Research literature during the past decade has conceptualized identity as something that is forged through the telling of life stories. By this analysis, self-identification is a situated process. As such, the author examined the research interview as the object of analytic attention to discover how identity was constructed by those being interviewed, in this case, 27 violent male offenders. The author describes the narrated identities of the men while focusing on the ways in which the research interview itself was assimilated into their narrated identities. The participants assimilated the research interview into their narrated identities by using the fact and nature of the interview to signify something about the moral self. Participants either inferred or solicited the authors’ evaluations in order to use an outside opinion to either invoke or reject self-claims. Another significant finding was that the men used the interview to exclude themselves from the problematic group known as “violent offenders.” Struggles between the moral self were enacted in the interviews so that the interviews could be used as a platform to construct the self as a morally decent being. To the participants, the interview indicated whether or not they were considered decent, which was used as evidence to launch claims or counter-claims regarding their identity. The author thus contends that the research interview itself was used by participants to create a version of reality. Therefore, researchers who study people and/or social movements, should be alert to the theoretical impact of their methodological choices on the object of their studies. References