Criterios científicos

Interviews are often acknowledged as the most commonly applied data collection method within qualitative research (Holloway and Wheeler, 2002; Gillham, 2005; Taylor, 2005)and they aim to understand and capture the world from the participant’s perspective; their feelings, experiences and thoughts. Interviews are acknowledged as one of the most important information sources for the case study data collection (Yin, 2009). Face-to-face, semi-structured interviews were chosen as the qualitative data collection method in this study. For the next following sections, definition of interview, interview methods, advantages and disadvantages of the interview as well as interview skills are discussed.

3.6.1 Justification for Using Semi-structured Individual Interviews

In this study, the semi-structured individual interview was applied to gain in depth data on an individual basis. Individual interviews allow the researcher and the participant to have more privacy so that the participants can express their perceptions and experiences. Additionally, semi-structured interviews allow the researcher a certain level of control over collecting data during interviews and at the same time to gain expanded data. Individual flexibility of the individual interview was taken into consideration during the decision- making process, in terms of scheduling the interviews.

3.6.2 Definition of Interviews and Different Types of Interviews

An Interview has been defined as a ‘conversation with a purpose’ (Burgess, 1984). Although interviews often contain informal questions and the tone of the interview is generally conversational research, interviews are more than conversation and the questions

asked in the interview have more rules than a conversation (Holloway and Wheeler, 2002; Taylor, 2005). The researcher usually has an interview guide which outlines the themes, topics and areas to be explored during the interview. However, the interview guide will only guide the participant to explore their experiences, feelings, thoughts and perspectives, rather than guide the researcher to have control over the interview to collect information that they need. The flexibility and adaptability of interviews are also often stressed (Gillham, 2005; Taylor, 2005). The main features of interviews are identified as follows:

• Participants are able to determine their own answers with their own words to the questions or topics asked (Gillham, 2005).

• It is a responsive and interactive relationship between participant and researcher with some degree of ‘adjustment’, clarification and exploration (Burns and Grove, 2005).

• Even though the questions asked are ‘natural’ in the real life setting, the context of the interview has structure and purpose (Gillham, 2005).

Although most health care professionals, including nurses, are familiar with the process of clinical information gathering interviews and are skilled at this, they need to be aware that the interview as a qualitative data collection method is different (Holloway and Wheeler, 2002).

As mentioned before, interviews are the most commonly used data collection method (Polit and Beck, 2004). Interview styles vary. Three main interview styles are discussed in the next section.

Semi-structured Interview

When the researcher is aware of the questions to ask, but not able to predict the answer to the questions, the researcher needs to have more control over the content and structure of the interview (Gillham, 2005; Taylor, 2005). In this case, the semi-structured interview is commonly used as the qualitative data collection method, where the researcher needs to prepare an interview guide with the topic and areas which need to be covered in the interview (Polit and Beck, 2004). The interview guide enables the researcher to obtain similar types of data from each participant and also the required information because of its

flexibility and well balanced structure; all of which can be prepared in advance (Burns and Grove, 2005; Gillham, 2005). The main features of a semi-structured interview are as follows:

• The same questions are asked to obtain similar types of data which cover the theme and area to be investigated (Polit and Beck, 2004; Gillham, 2005).

• Probes are used to elicit more detailed information (Burns and Grove, 2005).

• The type, form and order of questions need to be carefully developed in logical sequence, such as chronologically, or general to the specific (Burns and Grove, 2005).

• The direction or character of the answer to the question is open, even though the participant has less responsibility and control over the structure and content of the interview compared to the unstructured interview.

Unstructured Interview

The main feature of the unstructured interview is that gives the participant more control over the content of the interview and more responsibility for determining the direction and structure of interview (Burns and Grove, 2005; Gillham, 2005). Thus, it is important that the researcher lets the participant tell their stories without interruption. Unstructured interviews are usually utilised in the following cases:

• When the researcher is unsure about the research topic, and is trying to identify the problem to be investigated (Gillham, 2005).

• Where the participant is constrained or inhibited by being interviewed with other more structured approaches (Gillham, 2005).

• When the researcher’s aim is to explore the aspect of an individual’s life or other significant themes that can be only obtained by giving the participant more allowance in structure and content of the interview (Gillham, 2005).

Due to the features above, the unstructured interview is usually applied in phenomenology, ethnography and grounded theory (Polit and Beck, 2004).

Structured Interview

The structured interview is sometimes referred to as a quantitative data collection method because of the nature of the data which can be obtained (Burns and Grove, 2005; Taylor, 2005). More control over the context and structure of the interview is given to the researcher. Questions to be asked need to be planned well in advance, and should be asked precisely as it has been designed (Burns and Grove, 2005). The participant usually has a specific range of answers, which is similar to the features of a questionnaire (which will be discussed later in this chapter). This approach is often used in a marketing research or social survey (Gillham, 2005).

Other Types of Interview

Although interviews involve verbal communication and interactive relationships between the researcher and the participants, this does not mean interviews are always face-to-face. There are new styles of interviews as technology has been developed, such as telephone interviews and e-mail interviews. The biggest features of these distance approaches are the low cost and the great degree of ‘distance’ to the researcher as well as being ‘anonymous’ (Gillham, 2005). However, this brings an argument that these interview techniques, which restrain interactive relationships between the researcher and the participants, should not be referred to as interviews.

3.6.3 Developing an Interview Guide

A key factor of interviewing is flexibility (King and Horrocks, 2010). A semi-structured interview guide provides the outline of the main topics of the research, but it still leaves the flexibility in phrasing and the order of questions. Additionally, the participants still are able to lead the interview in an unanticipated direction within the context of the main topics of research. King and Horrocks (2008) suggested three sources to identify the topics to be included in the interview guide: personal experiences of the research area, research literature on the same subject and informal preliminary work on the subject area. The difficulty of developing the interview guide is identified as balancing the degree of comprehensiveness of the topics covered in the interview guide. The disadvantage of the comprehensive interview guide is that there is possibility to lose some of the perspectives or issues that are not unanticipated, but that are important to the research topics. On the other hand, the disadvantage of a minimalistic interview guide is failing to address

important issues. In order to avoid confronting these disadvantages, the interview guide should reflect the aim of the research and the methodological position. For example, a narrative study would use a more minimalistic guide.

3.6.4 Conducting Effective Interviews

In order to conduct and produce good research based on interviews, not only research design and methodological position, but also conducting interviews effectively is crucial (King and Horrocks, 2010). Essential factors of conducting effective interviews are discussed in this section.

Firstly, the interview setting can influence the procedure of the interviews. A comfortable, private and quiet environment are the three vital elements for the suitable interview location (Burns and Grove, 2005; King and Horrocks, 2010). A comfortable environment refers not only to physical comfort, but also psychological comfort so that the participants can express themselves freely and provide natural well-developed answers to the questions. Privacy is important to avoid the danger of interrupted or overlooked during the interview, which relates to the psychological comfort. Having a quiet environment is important not only for providing a relaxing environment, but also reducing the risk of having problems with recordings.

Secondly, building a good researcher and participant relationship is identified as one of the crucial elements. The relationship between the researcher and the participant is distinguished between the quantitative and qualitative research as the qualitative research involves interactions with the participants such as interviewing (Burns and Grove, 2005). Researchers need to be aware that they and the participants influence each other to some degree during the study process. In addition, the relationship needs to be based on mutual respect and on an equal position even though being in a relationship of complete equality with the participant is sometimes difficult. ’Rapport’ is used to refer to the good relationship between the researcher and the participants. ‘Rapport’ is based on trust between the researcher and the participants, and about enabling the participants to feel comfortable to speak openly (King and Horrocks, 2010), not about carrying favour with the participants. Thus, it is important for the researcher to empower the participants by listening and showing interest in the participants’ perspectives.

The last factor is interview skills. Interviewing requires the researcher to develop interview skills prior to initiating a study (Burns and Grove, 2005). How to elicit a higher quality of data very much depends on how skilled the interviewer is. The skilled interviewer knows when and how to intervene, when and how to direct to another topic, how to manage non- verbal communication and how to manage difficult interviews such as dealing with sensitive topics. Conducting a pilot interview with individuals who meet the sampling criteria is suggested to identify the issues related to the interviews (Holloway and Wheeler, 2002).

3.6.5 Field Notes

Field notes are a broad, analytic and interpretive way to record the information and also synthesise and understand the data. Field notes have two perspectives; descriptive and reflective. Descriptive notes contain descriptive and objective information about the observed events and conversation. Reflective notes are for the researcher to reflect on their personal experiences during the data collection period. In this study, field notes were taken to gain objective (length of interviews, the interview location, etc) and subjective data.