Research Methods & Reporting

Use of serial qualitative interviews to understand patients’ evolving experiences and needs

BMJ 2009; 339 doi: 10.1136/bmj.b3702 (Published 28 September 2009)
Cite this as: BMJ 2009;339:b3702

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  1. Scott A Murray, St Columba’s hospice professor of primary palliative care,
  2. Marilyn Kendall, research fellow,
  3. Emma Carduff, research fellow,
  4. Allison Worth, research fellow,
  5. Fiona M Harris, research fellow,
  6. Anna Lloyd, research fellow,
  7. Debbie Cavers, research fellow,
  8. Liz Grant, senior lecturer,
  9. Aziz Sheikh, professor of primary care research and development
  1. 1Primary Palliative Care Research Group, Centre for Population Health Sciences: General Practice Section, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH8 9DX
  1. Correspondence to: S A Murray scott.murray{at}ed.ac.uk
  • Accepted 26 March 2009

Interviewing patients over the course of their illness can give a much better picture of their experience than single interviews, but the approach is rarely used. Scott Murray and colleagues explain how to get the most from it

Longitudinal qualitative research offers considerable advantages over the more typical single “snapshot” techniques in understanding patients’ changing experience of illness. Serial qualitative interviews are a convenient and efficient approach to developing an ongoing relationship between the participant and researcher, thereby facilitating discussion of sensitive and personal issues while also allowing exploration of changing needs and experiences.

Serial interview studies are widely used by social science researchers in anthropology, criminology, education, psychology, and social policy.1 2 3 4 5 6 However, they remain underused in medicine.7 Using our experience with the technique, we suggest when researchers might wish to use serial interviews and discuss the methods, the data generated, and how to avoid potential pitfalls.

When to use serial interviews

Serial interviews are suitable for research that aims to explore evolving and complex processes or when time is needed to develop a relationship between researcher and participants. We have used the approach to study the changing experiences and needs of people with lung and brain cancers, heart failure, severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and spiritual distress, and access to care for south Asian patients at end of life (table⇓).8 9 10 11 Others have shown the value of this approach in, for example, understanding childhood asthma, exploring stigma related to HIV infection, reconstruction of self identity after diagnosis of chronic fatigue syndrome, complex clinician-patient interactions around requests for physician assisted suicide, and the symptom course in childhood cancer.12 13 14 15 16

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Details of six serial in-depth interview studies

Serial interviews can also be used to identify changes in what patients want, …

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