Interviewing Techniques

1. Create an Interview Guide:

The client believes that stress may be part of the problem with his/her symptoms

The purpose is to gather in-depth information to aid in diagnosis and treatment planning for the client.  You will need to gather detailed information about the symptoms being reported for both headaches and sleep problems (e.g., How often are the headaches occurring?  How long do they last?  What do they feel like?  Has any treatment helped?  Is there any pattern to the headaches?).

Interview Guide Topics

The Interview Guide should directly address the below topics.  Use each of these topics as headings within your paper to ensure that you directly respond to each.  You should respond with at least a paragraph for each topic/heading.

1. 1. 1. Identify and summarize the purpose of your interview.  How will the information you gather be used?
      2. Explain how you will structure the interview and your reasoning behind the structuring of the interview. Include a list of topics you plan to cover.
      3. Compose the questions you will use to obtain the information (develop a minimum of 15-20 questions). Be sure that you develop a minimum of 5 open and 5 closed ended questions.
      4. Develop a minimum of 5 examples of paraphrasing, summaries, or

         reflections techniques that could be used during your interview (must have at least one of each paraphrase, summary, and reflection). When you conduct your actual interview, these exact examples you create may not fit depending on the responses of your interviewee, but it is important to start thinking now about how you will incorporate these techniques.  For this Interview Guide assignment, develop hypothetical examples of each type of technique.

      5. Identify the opening techniques you will utilize to build rapport with the volunteer/client.
      6. Identify types/examples of questions you want to avoid during interview.

Include an Analysis Summary:

In addition to the Interview Guide include an analysis (2-3 paragraphs) of your own preliminary thoughts about this client based on the limited information you have about this client. Have you ever known a person with chronic headaches or sleep problems? What is your “gut reaction” to hearing about a patient with chronic headaches and problems sleeping? That the person is a complainer? Is he/she a victim of terrible illness? Spend some time examining your thoughts and attitudes. It is normal for all of us to make at least preliminary assumptions about everyone we come in to contact with, and a good interviewer has awareness of his or her preliminary assumptions. Include the following in your analysis:

1. Identify your own beliefs (sympathetic, unsympathetic, or some mixture of both) and explain how these could affect your interview. Do you think that your beliefs are influenced by your own age, cultural, gender, sexual orientation, or ethnicity?
2. Identify steps you can take to limit the impact of your own beliefs on the interview. Be as specific as possible.