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Increasing numbers of healthcare researchers in the UK are using telephone interviews in their research. In this paper, Elizabeth Smith summarises the context in which the method is used to target purposive samples of service users or patient, carers, clinicians and other staff, or key individuals in the field of inquiry. The aim is to gain detailed and specific data about perceptions, experiences and views of healthcare services. It is useful to identify the circumstances under which the advantages and disadvantages of telephone interviewing have been realised to contextua/ise concerns about the quality of the data compared to other methods and provide practical advice for researchers considering using the method
key words
* interviewing methods
* telephone interviews
* ethics in research
* research methodology
Introduction
The increasing use of telephone interviews across diverse fields of research (Thomas and Purdon 1994) suggests that the method has considerable value in its application to health services research. Researchers who have used the technique have identified advantages of the method, including:
* The opportunity to collect data from geographically disparate samples (Wilson and Edwards 2003).
* Increased cost and time effectiveness compared with face-to-face interviewing (Baker 1 994, Wilson et al 1998).
* Elimination of travel costs.
* Greater acceptability to interviewees because they generally take less time to undertake (Ross et al 2001).
* The opportunity to ensure that all questions are answered and clarified, unlike with self-administered questionnaires.
* Increased response rates compared with postal surveys (Thomas and Purdon 1994).
It could also be argued that the method lends itself to research management and governance (Department of Health (DH) 2003) as conversations can be recorded and observed with less intrusion than during face-to-face interviews.
For these reasons telephone interviews have become a favoured tool for opinion polls and social policy research (Noble eta/ 1991), as well as for large-scale surveys of access to and delivery of health services (Corey and Freeman 1990). In these contexts interviews tend to be heavily structured or involve administering a questionnaire, and are increasingly being supported with the use of Computer Assisted Interview Surveys (JCSM 1991). However, the extensive use of 'cold calling' in commercial market research has contributed to negative views about the method being intrusive (Baker 1994). Sykes...