title: Maximizing qualitative responses about smoking in structured interviews.
abstract: This article addresses the important methodological issue of whether face-to-face or self-administered interviews elicit better qualitative data on reasons for smoking and quitting among 173 current and former smokers. The data are from a study of smoking behaviors among 601 African American and Latina women age 14 to 21 years recruited from family planning clinics in Los Angeles from 1995 to 1996. Results suggest that responses to closed questions about smoking behavior are similar in both methods but that self-administered surveys elicit more responses to open-ended questions than face-to-face interviews. The authors encourage the use of self-administered surveys in smoking research because they are cheaper to administer, yield similar data on closed-question items, and elicit richer and more provocative responses to open-ended questions.
authors.affiliation: Department of Anthropology, University of Connecticut, USA.
authors.forename: P I
authors.initials: PI
authors.lastname: Erickson
authors.forename: C P
authors.initials: CP
authors.lastname: Kaplan
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001741:Black or African American / Q000523:psychology; D005260:Female; D015438:Health Behavior; D006306:Health Surveys; D006630:Hispanic or Latino / Q000523:psychology; D006801:Humans; D007407:Interviews as Topic / Q000379:methods*; D015141:Los Angeles / Q000453:epidemiology; D009042:Motivation; D012107:Research Design; D012907:Smoking / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000523:psychology*; D016540:Smoking Cessation / Q000523:psychology