Interviews and Focus Groups

What are Qualitative Interviews?

• Professional conversation with the goal of getting a participant to talk about their experiences, beliefs and perspectives on a topic you have determined
• Structured-all questions predetermined by researcher
• Semi-structured-researcher prepared an interview guide before the interview, but doesn't rigidly stick to it
• Unstructured-a list of themes/topics with focus on conversational flow
• Virtual interviews
• Telephone interviews
• Online/email interviews
• All interview/research situations are structured to an extent
• Standardised approach-ask participants the same set of questions in exactly the same way-the data collection 'tool' is all powerful
• Open approaches-interviews are exploratory-they provide a springboard for discussion. Interviews are active participants and interviews are a dialogue in which structure and meaning are negotiated (researchers are active and co-construct meaning with participants)

When and Why?

• Suited to experience-type research questions
• Useful for exploring understanding, perception and construction-type research questions that participants have a personal stake in
• Detailed insight into experiences and perspectives of individuals
• Get participants to talk about thoughts, feelings, experience of phenomena
• If you're researching a sensitive topics
• If you want the opportunity to probe participants to expand
• Can you get enough information from a small number of participants?

Designing/Types of Interview Questions

• Rapport and well-planned questions are important for generating rich and detailed accounts relevant to your research question
• Types of interview questions:
• Introducing
• Follow-up
• Probing
• Specifying
• Direct
• Indirect/hypothetical/projective
• Structuring (can be good for prompts/staying on track)
• Silence
• Interpreting
• Descriptive
• Behavioural/experiential
• Emotional
• Cognitive ('how do you make sense of this?')
• Evaluative
• Short
• 'Catch all Q' ('anything else you'd like to add?')
• Make sure that you start broad and then narrow down to personal questions (inverted triangle), ask 1 at a time and avoid 'why' questions=sound accusive

Designing/Types of Interview Questions

• Be naïve
• If they answer one of your questions before you've asked=means you're asking the right questions
• Don't answer straight away-give it time
• Issues:
• Interviewer bias
• Rapport
• Self-disclosure-giving answers to their questions, sometimes answering their questions may help build rapport but remember boundaries
• Participants-people you know=dual relationship, vulnerable people=requires additional skills and experience and has different ethical requirements, participant's distress=acknowledge the distress 'are you okay?' and back off a topic for a while and come back to it 'would it be okay to talk more about X, or would you rather move on to Y?', power status (high/lower than you)=think about how you would manage this
• 1 interview per day
• 3/10 interviews in total
• Consent from info sheets
• Recording equipment (be aware of where you conduct the interview)=background noises

Evaluation of Face-to-Face Interviews

• Strengths
• Rich and detailed data about individual experiences and perspectives
• Flexible: can prove and ask unplanned questions
• Smaller samples: you often need only a small number of interviews to generate adequate data
• Ideal for sensitive issues: a skilled interviewer can get people to talk about sensitive issues
• Accessible: can be used to collect data from vulnerable groups such as children and people with learning disabilities
• Researcher control over the data produced increases likelihood of generating useful data
• Limitations
• Time consuming for researchers to organise/conduct/transcribe
• Lack of breadth because of smaller sample sizes (compared to a qualitative survey study)
• Not necessarily ideal for sensitive issues: some people may feel more comfortable disclosing sensitive info in an anonymous survey rather than a group setting
• Time consuming for participants: an interview often takes at least an hour to complete
• Lack of anonymity: may be off-putting to some participants, especially those who are 'hard to engage' in research
• Not necessarily 'empowering' for participants: have less control over the data produced (compared to qualitative surveys and email interviews)

What are Focus Groups?

• Method where data are collected from multiple participants at the same time
• A moderated but relatively unstructured discussion focused around a topic of interest
• Participants interact with each other as well as the moderator
• The social interaction considered central to the method
• Can be creative e.g tasks etc

When and Why?

• Have the potential to access forms of knowledge other methods cannot and generate completely unexpected/novel knowledge
• Provide open/supportive environments in which participants talk in-depth on often quite sensitive issues and the interaction between participants can result in elaborated and detailed accounts
• Can elicit a wide range of views/perspectives/understandings of an issue
• Useful exploratory tool to start looking about the issue
• Good for accessing the views of underrepresented/marginalised social groups
• Illustrates how meaning is collectively and individually constructed and contested

Approaches to Focus Groups

• Essentialist
• Underlying assumption of the existence of 'reality' or 'truth' that can be accessed through a focus group
• Interaction process, stimulate memories, discussion, debate and disclosure
• Broad and in-depth
• Constructionist
• Underlying assumption that focus groups can't provide 'transparent window on reality'
• Focus groups allow the researcher to consider how meanings are constructed and defended

Issues to Consider

• Similar people=no new points of view, different people=hard to control
• People who know each other=ramble/go off topic but can get each other to talk
• 2-4 focus groups
• 1 pilot
• 6-10 participants
• Devise a schedule
• Moderator-prepared and basic interviewing skills

Evaluation of Focus Groups

• Advantages
• Flexibility in exploring unanticipated issues
• Good for gathering new knowledge about issues little is known about
• Access to everyday ways of talking about topics (high ecological validity)
• Can facilitate disclosure (even/especially around sensitive topics)
• Can lead to some level of empowerment of participants/social change
• Reduce the power and control of the researcher=data potentially less influenced by the moderator
• Good for groups for whom research participation might be daunting
• Disadvantages
• Doesn't allow in depth follow-up of individuals' view/experiences
• Can be difficult to manage
• Can easily get 'off topic' and be hard to bring back on topic
• Logistically difficult-difficult to recruit for and organise
• Not a good method to use with busy people
• Not good for people who are geographically dispersed
• More inconvenient for participants if they have to travel to you at a particular time
• Generally longer than interviews=more time consuming
• May need an assistant to manage practical matters
• Transcription of focus group data is very time-consuming