Patton (2002, p.340) says that we “interview people to find out from them those things that we cannot directly observe”. According to him, the purpose of interviewing is “to allow us to enter into the other person’s perspective”.
Kruger (1979) discusses the importance of interviewing subjects in a place and under conditions that are comfortable for and familiar to them. Kruger (1979, p.125) states,
“It is important that the researcher create a situation in which the subject can feel relaxed, unthreatened and where he has time to spend with the interviewer.”
Consequently, arrangements for the interviews were made so as to accommodate the participants. The researcher emphasised that the subject should choose a time and place where he/she would feel relaxed and be able to devote his/her full attention to the interview. In most cases the researcher travelled to the participant’s home. The length of the interviews was dependent on the amount of information the interviewee wished to share. Interviews ranged from 45 minutes to two hours.
This study made use of what Patton (2002. p.342) calls “the general interview guide approach”. This approach involves outlining a set of issues that are to be explored with each respondent before interviewing begins.
According to Patton (2002) the advantages of the general interview guide are:
§ It makes sure that the interviewer/evaluator has carefully decided how best to use the limited time available in an interview situation
§ It serves as a basic checklist during the interview to ensure that all relevant topics are covered
§ It increases the comprehensiveness of the research information and makes research information collection somewhat more systematic for each respondent.
The guide provided a framework within which the interviewer developed questions, sequenced those questions, and made decisions about which information to pursue in greater depth. The interview explored parents’ perceptions regarding five aspects of raising children with ADHD, namely:
§ Parents’ perceptions regarding their interaction with health professionals and the child’s use of medication
§ Parents’ perceptions regarding the effects of ADHD on family life
§ Parents’ perceptions about their ADHD child and the school experience
§ Parents’ concerns and hopes for their ADHD child
§ Getting through the day and advice for other parents of ADHD children.
The researcher decided to include the first aspect because, by the nature of the disorder, parents will often have extensive interactions with health professionals. The use of medication for the disorder continues to be controversial, and parents’
experiences around the medication need to be recorded.
Parents own perceptions regarding the effects of ADHD on family life remain largely unexplored. There has been some research on family interactions, but none where
parents discussed their perceptions of how raising a child with ADHD affected their whole family.
The school experience was included, as studies suggest that formal, compulsory education is the area of greatest impact on the child’s ADHD (Barkley, Fischer et al., 1990; Biederman, 1997) and will create the greatest source of distress for many of them and their parents. As Barkley (1998) states, at any stage in the course of development of the ADHD child, the concerns of parents of ADHD children are likely to stem primarily from the impact of the child’s deficits on their functioning in the school, in the family, and within the peer group, and not from the ADHD symptoms per se. The first three of these concerns (school) is also the primary reason to seek clinical services for their children.
The last two aspects, parents’ concerns and hopes and parents’ advice for other parents, are currently missing from the published literature. Participants’ insights might prove very valuable for other parents of ADHD children.
Asking parents to relate their experience according to these five aspects helped participants to ground their experiences in a context, and thereby helped them to tell their stories (See Appendix C for the General Interview Guide).
The response format for questions was open-ended. The interview did not supply or predetermine the phrases and categories that needed to be used by respondents to express themselves, as is the case with fixed-response questionnaires. It’s the difference between asking, “Tell me about your experience in the program” and,
“How satisfied were you? Very, somewhat, little, or not at all” (Patton, 2002, p. 40).
The purpose was to capture the individual experience of those being interviewed, rather than forcing them to fit their experiences into the researcher’s categories. As Lofland (1971, p.7) puts it: “To capture participants in their own terms, one must learn their categories for rendering explicable and coherent the flux of raw reality. That, indeed, is the first principle of qualitative analysis”.
Background/demographic questions were also asked, to help locate the respondents in relation to other people. Demographic questions included the age of the participant, educational level of participant, number of children, age of children, and marital status (See Appendix A for the Participant Information Form). Sample characteristics will be discussed at the beginning of chapter seven.
It is necessary to record as fully and fairly as possible each interviewee’s perspective. As Patton (2002, p.21) states, “direct quotations are a basic source of raw data in qualitative inquiry, revealing respondents’ depth of emotion, the ways they have organised their world, their thoughts about what is happening, their experiences and their basic perceptions”. Consequently, all interviews were tape recorded so that the researcher had the verbatim responses of all respondents. The use of the tape recorder was explained to participants during the initial telephonic contact and at the beginning of the interview. Participants were told that the researcher did not want to either miss anything they say or inadvertently change their words while making notes. Respondents were informed that they could turn the tape recorder off at any time during the interview.
Besides increasing the accuracy of research information, using a tape recorder allows the interviewer to be more attentive to the interviewee. According to Patton (2002), if you are trying to write down every word, it is difficult to respond appropriately to interviewee cues. Verbatim note taking can also interfere with listening attentively. The interviewer can get so focused on note taking that the person speaking gets only secondary attention.
The tape-recorded interviews were transcribed word-for-word onto a computer disc.
According to Kowal and O’Connell (2004, p.248) transcripts “are needed to make fleeting conversational behaviour available on paper for scientific analysis”. In two cases, a second interview was conducted with participants, one telephonically and one face-to-face. The second interviews were conducted to clarify certain statements and to ensure the researcher understood their meaning correctly. These member checks were undertaken in an attempt to enhance the validity and reliability of the research information. The second interviews were both taped and then transcribed in the same manner as the first set of interviews.