PRACTICE #10: REPEATING INFORMATION ALREADY COMMUNICATED VIA THE CONSENT FORM AS PREAMBLE IN THE INTERVIEW GUIDE

During a few years that we have been supporting implementation of qualitative studies, we have seen interview guides containing preamble information that is mostly a repetition of what has already been communicated via the consenting form. In the example below, taken from an IDI guide from one of the studies, most (if not all) of the information below, that was provided as preamble information in the interview guide, was already included in the consent form.

Hi, my name is __________________ and I am working on behalf of xxxx in Tanzania. We would like to talk to you about the processes of and lessons learnt from the implementation of the xxxx project in Shinyanga. The project is using process documentation to answer key questions about the experience of implementing its technical strategy to reach adolescents and young married women. Findings from these discussions will inform technical supportive supervision and facilitate evidence-based collaborative problem-solving between frontline implementers (yourselves and small group leaders), project implementing partners, and project managers. At the end of the project, process documentation will also help implementers to understand the key moments and decisions that affected your ability to implement the strategy, as well as to develop lessons learned and recommendations for future implementers. ?The discussions will last about 45min to one hour. ?There are no right or wrong answers and we just want to learn from you and from your ideas and experiences. All of the answers you give will be confidential and will not be shared with anyone outside this group, other than members of our assessment team. You don't have to be in the study, but we hope you will agree to answer the questions since your views are important. If I ask you any question you don't want to answer, just let me know and I will go on to the next question or you can decide to leave the discussions at any time.

?Are you willing to participate in the interview?

During the discussions, I will be taking notes to record the main ideas we discuss. However, so that I do not have to worry about getting every word down on paper I will also be tape recording the whole session. Please do not be concerned about this, our discussion will remain completely confidential and will ONLY be used for this study.

?Do you agree to have our conversations tape-recorded??

Such a practice may result when different study team members develop consent forms and interview guides, and if interviewers provide this information as it is to the respondents, as a preamble to the interview, and after having provided similar information through the consenting process, it may lead to boring the respondent even before starting the interview. ??

?BEST PRACTICE

We generally advise researchers to decide where to put such information in order to avoid boring study respondents with repetitions of what he/she might have already been told.?Our preference is putting such kind of information in the consent form and directly starting with questions for the interview guides. One may still add a very brief pre-amble to the interview guide, but this shouldn’t repeat any of the information that has already been communicated via the consent form.?

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PS. For more than 8 years that our team has been supporting qualitative studies for clients from more than 25 international organizations, we have been taking note of practices in qualitative tools design that proved to risk the quality of collected information. These series of articles are aimed at discussing each of the 20 practices that we compiled, including how they may risk the quality of collected information. We also provide alternative practices that may maximize quality of collected information. It is our hope that qualitative researchers around the world will keep the proposed tips in mind while designing qualitative tools for their studies so as to maximize the quality of collected information.