How to Conduct an Effective Research Participant Interview

This presentation provides tips and guidelines for conducting an effective research participant interview. It covers the steps to take before, during, and after the interview, as well as techniques for minimizing bias. The importance of listening and avoiding manipulation of answers is emphasized. The presentation concludes with a reminder to focus on the interview process as a whole and to avoid bias in the analysis of the data. References are provided for further reading.

‘How to conduct an effective
research participant interview’
Scholar Id:

Introduction
• This presentation demonstrates the ways
for conducting the interview for the
purpose of research.
• It discusses before, during and after the
interview process.

Before the interview
• Familiarize yourself with the interviewer-administered forms
– Read through form instructions
– Read through each question
– Learn wording, skip patterns and definitions (Morrison, et.
al., 2019).

Basic Interviewing Skills
• Develop privacy
• Get comfortable to ask personal as well as
sensitive questions
• Offers encouragement
• Assure confidentiality (Brace, 2018).

Cont’d
• Be attentive during the interview
• Be cautious while responding towards a participant
when:
• she has unfavorable reaction to a question (s)
• she asks questions
• she requests data (Lushey, and Munro, 2015).

Cont’d
• Listening is key
• Researcher should not provide feedback at the
time of interview.
• Do not disagree with, agree with, and correct
statements made by respondents (Creswell and
Clark, 2017).

Minimizing Bias
• The researcher should:
• Conduct interviews by using non-
judgmental strategy.
• Eliminate injecting his/her personality into
the interview (Fink, 2015).

Cont’d
• This will support for eliminating
• “socially desirable reporting”
• gathering infeasible information
• missing information
• possibly enrolling to disallowed participant
(Patterson, et. al., 2016).

During the interview
• Introduce yourself
• Make feel comfortable to the participant
• Read all introductory statements
• Eliminate re-phrasing an item
• When there is need of clarification, repeat the
questions and categorization of responds and
ask respondents to give their best response
(Blaikie, and Priest, 2019).

Cont’d
• Application of probing tools
• Probing is a tool of supporting the
participants during the interview.
• It helps to clarify the responses
• It helps to understand two similar, but
different responses (Kallio, et. al., 2016).

Cont’d
Watch for skip patterns -
• It is extremely significant for the
researchers to be very familiar with these
forms before conducting his/her first
interview (Patterson, et. al., 2016).

At the end of the interview
• Assesses completed questionnaires when
respondents is connects to researcher.
• Through this, errors as well as
irregularities could be identified among
respondents before they leaves (Fink,
2015).

Conclusion
• It can be concluded that researcher can
focus on before, during and after interview
• It can be also summarized that researcher
should avoid the biasness and should not
manipulate the answer after interview.

References
• Blaikie, N. and Priest, J., 2019. Designing social research: The logic of
anticipation. USA: John Wiley & Sons.
• Brace, I., 2018. Questionnaire design: How to plan, structure and write
survey material for effective market research. USA: Kogan Page Publishers.
• Creswell, J.W. and Clark, V.L.P., 2017. Designing and conducting mixed
methods research. USA: Sage publications.
• Fink, A., 2015. How to conduct surveys: A step-by-step guide. USA: Sage
Publications.
• Kallio, H., Pietilä, A.M., Johnson, M. and Kangasniemi, M., 2016.
Systematic methodological review: developing a framework for a qualitative
semi‐structured interview guide. Journal of advanced nursing, 72(12),
pp.2954-2965.

Cont’d
• Lushey, C.J. and Munro, E.R., 2015. Participatory peer
research methodology: An effective method for obtaining
young people’s perspectives on transitions from care to
adulthood?. Qualitative Social Work, 14(4), pp.522-537.
• Morrison, G.R., Ross, S.J., Morrison, J.R. and Kalman,
H.K., 2019. Designing effective instruction. USA: Wiley.
• Patterson, F., Knight, A., Dowell, J., Nicholson, S.,
Cousans, F. and Cleland, J., 2016. How effective are
selection methods in medical education? A systematic
review. Medical education, 50(1), pp.36-60.