Introduction

Talk based methods

Abstract

This guide provides practical advice for Health and Wellbeing staff on designing, delivering, analysing and reporting high-quality interviews and focus groups. It outlines when and how to use these talk-based methods, covering planning, accessibility, ethics, safeguarding, facilitation, analysis and the use of AI, to support robust and meaningful insight that can inform public health services, policy and decision-making.

About this guide

We publish our methodologies and guidance openly to be transparent about how Public Health Intelligence (PHI) works, and to enable others to reuse, adapt, challenge, or improve our approaches.

This document reflects the current practice of the PHI team at the time of publication. It is not intended to be a comprehensive guide to the subject matter, nor should it be regarded as corporate policy, formal organisational guidance, or a mandated approach outside the PHI team.

Different approaches may be equally valid in other contexts, organisations, or service areas, and practice may evolve over time. Anyone seeking to apply methods or recommendations from this guide should critically assess their suitability for their own objectives, context, and requirements.

What is this guide for?

This guide has been developed to support Health and Wellbeing staff at Camden to design and deliver high-quality interviews and focus groups (also referred to in this guide as ‘talk-based methods’).

Interviews and focus groups are widely used across public health to explore people’s experiences, perspectives, and views in depth. They are especially valuable when we want to understand why something is happening, how people experience services, or how policies and programmes affect people’s lives.

Interviews and focus groups require careful planning and delivery. Issues such as recruitment, consent, safeguarding, data protection, and analysis need to be considered from the outset to ensure that these methods are used appropriately and are ethically sound.

This guide is intended to help you feel more confident using these methods in your work.

If you are thinking about using interviews or focus groups, this guide can help you decide whether these methods are right for your project and how to get the most out of them.

You can find a range of tools, templates and resources in the Templates in this guide to help you get started.

If you are planning large-scale, complex, or highly sensitive talk-based work, or if you are unsure about the most appropriate methods or approaches for your project, reach out to the Public Health Intelligence team for support and advice.

Large scale work may involve a high number of participants, sites, or data collection events. For example, more than 20 to 25 interviews, multiple focus groups across several settings, or longitudinal designs with repeated contact. Scale also increases where work involves coordinating multiple researchers or fieldworkers, or where sampling spans several distinct population groups.
Complex talk-based work may involve using approaches that go beyond single semi-structured interviews or focus groups, such as in-depth or unstructured interviewing, life-course or biographical interviewing, longitudinal or repeat-contact designs, participatory methods, or the use of creative or arts-based techniques, in addition to involving hard-to-reach or seldom-heard populations, or projects where findings will directly inform significant commissioning or policy decisions.
Highly sensitive work may involve topics or populations where is there is potential for participant and/or researcher distress, disclosure of harm, or safeguarding risk. This includes research on experiences of trauma, abuse, bereavement, mental health, substance use, discrimination, or illegal activity, as well as work with vulnerable groups such as children and young people, people with learning disabilities, or individuals in crisis.

How to use this guide

The structure of this guide follows the Research Cycle. It starts with early planning and design, through recruitment and delivery, to analysis and writing up findings.
You can read the guide from start to finish or focus on the chapters that are most relevant to the stage you are at in your project.
Each chapter highlights best practice and how to avoid common pitfalls, as well as practical examples of how interviews and focus groups are used in a public health context.
Checklists, templates, and example materials are included at the end of the guide to support your work.

NIHR. Briefing notes for researchers - public involvement in NHS, health and social care research. Available from: https://www.nihr.ac.uk/briefing-notes-researchers-public-involvement-nhs-health-and-social-care-research

Templates

These templates are designed to be adapted. Every project is different, and the language, format, and level of detail in each document should be tailored to your specific research context, your participant group, and the topic you are exploring.