Qualitative interviews

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Qualitative interviews

• Dr Saharnaz Nedjat

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• Interviews are the most commonly used qualitative
  technique in health care settings.

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• There are three main types
• Structured more quantitative Is your health
  excellent, good, fair or poor?
• Semi-structured open ended what do you think
  good health is?
• Depth interview less structured than this and
  may cover only one or two issues, but in much
  greater detail. About health and then ad hoc
  questions

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• Good questions in qualitative interviews should
  be open-ended, neutral, sensitive and clear to
  the interviewee.

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Six type of questions

• On behavior or experience
• On opinion or value
• On feeling
• On knowledge
• Demographic or background details

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• Start with easy questions
• Proceed to more difficult or sensitive topics
• Sequence of questions is important
• Wording can not be standardized
• Ad hoc questions
• The interviewees questions should be asked at
  the end of the interview.

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Three strategies for maintaining control

• Knowing the purpose of the interview
• Asking the right questions to get the information
  needed
• Giving appropriate verbal and non-verbal feedback

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Some common pitfalls

• Outside interruptions (telephones)
• Competing distractions (TV)
• Stage fight
• Awkward questions
• Jumping from one subject to another
• Temptation to counsel interviewees (summarizing
  responses too early)
• Teaching (advice)
• Superficial interviews
• Presenting ones own perspective bias

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Semi-Structured Interviews
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• Focused interview
• The semi-standardized interview
• The problem-centered interview
• The Expert interview
• The Ethnographic interview

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Focused Interviewed

• Developed for media research
• Uniform stimulus (a film, a radio broadcast) its
  impact on interviewee is studied using an
  interview guide.
• The original aim of the interview was to provide
  a basis for interpreting statistically
  significant findings (from a parallel or later
  quantified study).

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• The stimulus presented is content analyzed
  beforehand.
• This enables a distinction to be made between the
  objective facts of the situation and the
  interviewees subjective definitions of the
  situation with a view to comparing them.

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Four criteria for interview guide

• Non direction
• Specificity
• Range
• The depth and personal context shown by
  interviewee

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Non-direction

• Unstructured question are asked first, and
  increased structuring is introduced only later
• to prevent the interviewers frame of reference
  being imposed on the interviewees viewpoints.
• The flexible use of the interview schedule.

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Specificity

• The interview should bring out the specific
  elements which determine the impact or meaning of
  an event for the interviewee.
• Retrospective inspection
• Explicit
• Yet general enough to avoid having interviewer
  structure it.

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Range

• Securing that all relevant aspects and topics are
  mentioned.
• The danger of superficiality

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Depth and personal context

• Emotional responses in the interview go beyond
  simple assessments like pleasant or unpleasant.
• Restatement of implied or expressed feelings
• Referring to comparing situations
• Depth versus range

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• The four criteria can be applied to other types
  of semi-structured interview without using an
  advance stimulus.

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• Focused interview
• The semi-standardized interview
• The problem-centered interview
• The Expert interview
• The Ethnographic interview

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Semi-Standardized Interview

• Reconstructing subjective theories
• Implicit and explicit knowledge of interviewee
• Structure laying technique

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• Open questions
• Theory driven questions to make implicit
  knowledge to explicit
• Based on the scientific literature or
  researchers theoretical presuppositions
• Confrontational questions theories and relations
  that interviewee has presented to critically
  re-examined these notions in the lighting of
  competing alternatives.

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Structure laying technique (SLT)

• Second meeting after content analyze
• One or two weeks after the first
• The interviewees essential statements are
  presented to him or her as concepts on small
  cards for
• If its contents are correctly represented on the
  cards
• Structure the remaining concepts in a form
  similar to scientific theories by applying the
  SLT rules

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• At the end the interviewee compares his structure
  with the version the interviewer has prepared
  between the two meeting.

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problems

• Irritations which may be caused by
  confrontational questions may be abandoned
• The rules of the SLT like a performance test
  rather be used playfully only a short version

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• Focused interview
• The semi-standardized interview
• The problem-centered interview
• The Expert interview
• The Ethnographic interview

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• Perhaps more than other interviews-centered
  around a given problem.
• It should comprise areas of interest but does not
  mention concrete types of questions to include.
• How to document the context and how to deal with
  the secondary information

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• Four central communicative strategies
• The conversational entry you want to become (a
  car mechanic), how did you arrive at this
  decision?
• General prompting questions where do you know
  that from?
• specific prompting questions mirroring
  (summarizing, feedback, interpretation) what has
  been said confronting interviewee with
  contradictions and inconsistencies in his
  statements
• Ad hoc questions

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Context information for interpretation and
comparison

• Use a short questionnaire (quantitative) together
  with the interview at the end of interview
• Immediately after the end of the interview the
  interviewer should note his impressions of the
  communication, of interviewee as a person,
  behavior in the situation, external influences,
  the room

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• Focused interview
• The semi-standardized interview
• The problem-centered interview
• The Expert interview
• The Ethnographic interview

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The expert interview

• The interviewee is integrated into the study not
  as a single case but as representing a group of
  specific experts.
• The interview is restricted much more than in
  other interviews.

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problems

• The experts blocks the interview because he
  proves to be not an expert.
• The experts tries to involve the interviewer in
  ongoing conflicts in the field and talks about
  internal matters.
• The experts changes between the roles of expert
  and private person
• The experts gives a lecture on his knowledge
  instead of joining the questions

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• Focused interview
• The semi-standardized interview
• The problem-centered interview
• The Expert interview
• The Ethnographic interview

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Ethnographic interview

• As a series of friendly conversations into which
  the researcher slowly introduces new elements.
• Opportunities for an interview often arise
  spontaneously and surprisingly from regular field
  contacts
• Open framework

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Thanks