Qualitative Interviews and Focus Groups

Last week I gave my very first lecture/seminar to a small group of postgraduate students!

My session was part of the Programme in Advanced and Specialist Practice convened by Dr Andrea Taylor who very kindly thought of me when planning who would talk to the group about these two qualitative research methods. It ended up being a 4 hour session held over two days (with sessions on other methods, including quantitative methods in between). As I had four whole hours with this group it meant I could spend a little bit of time talking about theory but there was plenty of time for everyone to have a go at writing questions for a focus group or interview, conducting a one-to-one interview and analysing the data.

This session was very nerve wracking for me as I have not spoken to a postgrad group before. The demonstrating work that I have done up till now has been with the undergraduate students. This was also a very different experience  because I was leading the session and there were only six students so I could quite easily tell when I was loosing them (to boredom or confusion) and when they were keeping up with me. So that side was quite positive. Also, I think  because they were all older than me – they were very encouraging as I felt quite nervous at first, which I am sure they had noticed because I could see several of them nodding and smiling encouragingly at me.

There were two unexpectedly great parts to this session. The first was coding a small excerpt of an interview from the clozapine service evaluation I worked on for Dr Jane Sutton and Dr Denise Taylor. It was a great example because it was an excerpt from a patients’ interview and the patient had talked non-stop and as it was their personal story they rambled all over the place making the transcript quite difficult to understand the first few times you read it. However what I wanted to show them was the richness of the data in this particular transcript as the patient uses wonderful metaphors such as their experience of schizophrenia as like their “subconscious has exploded” and the way they describe their hallucinations in their own terms for example this interviewee referred to the “dual channel” because their hallucinations had both a visual and an auditory element. The group quickly picked up on this, but what was great about this exercise is that they all had a unique specialist perspective (they were all pharmacy professionals, but from very distinct services) and they saw how they all had their own perspective or interpretation of some aspects of the narrative, but in the main they all picked out the same parts and coded them in very similar ways. This was great as their biggest concern was the subjectivity of qualitative analysis. This may have been a fluke however, will it work if I do the same session with a different group in the future?

The second great part was being able to practice interview skills on the second day with them, and for us to be able to record them practising these skills with each other. I have never seen the interviews or focus-groups that I did recorded, and I am not sure I would want to! I am sure that unconsciously I do lots of things that you are meant to avoiding doing when interviewing someone or a group (e.g. fidgeting, sitting with a closed posture). The pharmacy practice suite is a great facility because there are 6 consulting rooms (as well as the simulated dispensary, computer room and seminar room) which have 24/7 video coverage (all the students know about this) and so we could without any effort on my part film the interview practice that the students were doing so that they could analyse their performance in relation to the tips and theory I had given them on what constitutes a good interview / focus group. Plus it meant that Andrea and I could listen in to their interviews (by watching the live video feeds) without having to go into the rooms they were in and disturbing them.

What great fun! However, it was hard work and involved a lot of prep – I over prepared in many ways, but I think that was a symptom of my nerves. Thankfully I don’t think I am down for any other teaching sessions or demonstrating now until the new semester starts.