Research Methods in Psychology

To get someone’s point of view by asking questions Purpose of Interviews To get someone’s point of view by asking questions

Interviewing Styles Nondirective Informal Semistructured Structured but open-ended Structured

Nondirective Interviews Conversational where participants talk about anything they want Goal is to help participants understand themselves (therapy sessions) more than to gather data for a study

Informal Interviews Conversational in nature but researcher wants to gather data for a study Interviewer keeps interview focused on a general topic

Semistructured Interviews Researchers have a specific topic but questions are not asked in the same way to all participants Meant to be flexible and interactive with follow-up questions common Can be done one-to-one or in focus groups Some us narratives and/or vignettes

Semistructured Interviews Advantages Provides a rich account of a person’s situation Questions can be adapted to probe the context and meaning If relaxed, participants are likely to give detailed responses Disadvantages Reliability can be poor Use of small samples common More training required

Focus Groups Advantages A natural setting allows people to express their real opinions Hearing others’ responses helps participants think of other points or clarify their opinions Feeling their opinions count, people feel empowered Interactions among members provide richness and depth Disadvantages After participation in a focus group, an individual’s attitude may become more extreme Only one topic at a time can be discussed Individuals have less time to talk Group moderator may unknowingly inject bias

Narrative Interviews Advantages Since narratives allow people to “tell their story”, these interviews provide a rich form of data Narratives provide a window into someone’s life context Disadvantage Coding (creating categories about important emerging themes) individual stories from an entire group may be challenging

Structured but Open-ended Interviews Preset questions asked Interviewer still allows participants to respond any way they wish

Structured Interviews Data collected with a predetermined scale (ie, Likert Scale) Most objective, requires less training to administer and reduces researcher bias Lacks the richness of less structured interviews

Considerations Involved Before an Interview Choice of interviewer(s) Logistics Ethical issues Good questions Minimize demand characteristics and researcher bias Scheduling details

Considerations Involved During an Interview Create and maintain good relationships Be aware of recording process Remain empathetic Manage sensitive areas

Considerations Involved After an Interview Participants should feel appreciated, be told how to obtain results of the study and be allowed to withdraw data if desired Transcribe interview using verbatim transcription or postmodern transcription

Inductive Content Analysis (Thematic Analysis) A process for analyzing interview transcripts by organizing it into categories according to important themes that emerge. Coding is central to organizing raw data into coherent categories which is hard work and time consuming.

Coding Process (Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis) Researchers read and reread transcripts reflecting on what is being said Specific themes are identified and named Categories are named based on clusters of themes A summary table of the theme categories is created