Key Informant Interviews

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Key Informant Interviews

• Maria Hitt, Coordinator
• Healthy Carolinians
• of Orange County

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Why Interviews?

• Good way to engage key community leaders in the
  CHA
• Face-to-face you can build relationships
• May discover issues that you had not anticipated
• Can learn the opinions of leaders

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Disadvantages

• Time consuming- people are busy
• Analysis is sometimes challenging
• One persons opinion per interview
• Can only do so many, not good if you want lots of
  peoples opinions
• May be biased

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Preparing for Interviews

• Develop your list of questions
• Keep it short 15-20 questions
• You should be able to do it in 30-45 minutes or
  less
• May need one set of questions for agency
  personnel and another for community members

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Preparing for Interviews

• Decide who you will interview
• Agency Directors
• Community Leaders
• Gatekeepers
• Elected officials
• Be sure to represent key populations
• Dont try to do too many

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Preparing for Interviews

• Practice the interview with others who will be
  volunteering or with a friend or colleague
• Gather tape recorders, copies of questions,
  notepads for note taking
• May want to offer a small incentive to
  participants

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Conducting the Interviews

• Introduce your self and try to relax
• Make sure you are both comfortable
• Explain confidentiality, do not use the persons
  name in final results
• Be prepared to take notes, be sure to write down
  good quotes
• May want to use a recorder as well

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Conducting the Interviews

• Look professional
• Break the ice with small talk
• Be natural
• Listen well
• Stay on track
• If yes or no answer- probe for more
• Show respect

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Wrapping up

• At the end of your interview, ask if there is
  anything else they want to share
• Invite them to participate in any follow-up
  activities like community forums
• Thank them and send a note
• Send a copy of final report when ready

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Analyzing the Results

• Read all the interview notes
• Listen to tapes to fill in any blanks
• Look for themes that run across the interviews
• Are these issues that rose up in other data?
• Did they come out in focus groups as well?

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Coding data

• The process of attaching labels to lines of text
  so that the researcher can group and compare
  similar or related pieces of information.
• --Ulin et al (2005)

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Steps in Coding

• Look for repeating themes and issues
• Make a list of the themes
• Analyze those themes in order to find
  commonalities, differences, patterns and
  structures

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Coding Terminology

• Domain
• Code
• (subcode)
• Theme

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Examples of Domains

• Education
• Health Services
• Race Relations

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Examples of Codes and Sub-codes

• A. Race Relations (Domain)
• A1. Interaction among races (Code)
• A1a. Church (Sub-Code)
• A1b. School
• A2. Racism (Code)
• A3. Issues around Latino immigrants

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Look for Commonalities

• After coding all your text, look for common
  topics, issues and statements
• Count the number of times that you see each major
  issue
• You can color code or use abbreviations or
  numbers to code the text

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Determine your themes

• Once you are able to see the most commonly
  repeated ideas you can then determine your themes
• Ask your assessment team to review the themes to
  make sure you have consensus

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Example of a theme

• More Whites than African-Americans felt that
  there were comfortable social interactions and
  stronger community cohesiveness.

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Be prepared

• Coding and analyzing data is a large task
• Ask for help if you can from local universities
  or other groups
• Give yourself plenty of time to get this part done

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Thanks to the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Public
Health Dept. of Health Education and Health
Behavior

• Maria Hitt
• Healthy Carolinians Coordinator
• Orange County Health Department
• mhitt_at_co.orange.nc.us