Interviews and Focus Groups: Gathering Data

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Interviews and Focus Groups Gathering Data

• Elizabeth Boyd, PhD
• EPI 240
• January 22, 2008

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Goal Rich and sufficient data

• Enough background to understand and portray full
  range of persons, processes, settings
• Detailed description of range of views actions
  -- multiple perspectives
• Beyond superficial
• Analytic categories
• Comparisons -- generative or general?
• Saturation -- stop seeing new cases/instances

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Before the Interview

• Recruiting participants
• Expert commentators
• Reports of lived experience
• Interview prep
• Working out questions - lists or general notes?
• Tape recorder or notes?
• One interview or several?
• Where to hold interview -- comfort level of
  participants?

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Interviews

• Purpose Elicit respondents descriptions,
  reflections, interpretations of his/her
  experience
• Role of IR Listen, observe, and encourage

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Interviews

• Neutral questions do not produce neutral
  interviews
• The interview is first and foremost a social
  situation with two active participants
• The interviewer is NOT a survey instrument but an
  active participant in the interaction

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Question Design

• Specify the overall goals of the interview --
  what do you want to know?
• Recipient design questions must be designed
  appropriately to who the interviewees are
• Form of question will largely determine type of
  response you get (preference organization)

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Question design, cont.

• Yes/No qs Are you satisfied with the way your
  doctor explained that?
• Framed qs Would you say that you were surprised
  by the doctors diagnosis or did you expect to
  hear it?
• Open qs Tell me about the last time you saw Dr.
  X.

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Importance of first questions

• Set the tone for the whole interaction
• How best to engage the particular participants
  and their concerns/interests/perspectives?
• Bureaucratic vs. general qs consistent with
  overall theme
• Not too probing but not misleading (I.e., be on
  topic)

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Active Listening

• How do participants respond?
• Short or factual responses?
• Stories/extended narratives
• Where do they struggle for words?
• Silences
• Word searches glitches
• Changes in direction, focus, frame of the
  question

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Active Listening, cont.

• The interview is a developing conversation
• Following the participants lead requires active
  listening

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Focus Groups

• Similar to interviews but with several key
  differences
• Group dynamics key
• Joint narratives
• Role of moderator
• People management

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Advantages of Focus Groups

• Quick
• More naturalistic - range of conversational
  styles, practices emerge
• May facilitate personal disclosure
• Cumulative experiences
• Participants build on and respond to each other

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Key references

• Interviews
• Learning from Strangers The Are and Method of
  Qualitative Interview Studies. Robert S. Weiss.
  The Free Press. 1994.
• Focus Groups
• Focus Groups A Practical Guide for Applied
  Research. R.A. Krueger and M.A. Casey. Sage
  Publications. 2000.