Symposium 74 - Applying qualitative research methodology to the study of intervention process: Applications in intervention development

Chair(s)

• TS

  Tyrel J. Starks, Ph.D. (he/him/his)

  Associate Professor
  Hunter College of the City University of New York
  New York City, New York

Discussant(s)

• SS

  Steven Safren, ABPP, Ph.D. (he/him/his)

  Professor
  University of Miami
  Coral Gables, Florida

Presenter(s)

• TS

  Tyrel J. Starks, Ph.D. (he/him/his)

  Associate Professor
  Hunter College of the City University of New York
  New York City, New York
• SG

  Stephanie Godleski, Ph.D. (she/her/hers)

  Rochester Institute of Technology
  Rochester, New York
• DS

  David Scales, M.D., Ph.D. (he/him/his)

  Weill Cornell Medicine
  NEW YORK, New York
• LT

  Leora Trub, Ph.D. (she/her/hers)

  Associate professor of psychology
  Pace university
  Brooklyn, New York

Qualitative research methods are well established and used routinely across a range of disciplines. They have been applied to a range of data sources. Examples include in-depth interviews, open ended survey questions, and rapid ethnographic assessments. Recently, behavioral intervention research has begun to utilize qualitative methodology to study intervention process. These studies utilize intervention transcripts as data. Their subject of study is the text of the verbal interactions between a client and interventionist. Findings from these studies have been used to further the application of theory to clinical practice, identify effective intervention strategies, elucidate mechanisms of intervention effects, examine client perspectives on health behavior, and gauge client perspectives on the intervention experience.

Our first presenter provides an overview of inductive and deductive approaches to qualitative analysis. Their talk focuses on three characteristics unique to the analysis of intervention transcripts. First, the stance of the counselor (or intervention content) is different from that of a qualitative interviewer (or an open-ended survey question). Second, analyses must situate intervention interactions in the context of the theoretical orientation that guides the intervention. Third, unlike qualitative interview data – where the respondent’s utterances are informative and the interviewer’s utterances are typically not analyzed – both counselor and client speech may be the subject of analysis when studying intervention process.

Our second presenter provides an example of the use of qualitative analysis to identify effective provider responses during intervention sessions focused on hazardous drinking among non-pregnant partners in a sample composed of primarily heterosexual couples. The analysis suggested that a number of specific provider behaviors (i.e., supporting autonomy, dyadic reflections, and relationship affirmations) served to mitigate conflict and enhance client engagement in session. Results are discussed in terms of their application to provider training and ongoing intervention delivery.

The third presenter details how qualitative analysis of transcripts in which medical infodemiologists conducted interventions to enhance COVID-19 vaccine uptake and combat misinformation in online, social networking platforms. Their findings identified specific infodemiologist strategies that promoted the consideration of vaccination and decreased the intensity of anti-vaccine positions expressed by chat-room participants.

The fourth presenter describes the application of qualitative analyses to track changes in the content of text-messages following a mindfulness-based intervention delivered via an app. While communication theory is advanced, its application to digital communication is in a nascent stage. Dr. Trub and her team evaluated the utility of existing taxonomies of adaptive and maladaptive communication to a text-messaging format. Their analyses also have the potential to advance communication theory through identifying several unique manifestations of adaptive communication evident in text-messages.