Authors: Anthony Arcuri and Doris McIlwain

The data

We anticipated that interviewing between 8 and 12 of the 35 psychologists interested in participating would provide us with ample data to generate a grounded theory. We decided to interview first a person who we thought was likely to provide rich data from which to elucidate our sensitising concepts and discover new concepts - an approach known as 'purposive sampling'. For the purposes of our study, we believed this person to be one who had a psychodynamic or humanistic theoretical orientation and was able to reflect openly on his or her experiences within the therapeutic relationship. To identify such a person, we reviewed the screening information we had collected earlier from our pool of potential participants. Anthony also had the advantage of being personally acquainted with a number of these people, which gave us additional information with which to gauge their suitability for being interviewed first.

Prior to interviewing the first participant, we collaboratively developed an interviewing guide beginning with a series of questions designed to collect demographic information in addition to that collected via the screening process. Our intention behind the inclusion of these additional questions was to provide points from which to ask questions and make comparisons both within the interviews and during data analysis. We followed these brief demographic questions by a non-confrontational inquiry into what it is like being a psychotherapist, which was intended to ease the participants into the interview process. Next, we included a brief passage directing participants to imagine being sexually attracted to a client who has qualities characteristic of people to whom they are usually attracted. In this passage we incorporated the suggestion that the participants could go beyond their imaginations and draw from their actual experiences if they wished, without needing to disclose whether they were doing so.

The remaining items in the interviewing guide evolved over the course of the study. The initial guide included only a few general questions organised around our initial sensitising concepts. We tailored our subsequent interviewing guides to each individual participant, whom we selected on the basis of his or her supposed ability to 'flesh out' and clarify the concepts that emerged through our analysis of preceding interviews. To demonstrate this process of 'theoretical sampling', we will draw upon a single example from our study that illustrates how concepts arising from the data could form the basis for further sampling decisions about who could be included in the study to maximise a variety of positions with regard to that issue. Many such concepts arose; we use this as illustration.

Early in our analysis, we identified the concepts of 'therapeutic self-disclosure of the sexual attraction' and 'theoretical orientation'. One of our participants had stated that his psychodynamic theoretical orientation would allow him to self-disclose his sexual attraction to a client for therapeutic benefit. In our analysis of this interview, we became curious about how psychotherapists with other theoretical orientations would feel about such a self-disclosure. Using our knowledge of our pool of potential participants, we selected people from other theoretical orientations and posed this question to them.

Through this process, we gathered rich and varied information that allowed us to hypothesise about the role of theoretical orientation in psychotherapists' decisions about whether to therapeutically self-disclose their sexual attraction to clients. We continued to sample and theorise in this way until we reached 'theoretical saturation': the point at which we thought we could learn nothing new and relevant about these concepts or their relationships with each other. After 11 interviews, when we had reached theoretical saturation for all of our concepts and their relationships, we stopped collecting data.

Such a sample size might appear small to a quantitative researcher; however, participants for qualitative research are expected to represent an experience or detailed knowledge of a particular process rather than an entire population. Because one participant can provide a rich and detailed account of an experience, qualitative data from a relatively small number of participants can result in a dense and substantial representation of the experience in question. Adding participants to qualitative research is of value only when that participant can add something new to the explanation of the experience under investigation. Therefore, the importance of sample size in qualitative research is secondary to the quality and richness of the data collected.

Although our data collection focussed primarily on our participants' narratives, it also involved a record of the interpersonal context of Anthony's interviews with the participants. For each interview, Anthony created a 'transcript file' - a document divided into three columns: the middle column contained the verbatim transcript of the interview; the rightmost column provided space for hand coding of the raw data (a process which we will explain in greater detail in the following section); and the leftmost column provided space for corresponding notes about the interview process, including the participant's and Anthony's interactions and non-verbal communications, and a critique of Anthony's questioning techniques.

In addition, Anthony developed a 'methodological file' (Browne & Sullivan, 1999) containing detailed methodological information about each interview, cross-referenced with the methodological notes in the corresponding transcript file. This information included: how Anthony came into contact with the participant; how he made arrangements for the interview; the quality of the rapport developed; how and why we selected the participant; a description of the participant; how Anthony may have been perceived by the participant; how Anthony perceived the participant; the suitability of the interview setting; the timing of the interview; Anthony's interviewing technique; the use of recording equipment and note-taking; and how the interview finished. Within the methodological file, we reflected on how each of the above areas may have impacted on the data collected, and made an overall assessment of the validity of the information obtained in the interview. We then used this methodological file to assist us in our interpretation of the data.

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