Interviewing

This stage mainly focuses on the actual implementation of the interview. The semi-structured interviews were conducted during a one month period, i.e. September 2014, and over the telephone, for several reasons. Participants were distributed across large geographical areas; therefore, it was more cost-effective to conduct the interviews over the phone rather than face-to-face (Wilson, 2014). Participants in this research were working in hospitals and other organizations across several regions of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia – as presented in Table 3.3. As the training was targeting Tabuk region, so most participants came from the Tabuk region, but there were few people come from other regions such as Makkah and Asir region. It was difficult for the researcher to travel because of time and resource constraints; instead it was convenient for both herself and the interviewee to conduct the interviews by phone. Additionally, a study conducted by Sturges and Hanrahan (2004) on a comparison between
face-to-face interviewing and telephone interviewing in a qualitative study, the results indicated that no significant differences in the interviews and telephone interviews can be used efficiently in qualitative research.  However, there are also some disadvantages posed by phone interviews. For example, the researcher might not be aware of the interviewee’s setting while asking questions that might impact on their responses;  or could miss non-verbal clues such as  the interviewee becoming fatigued by repetitive questions (Wilson, 2014). The researcher took this into account throughout this stage. For example, when the interview questions were piloted, the researcher asked the interviewees if this was an appropriate time to start, otherwise she would call back for a better time and place, without any distractions.  This will be discussed further in the next section.
The setting of the interview is very important too (Bryman and Bell, 2007). Consequently, the researcher sought to select the most appropriate place. This should be characterized of being quiet and private, thus offering ample time to the interviewee. As the interviews were conducted over the phone with professionals being based in their work settings, the researcher ensured that they were comfortable, and that there were no distractions or noise. This was particularly important, because participants were located in busy clinical settings or offices.
The interview process was completed in three phases. The first phase began by welcoming the participants. The researcher introduced herself, briefly described the purpose of the study; highlighted the importance of the interviewee’s point of view; and reassured them on issues like consent and confidentiality. Some initial questions were asked to break the ice between the researcher and the interviewee such as asking them to introduce themselves, describe features of their role, their recollection of the contents and delivery of the child protection training, and to what extend this was related to their role. The aim of these open questions was to make the participant feel comfortable before exploring more sensitive topics (Memon and Bull, 2000).
In the second phase, the researcher explored their perceived impact of the child protection multidisciplinary training programme, its positive or negative aspects, and participants’ experiences in implementing the training into their practice. These prompts aimed at unravelling the reasons behind positive and negative appraisals.
During the third and final phase, questions were related to participants’ opinions on improving the training, and related policy or practice in the future. At the end, they were provided with a summary of their views to determine if these had been understood correctly. Interviewees were also asked if they wanted to add any other points. Some prompts were used, if appropriate, to encourage sharing more information, for instance, “could you explain to me more or how?”
Permission for the recording was granted by each participant prior to the beginning of the interview. The interviews were recorded using a digital MP3 player with several features. This allowed the researcher to transfer the files easily on the computer and to ensure that these were safely stored. The transferred files supported the researcher in slowing down or speeding up on the computer when required. However, a recorded interview may also be considered as de-contextualized in the absence of visual aspects (Kvale, 1996). It can be argued that non-verbal signs would add richer information (Cohen et al., 2007), however, video recording is costly and may cause the participant to feel uncomfortable. It may also result in the collection of broad information that is time-consuming and cumbersome to transcribe (Kvale, 1996). Thus, the use of a voice recorder was the chosen method.