Abstract

Future development of electronic health (eHealth) programs will be furthered if program design can be based on the knowledge of eHealth’s working mechanisms. A promising and pragmatic method for exploring potential working mechanisms is qualitative interview studies, in which eHealth working mechanisms can be explored through the perspective of the program user. To be useful, such interview studies need to be of sufficient quality, which entails that the interviews should generate enough data of sufficient quality relevant to the research question (ie, rich data). However, getting rich interview data on eHealth working mechanisms can be surprisingly challenging, as several of the authors have experienced. In this paper, we build on our experience as well as the qualitative literature to address this need, by describing 5 challenges that may arise in such interviews and presenting methodological tools to counteract each challenge. We hope the ideas we offer will spark methodological reflections and provide some options for researchers interested in using qualitative interview studies to explore eHealth’s working mechanisms.

Article

Holter MTS, Johansen AB, Ness O, Brinkmann S, Høybye MT, Brendryen H. Qualitative Interview Studies of Working Mechanisms in Electronic Health: Tools to Enhance Study Quality. 2019. J Med Internet Res 2019;21(5):e10354

https://www.jmir.org/2019/5/e10354/

Contact

Mette Terp Høybye, Associate Professor, IMC
Department of Clinical Medicine - Elective Surgery Centre, Silkeborg