The Intersection of Counseling Microskills and Qualitative Interviewing and Reporting in the Study of Sensitive Topics

Abstract

Sensitive topics evaluation presents both a maze and a minefield to qualitative evaluators due to their complexity and their potential to create areas of misanalysis. For novice and experienced qualitatve practitioners alike, the evaluator can find the task of broaching complex content and developing trusting relationships to be serious methodological hurdles. In particular, the exercise of exploring and analyzing sensitive topics may increase strain as the evaluator seeks to access the abstract and intangible aspects of often distressing subjective content. To assist qualitative evaluators in overcoming these hurdles, the authors propose a collaborative analysis approach informed by counseling strategies and reflecting skills.

Keywords

qualitative methods sensitive topics interviewing collaborative analysis

Much of the emphasis on affective coding and rapport building in qualitative evaluation inquiry is found in the literature concerning the study of sensitive issues, encompassing topics such as racism, abuse, and trauma. The qualitative study of these sensitive topics poses increased difficulties for evaluators looking to explore the values and emotions interwoven in the participant experience. There is an understanding that research and evaluation concerning sensitive topics typically require different perspectives and interventions than interviews that elicit neutral emotional reactions (Hubbard et al., 2001; Lee, 1993). Methodological processes such as affective coding and co-construction offer insight into the diversity and definition of these issues in the interpretation actions of data collection and analysis. Saldaña (2016) defines affective coding as a methodological process of focused coding of the subjective perceptions of human feeling and emotion. Co-construction, defined by Holstein and Gubrium (1995, 2011), inhabits a more axiological space within qualitative work by focusing on the development of meaning-making through collaboration between the interviewer and interviewee.

To strengthen qualitative evaluative practice in this regard and to offer additional tools in practicing these ideals, the authors pose exploration and adoption of analysis strategies from participant-centered fields, specifically the field of counseling. As an area of study primarily concerned with participant emotional well-being and relationship building, counseling provides an existing framework of best practice for actively and empathetically engaging with the participant to offer respectful and professional interaction and to strengthen the validity of resulting findings. These approaches are especially valuable within the potentially complex areas of affective coding and co-construction of meaning with participants.

Continued Need for Additional Frameworks and Tools

The authors espouse Schwandt and Cash’s (2014) definition of qualitative evaluation as “evaluation [that] relies on methods used to generate qualitative data (e.g., interviewing, observations, focus groups, and document reviews)” (p. 3–4). Although evaluators utilize findings and approach the overall project differently, the best practices of data collection and analysis in qualitative evaluation are the same as those in qualitative research. This is particularly important in evaluations that explore sensitive topics, which Lee and Renzetti (1990) define as those topics “which potentially pose for those involved a substantial threat, the emergence of which renders problematic for the researcher and/or the researched the collection, holding, and/or dissemination of research data” (p. 512). Practitioner guides for qualitative data collection often provide broad guidance, focusing on data collection methods that can be applied across content and contexts (Chesney, 2001; Fontana & Frey, 2000; Hatch, 2002; Lincoln & Guba, 1985; Patton, 2002). In contrast, Goodrum and Keys (2007) argue that there is a relatively smaller body of literature focused on best practices in specific contexts such as sensitive topics’ explorations. Further development and additions to current tools and models continue to remain pivotal to advancement in the qualitative evaluation as the quality of work in data collection and analysis depends primarily on interviewer preparation and skill (Patton, 2015). These skills have the potential to influence the evaluator’s ability to reduce emotional distress (Corbin & Morse, 2003), generate empowerment and healing (Shamai, 2003), and construct a safe space that invites the participant to share when presented with sensitive and sympathetic interview questions and interviewers who are sympathetic to their experience (Rubin & Rubin, 2012).

In order to further build on this body of guidance in the methodological discourse, the authors (a counselor educator and a qualitative methodologist/evaluator) introduce strategies for using microskills from the helping profession of counseling to supplement the current skills of those working in the qualitative evaluation and to expand the toolbox of data collection techniques taken into the field (Fontana & Frey, 2000) beyond what Ellis (2007) describes as “the vague ‘do no harm’” principle (p. 5). This addition to current frameworks responds to a growing mandate for relational ethics, connections with participants, and conversational co-construction of meaning between interviewers and interviewees as best practice in the field (Corbin & Morse, 2003; Ellis, 2007; Holstein & Gubrium, 1995, 2011; Morse et al., 2002; Roulston, 2010). In continuing Ellis et al.’s (1997) call for continuous skill development in qualitative discussions, the goal of this article is not to propose specific rules but rather to provide additional tools for use in evaluative contexts of emotional depth and complexity. Further, we seek to provide additional techniques for developing one’s own skills in the necessary “art of listening” and presence within strong qualitative practice (Patton, 2015). To illustrate this practice, the authors discuss qualitative interviewing’s therapeutic connections to the counseling field, the counseling field’s strengths in developing co-construction of meaning, practical applications of the specific counseling skills of reflecting feeling and reflecting meaning, the ways in which these elements work together to address sensitive topics data collection and analysis, and the opportunities and limitations inherent to its use.

The Qualitative Interview as Therapeutic Process

The similarities between structure and outcome of qualitative interviewing and therapeutic processes are an established congruency in the field (Birch & Miller, 2000; Booth & Booth, 1994; Bourne & Robson, 2015; Corbin & Morse, 2003; Ellis et al., 1997; Fontana & Frey, 2000; Goodrum & Keys, 2007; Hutchinson et al., 1994; Rosetto, 2014; Shamai, 2003), although the qualitative process will differ in purpose and focus (Patton, 2015). Qualitative interviews and therapeutic interviews can both “involve acts of self-disclosure and the revealing of intimate personal meanings in the presence of a listener” (Birch & Miller, 2000, p.190), with researchers often feeling as though a nuance of therapist has been blended within their role of the researcher (Birch & Miller, 2000; Booth & Booth, 1994; Olson, 2016).

Various aspects of the interviewer’s role in the qualitative inquiry have been compared to that of a counselor, particularly in giving the participant space to express emotions and in the interviewer’s need to consider the importance of the participant’s safety and welfare (McCosker et al., 2001). Additionally, this therapeutic role can also allow for an increased depth of disclosure and data (Cowles, 1988; Wilde, 1992), resulting in potentially greater validity through richer, co-constructed qualitative data (Morse et al., 2002). The rapport developed between the evaluator/interviewer and the participant can greatly influence the quality of the qualitative product (Booth & Booth, 1994, McCarthy & LaChenaye, 2017; Morse et al., 2002), an area in which the field of counseling may serve as a source of guidance in improving the evaluator–evaluated relationship and engaging the participant and evaluator in a real-time co-construction of the participant experience (Dickson-Swift et al., 2007; Liamputtong, 2007). The resulting “ethic of empathy” (McCarthy & LaChenaye, 2017) focuses on the incorporation and application of respect for the individual through physical and affective behaviors such as the suspension of critical thoughts and judgment (conscious and unconscious), expressed acceptance, constructivist promotion of communicating the world as the participant experiences it, use of encouragers, and expressions of genuineness. The resulting empathetic practice creates effective communication by enriching the experience of the participant in the evaluation process as a necessary and integral step in developing relationships and securing trustworthy spaces for sharing and exploring the topic of interest (Douglas, 1985; Fontana & Frey, 2000; McCarthy & LaChenaye, 2017). Further, it engages the participant in the construction of the emotional and value-oriented findings within the analysis process. This incorporation of counseling best practice as a form of qualitative methods best practice allows evaluators to focus on voice, emancipatory and collaborative evaluation principles, and transparency as we deconstruct the dichotomy between the evaluator and the evaluated and further strengthen the results of our evaluative endeavors.

Counseling Practice as a Framework for Promoting Co-construction of Meaning

The adoption of counseling as a potential area to inform interviewing practices that are taught in qualitative courses has been proposed previously (Corbin & Morse, 2003) for embodying the qualitative ideal of promoting a “desire to understand rather than explain” (Fontana & Frey, 2000, p. 654). This ideal, embodied in co-construction of meaning and engaged discussion within the interview, seeks to promote clearer communication and understanding between the interviewer and interviewee (Holstein & Gubrium, 1995, 2011; Morse et al., 2002) to meet qualitative evaluation’s goal of “build[ing] the capacity of those involved to better understand their own situations, raise consciousness, and support future action” (Patton, 2002, p. 271). As research in qualitative methods of collaborative and participatory evaluation approaches have highlighted the importance of the evaluator–evaluated relationship (Chouinard & Cousins, 2014), research in the counseling field has also long supported the positive connection between the quality of the therapeutic relationship and resulting outcomes (Horvath & Bedi, 2002; Horvath & Symonds, 1991). In particular, this connection draws on the role of the relationship in therapy, including the development of alliances, cohesion, and empathy, among others (Norcross, 2002). For example, the early steps of the interview process are similar to the early stages in counseling, including the discussion of issues pertinent to the participant and the increasing depth of emotions that are expressed and discussed. The adoption of counseling skills in qualitative evaluation practice seeks to strengthen the evaluator’s ability to work within the sensitive topic realm “not so that interviewers can become a counselor, but rather because many of those skills make one better equipped to deal with emotional interviews and remain professional in the face of displays of emotion or requests to help” (Owens, 1996, p. 65).

Building rapport is central in both the counseling and qualitative literature (Fontana & Frey, 2000) and relies heavily on the role of listening skills in the two fields. Specifically, active listening informs and influences the participant’s perception of the relationship, with participants closely associating the perception of “being heard” with feeling “empathically understood” (Myers, 2000). Through the counseling lens, rapport is defined as an interactional process that is necessary to create a comfortable and safe environment for disclosure (Ivey & Matthews, 1984). In a counseling relationship, the rapport-building stage is essential to creating an alliance and facilitating the comfort of a client. The need for an environment that is conducive to disclosure is no less critical in the qualitative interview relationship, where attendance to and utilization of rapport-building skills and behaviors currently implemented in the counseling field could be an important tool in creating an authentic and candid working relationship with participant stakeholders.

Meanwhile, for the participant, the ability to reflect aids in “hearing” oneself (Goodman, 2001). It can allow the participant to not only gain further awareness of the underlying emotions or meaning in their communications but also to understand how a listener perceives the participant’s message and the emotions and meaning contained within it. Reflecting can foster greater clarity in interviewing by allowing interviewees to hear how and what they are communicating and providing them the opportunity to verify or correct this message as they see fit. In permitting interviewees to become more aware of what they are communicating and how it is being understood, qualitative evaluators offer interviewees an opportunity to verify or correct the evaluator’s understandings of the shared content (Morse et al., 2002). If applied to qualitative evaluation in this way, reflecting skills can allow for a type of in vivo member checking that promotes collaboration with participant stakeholders and increased accuracy in comprehension and subsequent coding.

The Intersection of Affective Coding, Co-Construction of Findings, and Counseling

In the analysis stages of qualitative evaluation work, the “artistic expressions of qualitative analysis strive to provide an experience with the findings where ‘truth’ or ‘reality’ is understood to have a feeling dimension that is every bit as important as the cognitive dimension” (Patton, 2002, p. 270). It is in the exploration of this feeling dimension—the affective experience—that counseling strategies offer support to the ideals of qualitative inquiry in evaluation. Here, the areas of affective coding, co-construction of findings, and counseling skills overlap in their mutual goal of uncovering meaning within the participant experience. By viewing co-construction of meaning as integral to the processes of affective coding, we can reduce the potential for misanalysis of affective meaning in sensitive topics’ investigations by engaging the participant in the analysis process. Specifically, co-construction approaches to data collection and analysis should include the participant in a discussion of affective meanings in real time (Holstein & Gubrium, 1995, 2011; Morse et al., 2002), creating an opportunity to participate in member-checking validity procedures within the interview itself. Misinterpreted content can be discussed within the context of the data collection process rather than at a later date, wherein the emotion and focus of the moment are potentially lost. It is in this task that counseling skills can offer critical guidance in evaluations addressing sensitive topics.

Putting Methods Into Practice

Affective coding is defined as coding focused on the value and emotion components of the participant experience, “directly acknowledging and naming those experiences”; identifying “core motives for human action, reaction, and interaction”; and arguing for their place in “investigations of the human condition” (Saldaña, 2016, p. 124). Unlike other coding foci, affective coding focuses the qualitative evaluator on the perceptions, perspectives, and attitudes of the participant (for contrast, see attribute coding’s focus on contextual factors, descriptive coding’s focus on identifying topics, and process coding’s focus on actions taken; Saldaña, 2016). This focus requires the qualitative evaluator to highlight the affective impact of a given program or phenomenon on its participants. Affective coding is further complicated by the subjective nature and nuances of human experience. Emotions and values—the focus of affective coding—are often not explicitly stated by the participant and can easily be misinterpreted by the evaluator. In the analysis stage, “shame” can look like “guilt” and “resentment” can look like “envy.” These nuanced differences further underscore the importance of qualitative evaluators having both technical and affective abilities to efficiently and accurately negotiate the coding and analysis process, especially when emotional or sensitive topics are involved (Woodby et al., 2011). For example, emotion coding and value coding (a subset of the variety of human experience best captured through affective coding methods) can benefit significantly from counseling interviewing techniques as they draw on levels of subjective understandings often addressed by communication messages in counseling practice—specifically, the counseling best practices of reflecting feeling and reflecting meaning.

Verbal communications often contain three levels within the participant message: the cognitive level, which contains the participant’s description of the facts in a narrative and their cognitions or thoughts concerning these events; the emotional level, which includes the participant’s conveyance of emotion; and the existential level, which contains the concealed meaning or values present in the message (Young, 2012). The skill of reflecting feeling aims to bring the relatively hidden emotional level into awareness and discussion and can also serve the purpose of making emotion codes more explicit and accurate. The skill of reflecting meaning targets the deepest level of a message (the existential level) and can allow for the discovery and discussion of the implicit values in a message, thus leading to more accurate coding of participant values that have been verified and discussed openly by the participant.

Reflecting Feeling as Emotion Coding

Analysis of emotive experience is especially fertile ground for promoting co-construction of meaning through the use of active engagement and discussion of emotion-based constructs to increase validity. Pivotal to the practice of emotion coding is the interviewer’s “ability to read nonverbal cues, to infer underlying affect, and to sympathize and empathize with your participants” (Saldaña, 2016, p. 125). Reflecting feeling—the counseling practice of engaging the client in a discussion and identification of underlying emotions—offers strategies for co-constructing the meaning of participant experiences through practices that embody this construct.

The skill of reflecting feeling is critical to helping participants become aware of and experience their emotions, “the most basic part of themselves” (Ivey & Ivey, 2003, p. 157) that underlie the verbal content, behaviors, and cognitions of participants (Ivey et al., 2013). There are numerous benefits of reflecting feeling. First, reflecting feeling allows for increased participant awareness of underlying emotions and can facilitate a nonjudgmental discussion concerning these emotions. This skill can also facilitate deeper and more meaningful disclosures from participants as they become more aware of their emotions (Young, 2012). The rapport between the interviewer and the participant can also benefit as the act of reflecting emotion conveys a deeper level of listening and engagement and serves to validate the participant’s right to experience these emotions. Additionally, reflecting skills can allow interviewers to check for the accuracy of their perceptions (Young, 2012). If a reflection seems inaccurate to participants, this opportunity permits them to correct the evaluator and provide a more accurate statement, thereby increasing the evaluator’s understanding of the participant and the experience of interest.

The process of reflecting feeling is composed of observing and internally identifying the participant’s emotions and making a verbal statement that conveys these heard emotions clearly to the participant (Young, 2012). Communicating the perceived emotion aims to promote attentiveness and support toward the participant and increased awareness of the emotions being conveyed (Rautalinko, 2013). It is essential that these statements are neutral and do not communicate judgment of the emotion. While questions can be used to uncover an emotion, a statement of reflecting feeling conveys a deeper level of empathy on the part of the evaluator. These statements take the form of formulaic responses such as “It sounds like you feel _______” or “Do you think you feel ______ because of ______?” The latter statement involves a brief reflection of content in addition to the reflection of feeling, conveying an understanding of the reasoning behind the participant’s emotions (Ivey et al., 2013; Young, 2012).

Cues that reveal the emotional level of a message may be deliberate or less obvious to the participant (Hackney & Cormier, 2013). When reflecting feeling, it can be effective for the interviewer to identify for the participant the types of nondeliberate action that may have acted as cues. For example, “I can see you’re smiling. Are you happy about this?” At the end of a reflection, a checkout is employed to gauge the accuracy of the statement (Ivey et al., 2013). A checkout can resemble a statement such as “…am I hearing you correctly?” or “does that sound accurate?” The checkout allows for collaborative member checking with the participant within the active process of data collection. It is important to note, however, that an occasional inaccurate reflection can still be productive as it often prompts the participant to correct the interviewer and provide their perspective on the true emotion (Okun & Kontrowitz, 2014).

The following excerpt illustrates the utility of reflecting feeling when employing emotion coding. The participant, discussing family struggles with obesity, states

I mean, I tried every diet there is. I did a lot of things because I’ve seen it get out of control, and it’s not because I eat, eat, eat. It’s because sometimes, like I said, I had got to the point where I was eating uncontrollable [sic], and I let it get out of control at that time. Then, when I tried to bring myself back in, it was too late.…Now it’s too late.

There is a wide range of potential subjectivities inherent to how the evaluator attempted to interpret this statement. Without an emotion explicitly tied to this account by the participant, there are multiple possibilities for codes to represent the emotion embedded in this statement. For example, emotions such as regret, shame, frustration, or embarrassment could potentially be applied in this instance. Using the reflection “It sounds like you are talking about feeling regret here. Am I hearing you correctly?” allowed the participant to verify this emotion and correct it with a more accurate depiction (“Yeah, regret for sure. But not just that. Mix some shame with it ‘cause I should be able to do this.”). Not only did this reflection enable the participant to ensure that she is accurately represented, but it opened an opportunity for co-construction and increased precision in coding and analysis.

The clarity reflecting feeling strategies bring to emotion coding can be further seen in a later excerpt from the participant, which includes a myriad of connected yet mutually exclusive terms and concepts:

Yeah, I, umm, I find myself out of breath, can’t walk too fast, can’t do the things I used to do, and I’m like, “Uh-uh,” I’m like, “this is over. I’m done. I can’t do this.” I want to run; I want to walk, I wanna do a lot of things that I can’t do this. So, this is over with. I can’t do the things I used to do, and this just ain’t working. So I’m at the point of no return.

The participant’s response demonstrates various emotions like shame, motivation, frustration, failure, determination, and desire to change, each with nuanced definitions and implications for interpretation. Prompts used to dig deeper into her response include “So it seems like you’re frustrated that you’ve reached this point and now you’re feeling motivated to change. Am I hearing you correctly?” The result of this focused probing resulted in clarification from the participant, as she refined the initial understanding to reflect “desperation more than frustration. Frustration is more temporary but this, this desperate, it gets in your bones. It’s frustrated with hopelessness.” These prompts clarified for the interviewer the exact emotion the participant was trying to convey and enriched the data by reflecting this depth of emotion beyond the initial interviewer’s analysis while also demonstrating active listening and empathy during the discussion of a difficult and sensitive issue. The reflection here allowed the participant to hear what the evaluators were understanding through an unintimidating strategy that encouraged active discussion and clarification rather than the passive strategy of independent evaluator coding and subsequent member checking once the context, moment, and intent have passed.

Reflecting Meaning as Value Coding

Like emotion coding and other functions of affective coding in qualitative data analysis, value coding focuses on the subjective and nuanced shades of personal meaning and values associated with participant experience (Saldaña, 2016). As an abstract and potentially contested area of human experience, value coding lends itself exceptionally well to the strategies of meaning-making in counseling. Specifically, the counseling practice of reflecting meaning—the discussion and exploration of the meaning underlying a participant’s experience through engaged negotiation—shifts the focus to a co-construction discussion of participant experience and meaning, brings the participant into the analysis process to reduce evaluator misunderstandings, and promotes participant voice and validity in qualitative results.

This type of reflection makes known the value level of a participant’s message, often thought to be the least accessible level of meaning lying at the core of our behaviors, feelings, and cognitions (Ivey et al., 2013). As the meaning level of a statement is believed to be more deeply embedded than the emotional level, it can take longer for an evaluator to identify the values that may be implied in a narrative. Reflecting meaning strategies involve formulating questions that may elicit specific examples or stories, particularly concerning critical or important life events, as these often contain meaning or value to participants (Ivey et al., 2013). Possible questions include are, “What does this story or event mean to you?” and “What is important to you about this?” For this reason, a suggested formula for reflecting meaning may involve a combination of reflecting feeling and reflecting meaning. Young (2012) suggests a formula such as “Do you feel _______ (reflection of feeling) because _______ (reflection of meaning)?” For example, “It sounds like you feel shame that you lost your job because being the financial provider in your family is important to you?” This statement helps to uncover a value that may have been implicit in a narrative but not explicitly expressed. In taking this step, an interviewer makes their perceived meaning overt to the participant and encourages the participant to clarify or correct the assumed meaning and even expound upon it, assisting the interviewer in more accurately comprehending the participant.

The possibilities for reflecting meaning in qualitative evaluation can be found in revisiting the above participant’s discussions of her family:

…me and my daughter…me having sarcoidosis and my daughter being as young as she is, we need to get some help because I’m sick, and she’s too young, you know, and I want us to get some help with it. You know, as far as weight plan and manage, just manage it as a whole. We need to get control of it. Because I don’t wanna get sick, and not being able to take care of my children. That would be a problem for me.

Affective coding methods, such as value coding, applied to this statement highlight important aspects of the overall message. By reflecting meaning, the interviewer verified the interpretation of the value being communicated. For example, it was assumed by the interviewer that the participant was conveying that her ability to protect her children is important and that she values her health and the health and well-being of her child. Using the reflection “It sounds like you feel concerned about your health because being able to care for your child is important to you. Did I understand you correctly?” allowed the participant to confirm the emotions and values being perceived by the interviewer, contributing to more accurate coding and analysis.

In addition to confirming the participant’s experience, reflecting skills offer participants and evaluators the ability to clarify and differentiate between nuanced and overlapping emotions and values that can become oversimplified or unseen in traditional methods as presented in the participant’s example excerpt below:

She can’t participate in some of the things they do at school because of her weight. And she just, um, sometimes she feel ashamed. And I told her that she can’t feel ashamed. She just gotta hold her head up. Hold your head up. It’s gonna be better. You know. You are who you are. Love who you are. It’s gonna get better.

A host of potential value codes were initially interpreted in this response. Arguments could be made for the identification of the values of self-love, self-esteem, self-confidence, self-worth, and the importance of gumption and strength. These terms, however, were not interchangeable in the participant’s perspective and were clarified and refined through reflecting meaning practices. Furthermore, the reasoning for ascribing weight to these values was not evident from the text alone and was further explored through repeated questioning and reflection, resulting in the understanding that the mother here valued letting her daughter know that she is worthy. Understanding this value was essential to honoring the participant and honoring her experience, both of which are vital to the ideals of qualitative inquiry in evaluation.

Counseling Microskills and Validity

The goals of the counseling interview being different than that of qualitative evaluation mean that there are no parallel associations or matched skills for each part of the qualitative process; however, the counseling skills shared here have the potential to inform a number of other components of qualitative evaluation practice, namely the effectuation of qualitative validity by strengthening and complementing established validity practices.

Qualitative validity seeks to address the misconceptions between the researcher and the researched through techniques that are intended to increase the accuracy of findings and interpretations (Lincoln & Guba, 1985). This concept is typified by the qualitative value of trustworthiness through credibility (accuracy and familiarity of the findings to participants and those who have experienced the phenomenon), confirmability (acknowledgment of self and bias and the impacts of personal subjectivities), dependability (transparency of processes and decisions involved in the analytical choices of the researcher), and transferability (the applicability of findings beyond the explicit context) (Lincoln & Guba, 1985; Thomas & Magilvy, 2011). Of these four, the incorporation of counseling microskills has the potential to influence the areas of credibility, confirmability, and dependability (the fourth, transferability, would be addressed through sampling and participant description and would be less impacted by the proposed data collection and analysis skill set).

The above strategies contribute to credibility and dependability of findings through real-time member checking and active reflective memoing. In utilizing the skills presented above, the relatively passive act of analytical memoing (taking notes for oneself of thoughts on observed content as well as hints to analysis in the process of the interview, “primarily written for oneself” [emphasis added]; Schwandt, 2015, p. 196) becomes active and collaborative. Both analytical and observational memos are noted in the field notes of the evaluator but would also become part of the transcript as these observations and cues would influence how the interviewer acts on the strategies of reflecting feeling and meaning. Rather than making observational or analytical memos to be reviewed at a later time by the interviewer as reminders of the interviewer’s preliminary notions, many memos can be discussed and employed as the interview unfolds, serving as cues to inform discussion in real time. The resulting interview and transcript then incorporate a record of the feedback, memoing, and real-time member checking of the participant throughout the interview, contributing to qualitative dependability through the disclosure of how the method was used and interpreted and in prioritizing the participant voice as a means of checking bias in evaluation findings.

The proposed skill set also offers strategies toward confirmability by informing the practice of reflexivity. Reflexivity requires us to be aware of our place in the study and the inevitable impact we as human players bring to data collection and analysis and asks us to be reflective of the assumptions we bring to the evaluation and mindfulness toward how they influence the evaluation (Charmaz, 2014). The proposed collaborative methods presented here allow an opportunity for participants to engage with the evaluator’s assumptions through questioning that reflects both meaning and feeling. Combined with reflection on the part of the evaluator both within and beyond the process of data collection and analysis, these tools may assist evaluators in both correcting misunderstandings and misanalyses with participants in the moment but also to highlight potential areas of evaluator biases, known and unknown, in the acknowledgment of self and bias in qualitative evaluation work. This method, through real-time member checking, may provide validity assessments of the content and findings as they develop while also showing us the limits of our understandings as outsiders to the experience in our continued growth as qualitative evaluators.

Implications for Practice and Research

Emotions and values are among the most subjective and deeply embedded implicit aspects of the participant experience. They are intensely personal and vary widely from individual to individual and, indeed, between the evaluator and the participant, leading to an added challenge in the analysis of qualitative data. Open and real-time discussion of the participant experience utilizing these counseling skills as a framework for action offers an opportunity to increase the accuracy and validity of the coding of emotions and values. Moreover, this interactive dynamic engages participants in a collaborative, co-construction experience that builds rapport and empathy while potentially increasing participant agency. In sensitive topics evaluation, wherein participants are often speaking from the role of victim or disenfranchised citizen, these strategies offer participants a voice and acknowledge their position as the knower in the evaluator/evaluated dichotomy.

Beyond the potential positive effect of these practices on the participant and the quality of the evaluation findings, the strategies described here have implications for the well-being of the evaluators themselves. Although far less taxing for the evaluator than the participant, sensitive topics research presents a number of issues for the evaluator. The evaluator inhabits a space where managing emotions during the process of data collection is vital. The process of revisiting painful or sensitive experiences is stressful for the participant and becomes “emotional labor” for the empathetic evaluator (Emerald & Carpenter, 2015; Hubbard et al., 2001). Prepared strategies for working with these issues, such as the framework proposed here, may potentially ease the toll on participants and evaluators by providing tools to address these issues in an appropriate and empathetic way. The evaluator may more easily control and bracket their own emotions by relying on training and prior experience, allowing them to focus more intently on the participant (Woodby et al., 2011).

Limitations of the Proposed Approach

Since a cornerstone of qualitative inquiry in evaluation is the avoidance of leading the participant or inserting the evaluator’s own ideas into the discourse, there is a valid concern surrounding the concept of reflecting hidden elements of a participant’s message (such as emotions and values). The use of reflecting skills in the qualitative evaluation context, however, is proposed here primarily as an empowering strategy for the participant and follows Roulston’s (2010) suggestion of calculated assessment and critique of “prescriptive” strategies in qualitative interviewing methods (p. 137). Participants can understand the evaluator’s perception of their message and are given the opportunity to clarify or correct that perception to reflect a more accurate representation of their experience. Further study of these strategies in specific contexts is needed to examine the possible effect of these skills on data quality and the participant’s sense of agency, voice, and empowerment in the evaluation relationship.

It is important to note that the authors do not posit this approach as a panacea to the issue of biases and subjectivity in qualitative data collection and analysis but rather as a potential tool for encouraging conversation and co-construction between the interviewer and interviewee. As with other tools in qualitative inquiry, the adoption of these and other methods of co-construction should not replace ongoing attentiveness to evaluator reflexivity and is only as beneficial as the evaluator’s ability to employ them. Since true neutral positioning is considered implausible if not impossible in modern qualitative discourse, adopters of this method should continue to focus on evaluating their practice of data collection and analysis in order to address potential areas of bias and further growth in our work (Charmaz, 2014; Roulston, 2010).

Finally, a limitation of counseling microskills strategies in qualitative evaluation is the fine line between the evaluator/participant relationship and a counselor/client relationship. The relationship promoted here is not the therapeutic relationship espoused in the counseling environment but rather an adoption of the skills of communication best practice. Attention to this boundary is pivotal to reinforcing the type of relationship being established. As misrepresentation can be a potential ethical challenge in qualitative research, it can be important for evaluators to clarify their roles and draw distinctions between the multiple roles that they inhabit through clear boundaries set before the commencement of data collection that are shared with the participant (Olson, 2016; Sanjari et al., 2014). When interviewees become emotional and the evaluator sees a need for further processing or assistance beyond the scope of the evaluation relationship, the evaluator should refer to counseling or other appropriate follow-up resources identified prior to beginning data collection (Dongre & Sankaran, 2016; Olson, 2016). Evaluator interviewers should clearly define their role prior to data collection by setting boundaries for interview depth and content, engaging in reflective practice, and monitoring ways in which interviewing questions begin to shift from data collection to approaching the boundary into counseling care. Clarification can further be made through the informed consent document, which should detail the nature of the interview process and the limits of this process (Sanjari et al., 2014). Evaluators may also benefit from peer debriefings or consultations with fellow evaluators or counselors when working with sensitive topics or when there is potential for this blurring of boundaries (Dickson-Swift et al., 2007).

Conclusion

Qualitative data collection and analysis remains an imperfect process; however, increasing the tools available assists evaluators in meeting the demands and standards of ideal practice and offers a potential pathway to rectifying the hurdles of work, particularly when addressing sensitive topics areas. The strengths of adopting a counseling-informed co-constructive approach proposed here are threefold. First, the collaborative process potentially enhances the evaluator–evaluated relationship and fosters empathy to promote accuracy in participant response. The act of in vivo member checking through the use of these reflecting skills could enhance rapport itself, as the interviewee perceives the interviewer’s desire to ensure accuracy and the correct representation within evaluation findings. In qualitative evaluation, the evaluator often relies on subjective inferencing to code an emotion or value, as these aspects of a message are typically less explicit than the content level of a message. Reflecting feeling and meaning can serve as a method for interviewers to confirm with the interviewee whether the emotion or value that they are interpreting is indeed accurate, reducing miscommunication for both parties and improving precision in the resulting findings.

Second, the skills presented here may also contribute to reducing the emotional labor of both the participant and evaluator. The work of sensitive topics evaluation is demanding for both the interviewer and interviewee, as both engage in the transaction of recalling and bearing witness to the sensitive content of the experience (Emerald & Carpenter, 2015; Hubbard et al., 2001). The counseling microskills described here build upon current models and techniques for sensitive topics’ data collection in an effort to provide interviewers with additional tools to engage with participants in these contexts in an attentive and respectful way, potentially reducing overall discomfort for both parties.

Finally, the collaborative, co-constructive practices described above seek to promote increased agency and empowerment among participating stakeholders. In the experience of the participants presented in the example statements, cultural values and intense feelings were vital to understanding the lived experience of mothering and childhood obesity. The exploration of this vulnerable topic relied on building rapport with the participants and prioritized opening the route of dialogue to allow for discussion and identification of emotions and values from the participants’ perspective rather than leaving their interpretation strictly to the evaluator. The authors attempted to strengthen the exploration of this phenomenon by bringing the participant into the analysis and providing opportunities for participant co-construction of affective content coding. The counseling microskills presented here provided a method for addressing and identifying these emotions and values through a collaborative analysis procedure between the interviewer and interviewee which not only encourages participant voice in the research process but also potentially aids in developing rapport and validity through engaged data collection and analysis.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Jenna M. LaChenaye

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