Modified: 2007-01-31
The interview technique involves orally asking questions and recording the answers. Interviews allow researchers to interact with participants and to explore psychologically interesting questions thoroughly. However, interviews take more time than other methods. Successful interviewing requires preparation and practice. If the questions are created in advance and the same questions are asked of each participant, the interviews are structured interviews. If the questions vary as a result of the interviewee’s responses, the interviews are unstructured interviews.
Examples of Structured Interviews
Unusual groups are a fruitful source for interview research. Campbell and Jones (2002) interviewed 10 world-class male wheelchair basketball players. The interviews focused on the sources of stress (both general and competition-related) experienced by these athletes. The interviews began with an introduction that set the context: the athletes’ experiences in their sport. The interview then moved to questions designed to help the athletes recall their wheelchair basketball experiences. Questions about both general and competition–related stress followed. The interview ended with questions about the interview itself. Interviews lasted as long as 150 minutes. All were tape recorded and transcribed. Each interviewee later verified the transcript for accuracy. The transcripts were analyzed with a technique called inductive content analysis. In this type of analysis, researchers independently read raw data transcripts searching for uniformities which are grouped into emergent themes. In the Campbell and Jones study, seven steps were used in data analysis:
This analysis led to 156 raw data themes which were condensed into 10 higher–level themes related to stress: pre–event concerns, negative match preparations, on–court concerns, post–match performance concerns, negative aspects of match events, poor interaction and communication, negative coaching issues, relationship issues, demands of wheelchair basketball, and lack of disability awareness. Campbell and Jones found that many aspects of wheelchair basketball competition were stressful and that some of those stresses could come from competition while others came from the outside. Most of the stresses came from basketball but two non-basketball themes were also stressful—cost of the wheelchair and the public’s lack of disability awareness.
Researchers can also recruit interviewees from a larger established group. Sidebotham (2001) interviewed 16 parents (15 mothers and 1 father) at a meeting of parents involved in the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children, a large–scale longitudinal study. Sidebotham was interested in their perceptions of parenting. He first used two parents in a pilot study to refine his interview technique and questions. The interviews with the parents lasted from 30 to 90 minutes. Sidebotham used a multi–stage analysis. The first stage eventually yielded 8 categories related to parenting:
These categories yielded 4 higher–order themes: family stresses, time pressures, financial stresses, and cultural expectations and guilt. Parents found parenting stressful due to intrinsic stressors such as children’s health and time pressures, negative attitudes about parenting, and lack of community support. Sidebotham (p. 480) concluded, “First, our culture imposes particular pressures on families; secondly, there are increasing expectations felt by parents, and thirdly, there are increasing restrictions on children and their families.”
Examples of Unstructured Interviews
Prisoners of war (POWs) are another uncommon group. The United States Navy (Nice et al., 1996) conducted a 20–year study of 138 Viet Nam–era prisoners of war (VPOWs) and found that their incidence of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) was indistinguishable from that of the general population. In contrast, POWs from earlier wars exhibited high levels of PTSD. To resolve conflicting research reports on POWs, Henman (2001) interviewed 50 VPOWs using the unstructured interview technique. Henman’s VPOWs were older, more educated, and better prepared for possible captivity by their training than previously studied groups of POWs. Her interviews with the VPOWs uncovered a frequent and effective use of humor, which is way of coping with stress. One example of humor was that of one prisoner, Gerald Venanzi, who invented an imaginary motorcycle and an imaginary chimpanzee cellmate. So effective were these devices that even the Vietnamese guards and the camp commandment bought into the story. The commandant went so far as to ask the prisoner to evict the chimp before assigning a new cellmate! Henman concluded that the use of humor by the VPOWs she interviewed had been a major factor in their later adjustment.
Johnson (1998) conducted unstructured interviews with 10 psychiatric patients (5 males and 5 females) who had been restrained for therapeutic reasons. (Therapeutic restraint is belting a patient to a bed to prevent self-injury.) Johnson began each interview by asking patients to recall the experience of restraint. After that opening question, she allowed the patients to speak their minds. Following the interviews, verbatim transcripts were examined for emerging themes. Two specific themes, power and powerlessness, were selected for further analysis. Patients under restraint did not feel safe and protected, nor did they see being restrained as a form of therapy. Instead, they saw restraint as the consequence of rule breaking or disobedience.