Using a topic guide as a data collection instrument

Semi-structured interviews can be supported by either topic guides or interview schedules. Patton (2002) suggests that topic guides provide a framework of issues to be explored in the course of an interview but still retain enough flexibility for the interviewer to respond spontaneously to the participant. Additionally Rubin and Rubin (1995) note that guides provide some order for topic exploration to help prevent the interviewer getting lost. Interview schedules provide more guidance than topic guides as they consider specific wording of the questions to be asked rather than just the topics to be covered (Smith and Osborn 2003).

I opted to develop a topic guide (Appendix 3) rather than an interview schedule as I wanted to have the flexibility in the interview to cover topics as they arose in response to the participants’

experience. I did however pay attention to the wording and sequencing of questions within it. As a novice researcher I was unsure how the interviews might pan out or how I might manage myself within the interview. Taking some time to plan the topic guide prior to the interview enabled me to envisage how an interview might evolve and allowed me to consider the focus of the interview, difficulties that might be encountered and how to manage them prior to the event. Smith and Osborn (2003) suggest this planning process leads to a more confident and more effective interview and I am inclined to agree. I think in the early interviews in particular, having the topic guide enabled me to stay focussed on issues relevant to the research question. Mapping out potential questions rather than listing them, gave me flexibility in my approach, preventing me from imposing a rigid structure on the interview.

Within IPA it is recommended that consideration is given to both the wording and sequencing of questions prior to interviews (Smith and Osborn 2003, Langdridge 2007). I therefore drafted an initial topic guide (Appendix 4) with regard for wording and sequencing and piloted it with colleagues (Appendix 4) to check for coherence.

I took time to consider how the wording of my questions might affect data collection. For the purposes of IPA questions need to facilitate detailed descriptions of specific experiences (Langdridge

63 2007). I needed to write/ask questions which enabled the participants to express their perspective whilst at the same time ensuring the questions remained focussed on the subject of interest. Patton (2002, p. 354) recommends the use of open ended questions as they do not presuppose the

participant’s answers but allow the participant to select from their “full repertoire” of potential responses. In writing the topic guide I found constructing truly open questions more difficult than I had anticipated. I found that there was a tension between writing questions which focus on the topic and writing questions that were are open enough to elicit a rich response from the participant. In draft 1 of the topic guide (Appendix 4) I think the questions such as “Can you tell me what learning means to you?” would have been too open and produced data which was vague and lacking in specific details of learner experience. While questions such as “How did the course tools affect your learning?” were too focussed and too jargonistic and potentially difficult for the participant to answer.

On reviewing the first draft of the topic guide I concluded that the wording of the questions would not be successful in eliciting the rich descriptions of specific experience required for IPA. I amended the questions to reflect the format for descriptive questions (Spradley 1979, Table 5) as I felt that the data collected using descriptive questions would be more likely to help me achieve a balance between topic focus and openness. I think the questions on the final topic guide (Appendix 5) helped me achieve a reasonable balance as it enabled me to collect data that reflected both the uniqueness and similarity of participant’s experiences. So for example, the question “Can you tell me about a typical learning activity?” produced diverse responses about organizing learning tasks, learning with others and learning from patient characters but in doing so highlighted these 3 areas as potential important themes that occurred in multiple interviews. I therefore think that the questions I used on the topic guide helped me achieve the goals of data collection for an IPA study as I was able to obtain data that reflected both the idiographic and thematic elements of learner experience. This does not mean that the topic guide is not without its limitations, however. On reflection it may have been pertinent to ask participants explicitly about their previous experiences of online learning or

64 learning style as this would have provided more insight into the individual context of each learner’s experience. Failure to include questions about previous experiences of online learning on the topic guide can therefore be considered to be a limitation of the study by limiting the scope of the exploration of learners’ historical learning experience and how it informs the present context.

Table 5 Spradley’s taxonomy of descriptive questions

Type of question Function

Grand tour questions Description of time, places, people, events, objects and activities Mini tour questions Descriptions of specific units of experience

Example questions Descriptions of examples Experience questions Recall of specific experience

Native-language questions Identify terms and phrases most commonly used in the specific environment

In addition to considering the wording of questions, I also attended to sequencing. Although Patton (2002) recommends that topics are explored in relation to timescale, starting with the present situation, then reflecting on the past and finally looking to the future; this did not seem entirely appropriate for my topic guide as the majority of questions I wanted to ask were exploring past rather than current or future experience. I did however include an initial question about the

participant’s current situation as I felt it would help the participant to feel at ease with the interview process. This seemed to work well as an icebreaker in practice.

Having rejected the chronological approach to sequencing the questions on the topic guide as suggested by Patton (2002), I thought that a funnelling approach in which questions move from general descriptions of an experience to more detailed questions as proposed by Minichiello et al (1990) might be more suitable, as this approach would allow participants to express broad views before focussing more specifically. While the interview schedule aided this process, I did find that funnelling was challenging in practice, particularly in telephone interviews. I found that having the cascade of questions in front of me encouraged me to move from one level to the next in order to get to specifics. At times this meant some issues that the participants had raised were perhaps not

65 always fully explored. On the other hand, the questions which asked for specific units of experience enabled me to obtain some rich descriptive data that was of key importance to the research questions. On reflection, I feel my implementation of funnelling questions improved over time. I became more adept at pacing myself within the interviews and allowing the questions to funnel more naturally within the conversation rather than pushing the conversation in a given direction. As previously mentioned, the opening questions on the topic guide (Appendix 3) were specifically constructed to allow the participant to become comfortable and to build rapport between researcher and participant (Spradley 1979) and were delivered to take the participant from their present situation gently back to their experiences of the course. These questions appeared successful in these aims as all participants responded to these initial questions readily and overall the transition from rapport building questions to topic focussed questions appeared smooth. Although Spradley (1979) suggests that rapport is generally built up over time through a series of interviews, attention was paid to building rapport throughout each interview. Doing so was

particularly important as each participant would only be interviewed once in the study. Rapport was maintained by demonstrating listening within the interview through the use of the key prompts as per the interview schedule and attending to non-verbal positioning (Rubin and Rubin 1995) to display relaxed interest. In addition, I drew on my nursing background and used techniques from motivational interviewing such as simple reflection and double-sided reflection (Miller and Rollnick 2002) to demonstrate empathy and understanding to the participants. Although I was not able to attend to non-verbal positioning during the telephone interviews, I still feel I achieved a comfortable environment for participants as the majority of participants talked about their experiences readily.