Question

Nursing Research: Chapter 9 Polit and Beck (2010). Suppose you were interested in doing a survey of nurse’s attitudes toward caring for AIDS patients. Would you use a personal interview, telephone interview, or a mailed/e-mailed questionnaire to collect your data? Defend your decision.

Answer 1

ATTITUDE is a settled way of thinking or feeling about something... It might be in a good view or bad view

We can come to know about attitude of a person only when we spend sometime in person with him or her

In the above context to assess nurse's attitude towards AIDS patient, it would be better to have PERSONAL INTERVIEW rather than telephone or mail

REASON FOR SELECTING AND BENEFITS OF PERSONAL INTERVIEW

• it is standardly recommended to use personal interview method while assessing attitude of a person
• It allows a face to face conversation which would help us to see the non verbal expressions of the nurse
• Language barriers can be minimised with this method
• Avoids problems of weak cellular network and phone problems
• Technical skills of nurses can be observed and evaluated
• We can get right information from the right person. For example when we mail a questionnaire, we are not sure of the person who answered the questions....but in personal interview this does not happen and we can have correct results at the end
• Personal interview helps us to know more about the nurse
• Increases rapport between interviewer and interviewee
• Trust is devoloped and this helps the interviewee to open up while answering the questions
• Changes can be made in the questions or the way of questioning can be changed depending on the situation
• In this context to assess the attitude of nurses, interview or questionnaire must be focused on

1. Knowledge of nurses
2. Cultural differences they have
3. Professional ethics
4. Personal beliefs
5. Technical skills

• To know about all these things personal interviews are the best
• In dealing with AIDS patients, a nurse may have attitude of discrimination, acceptance and fear towards these patients...these are all something emotionally related and to know about such attitude we need to observe the person
• The person may answer a question in one way but she might not be following it in practice... For example when a question is asked like "do you provide bed bath to an elderly patient With AIDS?"... nurse may answer it as yes but she might not be following it... If we have a personal interview we can gather correct info
• Even though Nurses have subject knowledge about the disease, they may have fear of acquiring HIV infection while dealing with the patients...to know about such kind of inner feelings personal interview is the best

TYPES OF PERSONAL INTERVIEW

1.UNSTRUCTURED FORMAL INTERVIEW

• these are informal and are not controlled by a set of detailed questions
• Respondents are encouraged to talk freely about the subject

2.STUCTURED STANDARDISED INTERVIEW

• a specific questionnaire (regarding the issue) is used
• Questions are asked in a set order and in a set manner
• Respondents answers are recorded in questionnaire
• Here interviewer will not have a chance to change /add/delete anything in questionnaire

3.DEPTH INTERVIEWS

• unstructured or semi structured set of interview is used to get info about the topic or issue
• This type of interview explores deep emotions, motivations,and attitudes

4.TELEPHONIC INTERVIEW

• this is also a type of personal interview because two people are involved using a third medium
• This helps us to change the questions as per situation but this type of interview doesnt give us data accurately because here we are unable to see the person and hence we miss the non verbal communication of the opposite person

IN THE ABOVE CONTEXT,TO ASSESS THE ATTITUDE OF NURSES TOWARDS AIDS PATIENT DEPTH INTERVIEWS ARE PREFERABLE.

they are time consuming but yield quality results