Interviews in qualitative health care research

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: Interview is a conversation to procure information where an interviewer performs the action of questioning and an interviewee responds to the asked questions. The widely used modes are ‘Face-to-Face Interview’, ‘Telephonic Interview’, and ‘Interview via Electronic/Multimedia’ approach. Information acquisitions via interviews have proved their practicality under a wide range of considerations and aspects in domains of healthcare, social sciences, management, etc. Proper selection of the method right from planning, and establishment deliver the required information to the interviewer in the best expressible, and documented form to deliver results bringing the best after a whole planned workout of an interview. OBJECTIVE: In the present article, the author would be focused on the interview categorization in qualitative health care research. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Only PubMed and SCOPUS Databases were searched from inception to September 2020 for this narrative review. Only English language articles were searched with keywords, “Interview”, “Face-to-Face”, “Qualitative research” and “Category of Interview” and linked with Boolean words such as, “AND”, “OR” and “NOT”. Conference abstracts and proceedings articles were excluded. This narrative review did not followed PRISMA statement. RESULTS: The selection of interviews to be used in qualitative health care research should be based on time allocation, gender, prioritization of privacy, and requirement of the content of information. The interviewer should ask one question at a time, present with normalcy in facial and body expression following response even after noting the answers to be unpredictable and encourage the response rate to the highest for optimizing the results obtained. CONCLUSION: Various important aspects of interview in qualitative health care research has been discussed in this narrative review.