Why do interviews in qualitative research

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BMC Oral Health BMC Palliative Care Trials Advanced search. Skip to main content Thank you for visiting nature. Download PDF. Key Points Interviews and focus groups are the most common methods of data collection used in qualitative healthcare research Interviews can be used to explore the views, experiences, beliefs and motivations of individual participants Focus group use group dynamics to generate qualitative data.

Key Points Qualitative research in dentistry 1 Qualitative research in dentistry 2 Methods of data collection in qualitative research: interviews and focus groups 3 Conducting qualitative interviews with school children in dental research 4 Analysing and presenting qualitative data.

Abstract This paper explores the most common methods of data collection used in qualitative research: interviews and focus groups. You have full access to this article via your institution. Case study: A strategic research methodology.

Am J Appl Sci. Towards a definition of mixed method research. J Mix Methods Res. The potential contributions of quantitative research to symbolic interactionism. Symbolic Interact. Corbin J, Strauss A. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications; Creswell JW.

Oakley A. Gender, methodology and people's ways of knowing: Some problems with feminism and the paradigm debate in social science. Mason J. London, Routledge: Linking qualitative and quantitative data analysis. Analysing qualitative data; pp. Corbin J, Morse JM. We focus in this article on qualitative interviews. In this article, we take a closer look at the second stage of market research: Qualitative research.

The aim is to understand the different types of interviews to find the one that best suits your project and allows you to obtain the desired results.

This type of interview is characterised by the complete absence of an interview guide or structure of any kind. The aim here is to take a vast sweep of a given subject.

The interviewer may have thought of a few questions or adjacent themes, but no documents are prepared in advance to help him, or her carry out the interview. This type of interview is incredibly difficult to carry out , especially for beginners, because of the lack of structure.

The second difficulty lies in the absence of direction in the questions. The questions are typically comprehensive and should not point the respondent in one direction or another, but rather allow him or her to express themselves as freely as possible.

Free or unstructured interviews are particularly suitable in the early stages of research when the aim is to understand a subject or a market as a whole.

They are useful when you have little knowledge of the given topic. The objective is to gather a mass of information and data on the defined topic to generate an overview of the subject.

Semi-structured interviews are, as the name suggests, more structured than free interviews but more flexible than structured interviews. Semi-structured interviews are governed by an interview guide , which serves as a framework for the interview.

The interviewer can refer to it to contribute to the discussion with the respondent and ensure that the conversation goes in the direction desired and defined by the project. This type of interview is the most common type of interview used in qualitative research as it combines rigour in the themes and topics addressed and flexibility in the exchange. Thus, semi-structured interviews offer the possibility to deepen specific points that emerge during the discussion with the respondent.

The aim here is to gather opinions and comments that might not have been detected in the preparation phases, and that will have a definite impact on the continuation of the project. Semi-structured interviews are ideal for understanding consumer behaviour, attitudes and habits while ensuring that you have not forgotten anything.

To learn more about semi-structured interviews and how to prepare yourself, we advise you to read this article that we have dedicated to conducting qualitative interviews. In this context, the questions written are mainly open-ended questions allowing the respondent to express himself freely on the theme initiated by the interviewer.

It is called a guide because it is simply that—it is used to guide the interviewer, but it is not set in stone. Interview guides should outline issues that a researcher feels are likely to be important. Participants are asked to provide answers in their own words and to raise points they believe are important, so each interview is likely to flow a little differently. While the opening question in an in-depth interview may be the same across all interviews, the information that each participant shared will shape how the interview proceeds.

This is what makes in-depth interviewing so exciting and rather challenging. It takes a skilled interviewer to be able to ask questions, listen to respondents, and pick up on cues about when to follow up, move on, or simply let the participant speak without guidance or interruption.

Earlier, I mentioned that interview guides can list topics or questions. The specific format of an interview guide might depend on your style, experience, and comfort level as an interviewer or with your topic. Figure The guide is topic-based, rather than a list of specific questions. The listed order of the topics is important, however the order that each comes up during the interview may vary. When I was interviewing state administrators of developmental disabilities departments, my interview guide contained 15 questions, all of which were asked to each participant.

Sometimes, participants would cover the answer to one question before it was read. When I came to that question later on in the interview, I would acknowledge that they already addressed part of this question and ask them if they had anything to add to their response. Underneath some of the questions were more specific words or phrases for follow-up in case the participant did not mention those topics in their responses.

Our project was challenging because we were studying specific types of programs and the administrators may have thought we had an agenda to convince them to expand or better fund those programs. We had to be very objective in how we worded questions to avoid the appearance of bias.

Some of these questions are depicted in Figure As you might have guessed, interview guides do not appear out of thin air. They are the result of thoughtful and careful work on the part of a researcher. As you can see in both of the preceding guides, the topics and questions have been organized thematically and in the order in which they are likely to proceed though keep in mind that the flow of a qualitative interview is in part determined by what a respondent has to say.

Sometimes qualitative interviewers may create two versions of the interview guide: one version contains a very brief outline of the interview, perhaps with just topic headings, and another version contains detailed questions underneath each topic heading. In this case, the researcher might use the detailed guide to prepare and practice before conducting interviews and then bring the brief outline to the interview.