Face to face 1-2-1 conversation or interviews

Pros and cons:

Useful for: reaching people in specific groups you want to reach, including where the interviewer has community language skills, and/or where people would not be able to participate in a group activity. 

Disadvantages and risks:

• It may take a lot of time and resource to interview more than a few people, so you need to decide carefully about who to recruit (how many people? what characteristics or experiences?).
• Structured interviews are not well-suited to gaining insights to individual experience and perceptions.
• Semi-structured and unstructured interviews offer rich potential for learning about experience but require a lot of time to analyse.

Cost: varies - you may decide to pay for community language,  Deaf communication specialists or to pay community organisations to conduct interviews for you. 

Timing: this will vary - consider how many people you will interview and where (will they all be in the same place? Do you and/or the interviewees need to travel?). Build in time for testing your questions ahead of interviewing people, and for analysing and reporting on the interviews afterwards.

Preparation:

Recruiting people: follow our guidance about identifying who to invite, consent, practical and ethical considerations. Consider using an Information about me form. Consider sending reminders in ways people prefer, for example using a reminder letter, text or phone call.

Plan your questions: Identify three or four broad, open, questions relating to what you want to learn about (your overall research question). If possible, test your questions with people living with dementia who have similar skills and abilities to the people you want to recruit to your focus group. See our guidance about types of questions

Consider how you will analyse your interviews: Don't wait until you've done your interviews to try to work out what to do with all the notes or recording you've accumulated. This video provides a short guide.

How to conduct your interview

Ensure there's water or other appropriate drink available for the interviewee and interviewer.

Design an interview framework for you - or the interviewers on your behalf - to use. It should include:

• Check you have consent: introduce yourself, the purpose of the interview, an outline what will happen in the interview, and what will happen afterwards about what the person tells you (such as reporting and anonymity). 
  • Remember to apply process consent: if at any point the person you are interviewing is unable or unwilling to continue, allow them to withdraw and stop the interview.
• Build rapport so that the person feels able to be open with you: avoid being judgemental, focus on being in the moment and show empathy. 
• Use a range of question types to gather information
  • Ask follow on questions 
  • Adapt the types of question you ask to  the needs of the person you are interviewing. 
    • closed questions can be useful to check your understanding. Asking too many closed questions can make it feel like an interrogation.
    • asking too complicated questions may be confusing 
    • asking leading questions may skew your answers (many people like to please so may seek to give the answer they think you want rather than what they might have said otherwise)

After the interview

Thank the interviewee for taking part in the interview.

Tell the interviewee what will happen about what they have shared. Let the person know how they can find out more or get an update, if they want.

Offer the person the draft version of your notes so that they can check they are happy with them before you share them in reports etc. If the person is unable to read them for themselves, check they have help, if they want it, to review the notes.

Useful link

IDEAL masterclass 'Doing qualitative interviews with people with dementia and their carers/relatives: Tips, strategies and considerations

TIps from the IDEAL project for interviewing people with dementia

Real-life examples featured in this resource

Developing a dementia-friendly phone app with How do I?

Pads in bags- including people affected by incontinence