Research Methods in Psychology (Pp 32-44)

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Research Methods in Psychology(Pp 32-44)
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Purpose of Interviews

• To get someones point of view by asking questions

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Interviewing Styles

• Nondirective
• Informal
• Semistructured
• Structured but open-ended
• Structured

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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

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Informal Interviews

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

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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

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Semistructured Interviews

• Advantages
• Provides a rich account of a persons 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

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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
  individuals 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

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Narrative Interviews

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

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Structured but Open-ended Interviews

• Preset questions asked
• Interviewer still allows participants to respond
  any way they wish

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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

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Considerations Involved Before an
Interview

• Choice of interviewer(s)
• Logistics
• Ethical issues
• Good questions
• Minimize demand characteristics and researcher
  bias
• Scheduling details

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Considerations Involved During an
Interview

• Create and maintain good relationships
• Be aware of recording process
• Remain empathetic
• Manage sensitive areas

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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

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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.

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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

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One more thing before the end!
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