Q5: Lydia is a cynical psychologist. She is investigating the experiences of patients
who attend the local mental health unit. Lydia has decided to use interviews to ask the
patients about communication at the mental health unit and wants some feedback
regarding the areas they think are effective as well as possible improvements.
Lydia interviews each patient individually and uses a variety of question types within
her interviews. Once the interviews have been completed, Lydia collates her data and
then reports on her findings to the manager of the mental health unit.
Discuss how Lydia could use interviews with the patients in the mental health unit.
You must make reference to the context in your answer. (8)
Lydia could use semi-structured interviews to collect valid and reliable data about the
patients’ experiences at the local mental health unit. These interviews have questions that
aim to be answered, but the conversation with interviewee flows better and in a more natural
way whilst still achieving the aim of the interview. Lydia could ask the patients about their
general experiences at the local mental health unit, and could expand on their answers to
make the conversation flow better. This would help Lydia to obtain information about
communication at the unit and also about the patients’ experiences that could be useful
when she collates all of the data. This allows Lydia to report valid findings to the manager.
However, the findings may not be reliable since semi-structured interviews are difficult to
replicate because the conversations with patients may not necessarily have the same
questions in the same order. This may lower the reliability of Lydia’ findings about
communication at the unit because patients may have been asked different questions and
hence may have answered in a slightly different way.
Lydia could use closed questions in her interviews. These have a set of questions and
options which the interviewee can choose from, but leave no space for them to fully express
their opinions. For example, Lydia could use ranked scale questions that require the patients
to rank their experiences at the mental health unit from 1 (very poor) to 5 (excellent). Other
closed questions may include “Does this mental health unit meet your needs?” “Yes/No”.
The patient would then need to choose an option from the options given within the question.
This allows Lydia to collect objective and valuable data regarding how patients feel about
communication at the mental health unit. However, closed questions may not be suitable
when trying to collect meaningful and detailed information about the patients’ opinions on
how effective some areas of the unit are or suggest improvements. This means that closed
questions cannot gather enough information about why patients may find certain areas
effective or not, which can lower the validity of the data collected.
To solve this, Lydia can use open questions in her interviews. These allow the interviewee to
expand on their answers, giving refined detail and their opinions regarding specific topics.
For example, open questions Lydia could use are “What do you think about communication
at the local mental health unit? Or “How could some areas of this mental health unit be
improved?”. This can help Lydia gather meaningful data regarding the patients’ experiences
and suggestions for improvements. However, open questions need to be subjectively
interpreted by Lydia, which may lower their validity. This is because it introduces bias in the
findings and patients’ responses,hence they may not reflect their true views about
communication at the local mental health unit. To address this, Lydia could use a balance of
open and closed questions in her interviews to gather data that is both objective and
detailed, so that she can find out more about which areas of the mental health unit may be
effective for patients and what improvements they suggest.
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