thanks rick, yes i think it is interesting. as is yours!

well i am researching this general question through looking at a specific case. this will be IVF in one country. i will interview physicians and people undergoing treatment and will do some observation in clinics, and will use policy texts and available statistical data.

you are right that the general question is to huge to answer. i will just try to address it through looking at one small area of it

Hi Rick,
I've been looking at the way a new science is incorporated into medicine, and started out wanting to interview health professionals about whether they thought this particular science was going to be helpful or not. I found most people just said 'I'll worry about it if/when it happens'. I also suspect that because it was prospective, many people did not choose to participate, as they considered they had nothing useful to contribute. Consequently I shifted the focus of my research to look at what different professional groups within medicine currently do (for which interviews were useful) and how this new technology would fit or not with existing practice. So a more structural focus if you like.

[cont]

I guess with guidelines, at least medics are aware of the concept, even if not the specific details of the ones you are interested in, so that will probably help. But yes, in short, you are right to worry about people, especially busy professionals, not wanting to engage with stuff that isn't actually an issue for them at the moment - though I dont have any good solutions.

Thank you Aliby,

thanks for sharing this. Your posting is helpful as it confirms that interviewing people is probably required, yet they may not enthousiastic about it. The attitude that you describe sounds familiar to me. I am not too keen on open interviews anyway and having a more structural approach seems a good idea.
Maybe as suggested by Shani a combination of methods is required.

So is your research still ongoing or have you finished it?

Hi Rick,

I've finished the interviewing now thank goodness - at the writing stage.

I dont think you necessarily have to do interviews, a survey approach may have advantages. But I think you could find the same sort of problems (people not inclined to participate, not wanting to think about things that arent actually a problem now) whatever method you use.

hope it goes well whatever method you employ

Thank you Aliby

Hi Rick,
i've been thinking about your ideas (why do i like thinking about other people's projects so much more than about mine?)...
the approach of asking many small questions in the questionnaire and only one big overall question at the end has the goal, if i understand correctly, of gently introducing your interviewees to the topic of which they don't know anything yet. i think this is a good idea and might well work, but there might also be other solutions to your problem (how to introduce them to an unkown thing without boring them). like, you could produce a little film to show them, which explains the basics in a fun way. or make a interactive homepage.
just thinking aloud...

Hi Shani,

thanks for your thoughts regarding this subject. You are right that my idea was to use the questionnaire as an introduction into the subject and the to ask the general opinion regarding it.
Your ideas regarding the film and website are interesting and I will have to think about this. Indeed if the particapants could look at it individually they may do it, getting them all together for focus groups / film sessions is more difficult.

I have arranged an appointment with my supervisor today. His view is that the quesionnaire which I designed does cover the relevant areas but does not cover whether they actually will use it (they will know the subject, and they may say that they would use it, but cannot be sure that this will happen). I think he is claiming that the face validity is not great! I will discuss and see what other approaches there may be.

hm that is a standard problem about talking to people (qual and quant): what people say they do or would do is not necessarily what they really do. that's where experiments and observation come in handily (though they have their own problems); but this is probably not an option for you. perhaps a quasi-experiment, if you have data from another country where this has already been introduced and you can show that something was different before and after the introduction of this thing.

perhaps a way to approach this problem would be to confront your subjects not with abstract questions but with scenarios. the problem remains, but it gets more concrete, so you have a higher chance of getting from people what they really might do.

or something you can do is ask what they did in a similar situation in the past.

Hi Shani,

thanks, see what you mean.

How is the writing going?

Have spoken to me supervisor. Constructive discussion and nice to see that he also has no easy answer. He thinks the trick is to have a good research question that fits well with the method (how surprising!) He may be right regarding the importance of wording: would clinicians use a guideline one cannot answer with a questionnaire. Do clinicians think that certain elements of a guideline are correct you can find out using it. Obviously the question then is "What is correct". I have to think this over!