1. Research Methods in Psychology

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

3. Interviewing Styles Nondirective Informal Semistructured
Structured but open-ended
Structured

4. 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

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

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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

9. 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

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

11. 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

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

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

14. 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

15. 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.

16. 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