Qualitative Research in Practice : Stories From the Field - Blogs Unpad

Qualitative research in practice
them and also allows a cooling off period, in which they may still
change their mind about participating in the study.
Where the research topic has the potential to be distressing for
the participant, it is important to work out a plan to deal with such
distress should it arise. An immediate issue is to be clear about the
participant’s right to terminate the interview at any time. Often
human research ethics committees will require that provision be
made for referral to a trained professional should participants
become distressed or disturbed during the course of the research.
This is relatively straightforward where participants have been
recruited through a professional agency. At other times it may be
necessary for the researcher to set up an arrangement with an
agency for referral. This should always be discussed with participants,
in order to work out a process for this to happen. For
example, under what circumstances might referral occur—would it
be self-referral only or would there be circumstances in which the
researcher might make a referral on behalf of the participant? The
decisions made will depend very much on the research topic, on
whether appropriate resources are readily available and on the
capacity of participants to access them, as well as the vulnerability
of the participant group and the wishes of individual participants.
The interview
While interviews do vary in terms of how focused they are and the
extent to which participants are encouraged to ‘direct’ the flow of
the conversation, the idea of an ‘unstructured’ interview is really a
myth. Every interview, no matter how free flowing in terms of
topics and the order in which they are covered, has a structure of
some sort. The interview itself is a structured social interaction—the
very act of setting it up brings its own structure and context. There
would be little point in conducting an interview if the interviewer
did not have some idea of why they wanted to talk with that person
and of what they would like to talk about. On the other hand, if the
researcher imposes too much structure, many of the advantages of
the in-depth interview will be diminished. There is a fine line
between having enough structure to facilitate talk (why are we
here?) and imposing a structure that becomes constraining for the
participant. The extent to which interviews are focused depends on
many things, including the purpose of the study, the nature of the
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