell both people how to interact without anyone having to explain the rules.
This method hijacks that mechanism. Instead of inventing a new, unfamiliar evaluation format and hoping participants feel comfortable in it, you borrow a routine performance that your participants already trust. The setting, the props, and the conversational contract are already built. Your evaluation questions ride inside a script that participants have been rehearsing their whole lives. They do not need to learn how to behave in your evaluation, because they already know how to behave at the hairdresser, in the kitchen, on a walk, or in the passenger seat of a car.
The Routine Performance Evaluation
Embed your evaluation conversation inside a familiar, hands-busy activity so participants stop performing answers and start telling you the truth.
Phase 0: Logic Model & Topic Mapping
Identify the “Evaluation Gap” this method fills. It is best suited for programmes dealing with sensitive, stigmatised, or emotionally charged topics and communities where formal evaluation formats produce guarded, performative, or socially desirable responses.
Primary Objective
To unlock honest, unguarded disclosure from participants by embedding evaluation questions inside a familiar activity that already carries its own norms of trust, intimacy, and natural conversation.
Key Stakeholders
Evaluators, programme facilitators, community workers, researchers, and anyone collecting qualitative feedback from participants on topics where honesty is hard to come by.
Reflective Planning Questions – Ask Yourself Before You Begin:
- “What activity do my participants already associate with relaxed, honest conversation, and can I (or someone on my team) authentically perform it?”
- “If I sat my participants down in a room with a clipboard and asked these evaluation questions directly, would they give me the real answer or the safe answer?”
- “Where does the power sit in my current evaluation set-up, and does it sit with me or with my participants?”
Part 1: The DIY Step-by-Step Method
Choose Your Routine Performance
Every community already has activities where honest talk happens naturally. Your job is to identify which one fits your participants and your programme. The activity must be something your participants already know and associate with relaxed conversation, and it must be something you or a team member can perform with genuine skill. If the activity feels like a gimmick wrapped around an interview, the method fails completely.
The Details:
- Action: Map your participants’ existing routine performances. Think about what they already do in their lives where talk flows freely: getting their hair done, cooking, walking, crafting, driving, gardening, fishing, getting their nails done.
- Tip: Match the activity to the sensitivity of the topic. The more intimate the subject, the more the activity should occupy the hands and redirect the eyes. Side-by-side activities (driving, walking, craft work) and service-based activities (hair, nails, cooking for someone) are strongest for the hardest topics because they remove direct eye contact and create natural permission to pause.
Side-by-side (you do something WITH them): Walking, driving, gardening, fishing, painting, knitting circles, basket weaving, woodwork. You are equals in the activity, and the shared direction creates a sense of being on the same team.
Projection-based (they make something that holds the emotion): Painting, drawing, pottery, sewing, collage. The artwork becomes the focus. Participants project feelings onto the object rather than performing them directly, and you can ask about the work rather than the person.
Build the Stage
The physical environment must feel like the activity, not the evaluation. If participants walk into a room and sense “this is really an interview with some craft stuck on top,” the method collapses. You need real tools, real materials, and a real setting. The props and the space are not decoration. They are symbolic objects that tell your participants which social script to follow, and you want them following the relaxed, trusting script of the activity, not the guarded, performative script of being assessed.
The Details:
- Action: Set up the space as if the activity were the only reason anyone was there. If it is a cooking session, use a real kitchen with real ingredients. If it is a nail bar, set up a proper station with polishes, files, hand cream, and warm towels. If it is a walking evaluation, choose a route you have walked before and know well. The activity must be primary, the evaluation must be secondary.
- Tip: Think about what your participants will see, hear, and smell when they arrive. If the first thing they see is a consent form and a recorder, you have blown the stage. Lead with the activity. The consent and recording set-up should be woven in naturally after the participant has already settled into the activity’s rhythm.
Open with the Craft, Not the Questions
The first ten minutes are everything. Begin with the activity itself and let the participant settle into the familiar script. If you are doing hair, start with a genuine consultation about what they want done. If you are cooking, start by talking about the recipe. If you are walking, start by walking. This is the rapport phase, and the activity does it for you. You do not need an icebreaker because the activity is the icebreaker.
The Details:
- Action: Give your participants your genuine expertise on the activity first. Talk about their hair, their nails, the ingredients, the walking route, the craft materials. Let them ask you questions. Let them feel like they are there for the activity. Only after they have relaxed into the rhythm do you begin to introduce your evaluation questions.
- Tip: The consultation phase is not wasted time, it is your most important data moment. When participants feel genuinely cared for by the activity, they carry that feeling into the evaluation conversation. They associate you with care, not assessment.
Thread the Questions into the Flow
Your evaluation questions should feel like part of the conversation, not an interruption to it. The natural rhythm of the activity gives you something that formal interviews never have: built-in pauses, topic shifts, and moments of distraction that absorb the emotional weight of difficult questions. When a hard question lands and the participant goes quiet, you do not need to fill the silence. You just keep doing the activity. The silence becomes part of the rhythm, not an awkward gap that pressures them to respond.
The Details:
- Action: Prepare your evaluation questions in advance but do not follow them as a rigid schedule. Let the activity’s natural flow guide when you introduce each question. If the conversation moves to a relevant topic on its own, follow it. If there is a natural pause in the activity (waiting for polish to dry, checking the oven, reaching a viewpoint on the walk), use that pause for a bigger question.
- Tip: Let the conversation move between the activity and the evaluation topics naturally. One moment you are talking about the programme, the next you are talking about nail colour, the next you are back to something deeply personal. This is not a sign that the method is failing. This is exactly how honest conversation works. The activity gives participants an exit ramp when things get heavy and a way back in when they are ready.
Capture the Data and the Method Reflection
The conversation is the data, and you need to capture it. Record the session with consent (the activity’s background noise is fine, your recorder will pick up the voices). But you should also capture a second, equally valuable layer: ask participants at the end how they found the combined experience. This meta-reflection generates evidence about the evaluation method itself, which is gold for your reporting.
The Details:
- Action: Record the full session with a reliable device (placed discreetly within the activity setting, not prominently on a table between you). After the session, complete a facilitator reflection template capturing key moments, emotional shifts, body language, and any observations that the audio will not pick up. Ask participants a simple closing question about how they found the experience.
- Tip: Many participants will say they forgot they were being recorded. That is the best evidence that your method is working. Note it. It is proof that the routine performance absorbed the evaluation so completely that participants stopped being conscious of it.
Part 2: The Realist Pathway
What Can You Evaluate With This?
Imagine Your Funder Asks: “What Difference Did Your Programme Make?”
You need evidence of outcomes and impact. Not ticked boxes and satisfaction scores, but real stories of change that prove your programme shifted something in people’s lives. The problem is that the people best placed to tell you are often the least likely to open up in a formal evaluation. Here are scenarios where this method gets you the evidence that surveys and focus groups cannot.
When You Need to Evidence Change on Sensitive Topics
- Evaluating a domestic violence support programme: Your funder wants to know if women feel safer and more in control of their lives since engaging with the service. Set up a nail bar. While you do their nails, ask what has changed for them, what they can do now that they could not do before, what the programme gave them. You will get the real answers, not the careful ones.
- Evaluating a sexual health outreach project: You need to evidence whether participants are making different choices and feeling more confident about their bodies since the programme. Offer a hair or beauty session. The salon script already normalises intimate conversation. Participants will tell you about real behavioural change, not just that the workshop was “informative.”
- Evaluating an addiction recovery programme: You need to show funders the difference between where participants were when they started and where they are now. Paint or make pottery together. The making gives people a way to talk about their journey without it feeling like a clinical assessment. You get stories of transformation, not just abstinence statistics.
- Evaluating a faith-based community programme: You need evidence that the programme strengthened belonging, resilience, or wellbeing. Cook and eat together. Over a shared meal, participants will tell you what the community means to them now compared to before, what shifted, and what they would lose without it.
When the Groups Who Benefited Most Will Not Fill In Your Form
- Evaluating a men’s mental health programme: You need to evidence that men are coping better, connecting more, or asking for help sooner since the programme. Try woodwork, fishing, or walking. While their hands are busy, ask what is different now. Ask what they would say to someone thinking about joining. You will get testimony that no questionnaire could capture.
- Evaluating a young people’s programme: You need to show that young people’s confidence, aspirations, or decision-making improved. Drive somewhere together, cook, or do something creative. With no eye contact and something else happening, teenagers will tell you what actually changed for them rather than giving you one-word answers on an exit survey.
- Evaluating an ex-offender reintegration programme: You need evidence that participants are building stable lives, finding work, or reconnecting with family. Walk, garden, or fish. Being outdoors and moving signals the opposite of the institutional environments this group is most guarded in. They will tell you what the programme made possible.
- Evaluating a refugee integration programme: You need to show that participants feel more connected, more settled, or more able to navigate their new home. Cook dishes from their home countries. While they teach you the recipe, they will tell you what belonging feels like now compared to when they arrived. The food carries the evidence.
When the Impact Is Emotional and Hard to Measure
- Evaluating a bereavement programme for children: You need to show that children are processing grief and building resilience. Draw or paint together. Ask them about the picture: who is in it, what is happening, how the person in the picture feels. The artwork becomes the evidence of emotional change without anyone having to say “I feel better now.”
- Evaluating an older people’s loneliness programme: You need to prove that people are less isolated, more connected, and have a reason to leave the house. Set up a knitting circle, gardening group, or tea and cake. While the activity runs, ask what their week looks like now compared to before the programme. The contrast in their answers is your outcome evidence.
- Evaluating a carer support programme: You need to evidence that carers feel supported, less burnt out, and more able to cope. Sew, mend, or walk together. Ask what has changed for them since they started coming. For many carers, the activity itself is the first thing anyone has done just for them in months, and that realisation often unlocks the most powerful testimony about impact.
Evidence Manifest
Documenting how the mechanism was verified through specific data collection.
| Evidence Type | What it Proves | Data Source |
|---|---|---|
| Comparison Face-to-Face vs. Routine Performance Pilot |
The face-to-face pilot interview produced short, guarded answers and awkward silences, lasting only one hour. The routine performance interviews ran up to three hours with deep, spontaneous, and emotionally rich disclosure. The method produced longer, more honest, and more usable data. | Researcher field notes comparing pilot interview formats during the study design phase. |
| Participant Voice Participant Reflections on the Method |
Participants explicitly named distraction, lack of eye contact, and the feeling of being cared for as reasons they were able to speak honestly. Several said they would not have been able to talk about these topics sitting face to face. One participant said the face mask added a further layer of anonymity that made disclosure easier. | Recorded participant reflections at the end of each session, captured as part of the evaluation conversation itself. |
| Disclosure Depth Content of Participant Disclosures |
Participants disclosed deeply personal information that they themselves considered shameful, sinful, or unspeakable. The emotional range across sessions included tears, laughter, and anger, all signs that participants were responding from genuine feeling rather than performing safe answers. | Transcribed interview recordings analysed for emotional range, disclosure depth, and spontaneous (unprompted) disclosure. |
| Reciprocity Participant Experience of the Exchange |
Several participants said they felt guilty for not paying for the service, and many said they looked and felt great afterward. This proves participants experienced the evaluation as something done for them rather than something done to them, reframing the usual extractive dynamic of evaluation. | Participant comments captured during end-of-session reflections and researcher field notes. |
Don’t just write a boring report. Use the stuff you actually captured during the session.
The Before-and-After Comparison
If you ran any traditional evaluation alongside this method (a survey, a formal interview, even a pilot), place the two sets of data side by side in your report. Show what people said when they were in “evaluation mode” versus what they said when they were in “getting their hair done” mode. The contrast is your strongest evidence that the method works.
The Seamless Transcript Moment
Find the moments in your transcript where the conversation flows from the activity to a deeply personal disclosure without any break. These seamless transitions are proof that the method dissolved the barrier between “being evaluated” and “just talking.” One well-chosen transcript excerpt is worth more than a page of analysis.
The Participant Meta-Quote
Your closing question (“how did you find talking about this while we did the activity?”) generates direct quotes about the method itself. These are incredibly powerful in reports because the participant is telling your funder, in their own words, why this approach worked better than a clipboard.
The “One-Sentence” Report
“Because we used The Routine Performance Evaluation, participants in our community felt cared for enough to tell us what they actually experienced rather than what they thought we wanted to hear.”