ABSTRACT
This chapter briefly reviews the complexity of the qualitative interviewing process used by psychotherapy researchers, and updates some of the major ideas that psychotherapy researchers using such interviews must consider as they engage in the interview process. It then offers current thinking about additional research on the qualitative interview process that may help improve qualitative interviews themselves. Differences of opinion also exist regarding how many interviews each participant should complete. Some qualitative researchers or methods rely on a single interview, whereas others use multiple interview contacts. More recently, however, many qualitative researchers have moved to postmodern paradigms that emphasize constructivist interpretivist perspectives in which the truth of an experience is co-constructed between researcher and participant. Such researchers are often more directly involved with participants in attempting to more fully understand their experiences. Two studies that have examined phone vs. in-person formats reported a slight advantage for the latter in yielding higher-quality data.
