논문리뷰11: Interviewing elderly residents in assisted living: 연구 수행 시 고려되어야 할 context에 대하여

 Warren, Carol AB, and Kristine N. Williams. "Interviewing elderly residents in assisted living." Qualitative Sociology 31.4 (2008): 407.

“How did you come to live in this Assisted Living Facilities?” and ending with “What if anything could be done to improve the ALF?” Following the guided interview questions, a depression scale and a health-related quality of life scale were administered to elicit quantitative data.

-the focus of analysis is how the interview context shaped the residents' interpretation of questions, their answers, and the negotiation of numbers. By context, we mean the autobiographical (Wortham 2001) as well as the situational (Adler and Adler 2002).

-the purpose of the original study is to determine how resident and staff experiences in assisted living differ from other residential settings, and to identify whether assisted living is successful in maintaining autonomy

-analysis of the data: inductive method-generating concepts from the data (grounded theory)

-Inductive interpretation of interview data insists that respondents' talk is not viewed as a collection of reality reports delivered from a fixed repository. Instead, the talk is considered for ways that it assembles aspects of reality in collaboration with the interviewer.

-Validity here is to be inseperable from context, so findings are generalizable only to others, similar contexts, only tentatively.

 

Interviewing the elderly in assisted living facilities

-focuses on the context of the interview, and the interpretations, answers, and negotiations that occur within that context

-interview research may be critical to understanding and improving ALF living (issues of interviewing people in institutional settings or interviewing the elderly: Residents of ALFs may or may not be autonomous and independent enough to be able to choose to be interviewed) e.g., 65세 노인 70세 노인, 80대 노인은 모두 다름 (impairment 수준: Impairments such as forgetfulness, loss of hearing, speech problems, and cognitive impairment may have an impact on question and answer sequences) 그런데  paradoxically they may also make them more willing (“report in considerable detail the shape of even minor events and daily routines,” and that they may also tell long stories not directly related to the interviewer’s questions.)

-Black (2006) refers to the ALF setting as “liminal” in two interconnected ways: between lesser and greater frailty, and between the resident’s current AL and the two less preferable future options: death, or the nursing home

-Staff members have the power to recommend transfer out of the ALF, and residents are well aware of this. The interviewer’s questions—involving a critique of the staff and facility—were potentially dangerous to the residents—what we refer to as the ALF context of institutional fear

-The presence of the interviewer was also potentially valuable as sociability: institutional loneliness

 

Institutional fear

-Although the purpose of the interviews was not to elicit criticism of the facility or its staff on the part of residents, the institutional context framed the topic of staff precisely in this manner.

-The bottom line of institutional fear is the necessity of adaptation, adjustment, or attitude—that if residents do not do adapt, they will end up in a nursing home.

-Given this institutional fear factor, these recorded interviews may be somewhat threatening—the interviewer could be a spy for the facility, or report back to the facility, no matter what she says. On the other hand, many of these residents are lonely, and the interview has a more positive meaning—filling time, someone listening to them.

 

Institutional loneliness

-Institutional fear involves wanting to stay in place and not go to the nursing home; institutional loneliness exemplifies the social situation of most of these residents in ALFs. They are not at home, they are in a home, without their children and (except in a few cases) husbands.

 

Invoking impairment

-In the context of institutional fear, respondents might wish to avoid answering evaluative—qualitative or quantitative—questions concerning the facility or its staff; impairments of hearing, memory or understanding could be invoked in these cases.

 

Framing questions and answers

-Interviews, questions may seem meaningless to the respondent, or the meaning of questions is interpreted differently by researcher and respondent, or the respondent’s answers do not fit easily into numerical or quasi-numerical categories.

-It is clear from these interviews that the administration of scales is not similar to taking blood pressure; the answers to scale questions must be interpreted as qualitatively as the “qualitative” interviews—in the context of liminality, nostalgia, and ALF residence.

 

Conclusion

-Interviewing takes place in a context: a place, a time, and a biographical trajectory for the respondent (and for the interviewer).

-Within the situated present of the interview, the elderly resident’s interpretations, answers and responses—and perhaps invocation of impairment—may be affected by institutional fear and institutional Loneliness.

-Context is at the heart of the knowledge produced by the interview.

-And in Assisted Living, context is shaped by the institution and its staff as well as by the residents biography.

Both the words of the interview, and the laughter threading through the words, provide us with an understanding of the

biographical and institutional context of living in the ALF

 

-면담에서 context란 언제나 중요한 것일까? 덜 중요하고 더 중요한 상황이란 무엇들이 있을까? 예컨대 인터뷰의 목적 (정보전달) 등? 

-기존의 축적된 연구들이 context에 대한 충분한 고려를 위한 정보를 적절히 제공할 수 있는가?