54 research RApport 50 Interviewing in Research: what NLP can offer to enhance your skills in qualitative data collection By Dr Suzanne Henwood What other NLP skills would you advocate for qualitative researchers?
esearch RApport 50 55 Ongoing research supervision and support is also valuable Interviewing is a common form of data collection in qualitative research and requires skills and rigour to ensure good quality data is obtained. This article explores some of the ways that NLP can enhance data collection to add even greater value to research studies. What other NLP skills would you advocate for qualitative researchers? Suggested NLP skills to bring to qualitative interviewing to enhance a researcher’s skills are set out below. Preparation through modelling Qualitative interviewing is a skill to be learned, before interviewing, NLP researchers can use their modelling skills to model excellent qualitative researchers, alongside a credible research methodology course. Modelling will enable you to elicit the values, beliefs and attitudes that underpin the research skills, which you can then choose to adopt and anchor prior to your own interviews (see below). Videos of interviewing online are another way to practice modelling: asking questions such as: • How is the interviewer structuring the interview and keeping it on track? • What is the focus of the interview – and did they achieve the purpose through the questions they asked? Ongoing research supervision and support is also valuable and can be the difference between completing a study or not and will enable you to ensure good quality useable data. A pilot interview which you discuss with your supervisor will allow you to model your own development of excellence. Managing state (anchoring) The ability to manage state is one of the keys to interviewing effectiveness. The use of appropriate anchoring to include states such as calm, confident, rampantly curious, open, respectful, genuinely interested, responsive, attentive and enthusiastic, will enable an interviewer to prepare well for a good quality interview. Building rapport Schneider et al (*1) say ‘during an interview, the interviewer’s presence and engagement (including how they listen to and end responses) is vital to the process’. The ability to build rapport (which shows respect and recognition of another’s view, which leads to trust) will quickly facilitate the interviewee(s) to feel comfortable, which will then optimise full, open and honest responses, which mean the quality of information collected will be enhanced. Matching processing style (VAK) and language predicates, for example, are just two simple ways rapport can be built through language skills to create a quick deep connection at the start of an interview. An extended component of rapport building is the use of modelling in the present moment. By modelling and reflecting back the interviewees own language and descriptions you ensure that questions are directly relevant to their map of the world (see below). This will optimize the chance of being able to elicit the deeper structures and processes to ensure the richness of data collected. The link to Clean Language and the use of symbolic modelling through the use of the interviewees own metaphors, is also an important part of rapport building in interviewing which give NLP researchers exquisite skills that may not be present in all researchers. Sensory acuity In NLP we use sensory acuity to pick up on a wide range of cues, then we monitor any changes to give us insight into the individual’s internal processing of information. In research interviewing these skills can help to identify areas worth exploring further. Listening for semantically packed words in replies, or watching for body language changes, for example, can make the difference between an acceptable interview and one which strives towards excellence in the depth and richness of data it collects. Other things to consider which may not be as familiar include the following. From the field of mBraining, the addition of gut and heart cues alongside the more familiar cues taught throughout NLP training: from heart or gut based predicates (e.g. from gut: ‘I can’t swallow that’ ‘I need time to digest that’), to physical gesturing to the gut and heart brains, giving deeper insight into which brains the interviewee is using to process their story, which can assist with deepening rapport and in exquisite question construction to deepen the descriptions offered. This
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