THE INTERVIEW PROCEDURE

At the start of the interview the purpose of the meeting was made clear to the interviewees. It was explained that the interviews were intended to obtain their views of IPE and that these views would be used to evaluate the benefits and limitations of IPE. All the interviews were tape-recorded and transcripts compiled directly from the tapes. Field notes were taken during the interview to explain any contextually related factors. Many qualitative researchers commend these techniques as it enables accurate recording of the quantitative data. The context, tone of voice and other factors important in interpretation of verbal communication can be used when analysing the views of the interviewees.

6.2.1 Analysis of the interview data

The interview data was analysed in three ways. Firstly by taking the responses of students to questions regarding the professional roles of others from the pre- and post- module interviews separately. These two sets of statements describing the roles of other professions were assessed blind by educationalists from each profession for their accuracy in describing that profession. This enabled judgements to be made regarding differences in understanding within the group of the role of a profession before and after the module. The idea being that these would change as a result of their interprofessional education experience. This analysis was used to indicate whether learning had taken place about the role of each profession.

At least two educationalists from each profession were presented with these two lists of descriptive statements. They were informed that they were from student interviews before and after IPE but were unaware of which list was derived from which interview i.e. they were blind to the source of the statements. They were asked to cross out any statements that they believed to be false and to select the list that they felt best described their profession. For example the midwifery tutors viewed two lists of statements made by radiographers regarding the role of the midwife. They felt that one list better described the role of the midwife than the other.

To determine the degree of understanding by each interviewed profession the educationalists were asked to rate the difference communicated by the two lists on a simple linear scale from 1, a small difference in understanding to 10, a large difference in understanding.

Secondly, and in order to provide a comparison with the descriptive statement data above, each professional group was asked in the interview if they felt they had learned about the role of the other profession. The responses were tabulated and presented along with that of the descriptive statements. This would provide some measure of the validity of their responses as to whether they had learned about the role of other professions.

Thirdly the Contact Theory conditions were explored to identify whether the optimum conditions for contact had been established. The answers given by all the interviewees to any questions relating to the conditions were analysed by the author. Many of these were simple yes / no answers to questions related directly to the conditions but some were related to comments made in response to other questions that were considered relevant by the researcher. A written discussion, by the researcher, of the evidence from the interview data regarding which of the favourable and unfavourable conditions were present can be found in chapter 7.

6.3 Ethical considerations

Ostensibly the ethical principles that need to be adhered to in qualitative research are the same as those in quantitative research. That is to consider the morality of the research situation (McHaffie 1996) and take account of the values and beliefs of individuals and the conduct of the researcher. However when one comes to apply the principles some different ethical issues are raised and the ethical procedures that are required are different for each type of research method selected. The use of subjects for experimental and control groups and completing questionnaires was discussed in chapter 5. The ethics of the interview situation will now be explored and the practices adopted to ensure that the research was ethical are stated and explained.

The issues of confidentiality and anonymity are important when considering the ethics of a research situation (Cormack 1996). They become more important and problematic

when the researcher comes face-to-face with subjects such as in an interview situation. Subjects can be immediately identifiable by the researcher and their views can also be directly attributed. This puts the subject in a vulnerable situation. Therefore prior to the interview procedure the researcher asked for confidentiality for any comments made during the interview expressing the view that they should remain in the room. The researcher assured that any comments used in the research would not be attributable to any individual. It was thought that this would build some trust and relax participants enabling them to feel able to express themselves without concern. In addition (as stated previously) the interviews were arranged to be profession specific to reduce the constraints that might occur if a subject wished to express negative remarks about a member of another profession. All subjects for interview were invited to attend and although a purposive sample some subjects chose not to attend.

Robson (1993 p33) states ten questionable practices in social research. One of these is exposing participants to undue physical or mental stress. The interprofessional education module required students to engage in debate and discussion using problem- based learning. This involved, as with any effective education, a level of challenge and the use of the affective domain i.e. the student’s emotions. Therefore implicit in the education that they have voluntarily subscribed to is a degree of mental stress. During the interviews the research asked some challenging questions, as did some of the participants of each other. However the atmosphere was very positive and there were no activities or tasks for participants to undertake therefore the degree of mental stress was greatly reduced in comparison to that induced by the normal educational process.

Interviews can become emotional experiences for participants so debriefing time was given at the end of the interviews for students to express any concerns or worries that they had about the interview or the issues raised. Interestingly no interviewees chose to use this time for any debriefing discussion. This could be because no issues were present or that they did not feel they wanted to raise them.