Qualitative Interviews

It is important that patients’ perspectives are addressed in order to be able to assess the value of medical interventions, especially in situations where there are no agreed upon biomarkers or only the patient has knowledge of the benefit from the treatment (Brédart, Marrel, Abetz-Webb, Lasch, & Acquadro, 2014). A patient-reported outcome (PRO) is defined by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as any report that comes directly from the patient regarding the status of their health condition that has not been interpreted by a clinician or anyone else (FDA, 2009). The outcome is able to be measured as either a change from a previous measure or in absolute terms. PRO measures can provide a measurement of patients’ perspectives on their symptoms
(2014) define a qualitative research interview as “a scientific research process based on verbal communication aimed at gathering information in relation to a specific aim”. Qualitative research interviews allow for the collection of data on an individual’s thoughts, perceptions, feelings, sensations and attitudes on their disease and its treatment (Brédart et al., 2014). Although the topic in the qualitative interview is controlled by the interviewer and the questions are focused, the questions are open-ended and so this allows the interviewee some freedom with regard to their responses. The interviewee in the development of PROs is usually a person who is affected by a health condition although qualitative interviews can also be conducted with caregivers or clinicians (Brédart et al.,
(2015) that can help when used in clinical trials on new drugs for stroke with understanding the impact that issues that are significant for many stroke survivors such as family support and patient treatment satisfaction has on the patient and complemented existing stroke-specific measures. It was developed for patients with stroke and it was demonstrated to be reliable, understandable, valid, and captured valuable data from the patient’s viewpoint. Luo et al. (2015) interviewed ten stroke patients in order to identify potential items for their questionnaire. The stroke patients were interviewed about their symptoms, the effects that their stroke had on them as well as their families, their primary psychological burden, and their evaluations of therapeutic effects and medical workers. The researchers then interviewed five stroke patients, three physician stroke experts and a psychometric expert so that they could revise and refine the items and ensure that all of the items were relevant and