Interviewing

Question 1

Structured:

Answer 1

printed set of questions, using a standardized interview, all applicants asked same questions in the same sequence

Directive

Selection interview - designed to elicit info pertaining to qualifications and capabilities for particular employment duties

Question 2

Unstructured interview:

Answer 2

unstandardized, no specific or particular questions in mind and the sequence of questions followed the interviewees statements

Nondirective

Diagnostic interview: emotional functioning rather than qualifications - uncover thoughts, feelings, attitudes that might impede or facilitate competence

Question 3

The Interview as a test

Answer 3

Resembles a test in many respects

Like a test - method for gathering data or info about an individual - used to describe/make predictions or both

Can be evaluated in terms of standard psychometric qualities such as reliability and validity

Question 4

Types of interviews

Answer 4

Individually - one to one

Family interview - single interviewer with two or more individuals at the same time

Question 5

Interviewing important to

Answer 5

Interviewing important to employment and clinical psychiatry, all health-related professions, social work, counselors, parole, researchers, business, attorneys, contractors or architects

Non professional lives: parent questions a group of children

Question 6

Reciprocal Nature of Interviewing

Answer 6

All interviews involve mutual interaction whereby the participants are interdependent - they influence each other

Question 7

Study Akehurst and Vrij - transactional or reciprocal nature of the interview process

Answer 7

Criminal suspects observed during interrogation

If one of the participants in the interview increased their activity level, then the activity of the other participant also increased

Reduction in activity by one triggered a reduction in the other
Participants in an interview profoundly affect each other

Second experiment - increased activity from the subject was related to increased suspiciousness on the part of the interrogator

Highly active interrogators increased activity in the suspects which in turn increased the interrogators suspisciousness

Question 8

Interview participants affect each other’s moods

Answer 8

Heller - when professional actors responded with anger to highly trained experienced interviewers the interviewers became angry and showered anger towards the actors
Social facilitation - act like the models around us

If interviewer wishes to create conditions of openness, warmth and acceptance - have to exhibit these qualities

Question 9

Principles of Effective Interviewing
Proper Attitudes

Answer 9

More a matter of attitude than skill

Interpersonal influence - degree to which one person can influence another is related to interpersonal attraction - degree to which people share a feeling of understanding, mutual respect, similarity etc.

Attitudes related to good interviewing - warmth, genuineness, acceptance, understanding, openness, honesty and fairness

Question 10

Principles of Effective Interviewing
Responses to Avoid

Answer 10

Stress interview - the interviewer may deliberately induce discomfort or anxiety in the interviewee
As a rule - making interviewees uncomfortable tends to place them on guard, guarded or anxious interviewees tend to reveal little info about themselves
Determine how well an individual functions in adversity - types of responses that interviewers should avoid might be used in a stress interview

If goal is to elicit as much info as possible or receive a good rating from the interviewee - interviewers should avoid certain responses including judgmental or evaluative statements, probing statements, hostility and false reassurance
Judgmental or evaluative statements -likely to inhibit the interviewee.
Being judgmental means evaluating the thoughts, feelings, or actions of another.- put them on guard because we communicate the message, “I don’t approve of this aspect of you.”- inhibit others’ ease in revealing important information.

Thus, unless the goal of the interview is to determine how a person responds to being evaluated, evaluative or judgmental statements should usually be avoided.

Question 11

Principles of Effective Interviewing
Avoid Probing statements

Answer 11

demand more information than the interviewee wishes to provide voluntarily. The most common way to phrase a probing statement is to ask a question that begins with “Why?” - tends to place others on the defensive

some circumstances, probes are appropriate and necessary. With children or individuals with disabilities- needs to ask questions to elicit meaningful information

hostile statement directs anger toward the interviewee. Clearly, one should avoid such responses unless one has a specific purpose, such as determining how an interviewee responds to anger.

reassuring statement attempts to comfort or support the interviewee
sometimes appropriate, you should almost always avoid false reassurance. For example, imagine a friend of yours flunks out of college, loses her job, and gets kicked out of her home by her parents. You are lying to this person when you say, “Don’t worry; no problem; it’s okay.”

Question 12

Effective Responses

Answer 12

One major principle of effective interviewing is keeping the interaction flowing

Except in structured interviews or for a particular purpose, one can effectively initiate the interview process by using an open-ended question - tell me about yourself
- –Open-ended questions give the interviewee wide latitude in choosing the topics that he or she feels are important. Except for highly specific structured interviews, we usually can learn a lot more about people when they tell us what they think is important than when we try to guess by asking a series of closed-ended questions.
—The open-ended question requires the interviewee to produce something spontaneously and the closed-ended question to recall something

A closed-ended question brings the interview to a dead halt, thus violating the principle of keeping the interaction flowing

Question 13

Responses to Keep the Interaction Flowing

Answer 13

After asking the open-ended question, the interviewer as a rule lets the interviewee respond without interruption; that is, the interviewer remains quiet and listens. Unless the interview is structured, once the interviewee’s response dies down, the interviewer usually responds in a way that will keep the interaction flowing

He or she should use minimum effort to maintain the flow, such as using a transitional phrase such as ‘Yes,” “And,” or “I see.” These phrases imply that the interviewee should continue on the same topic.

Question 14

Sometimes the transitional phrase fails to have the desired effect. When this occurs, the interviewer should make a response relevant to what has just been communicated

To make such a response, the interviewer may use any of the following types of statements:

Answer 14

verbatim playback, paraphrasing, restatement, summarizing, clarifying, and understanding.

Question 15

verbatim playback

Answer 15

the interviewer simply repeats the interviewee’s last response

Question 16

Paraphrasing and restatement responses

Answer 16

interchangeable with the interviewee’s response. A paraphrase tends to be more similar to the interviewee’s response than a restatement, but both capture the meaning of the interviewee’s response

Question 17

Summarizing and clarification statements

Answer 17

go just beyond the interviewee’s response. In summarizing, the interviewer pulls together the meaning of several interviewee responses.

Question 18

The clarification statement

Answer 18

as its name implies, serves to clarify the interviewee’s response

Question 19

Carl Roger’s - effects of client-centred therapy
5 point scoring system - represents a degree of empathy

Answer 19

Level one responses: bear little or no relationship to the interviewee’s response.

Level 2: communicates a superficial awareness of the meaning of a statement. never quite goes beyond his or her own limited perspective. Level-two responses impede the flow of communication.

Level 3: interchangeable with the interviewee’s statement. level three is the minimum level of responding that can help the interviewee. Paraphrasing, verbatim playback, clarification statements, and restatements are all examples of level-three responses.

Level-Four and Level-Five Responses: not only provide accurate empathy but also go beyond the statement given. In a level-four response, the interviewer adds “noticeably” to the interviewee’s response. In a level-five response, the interviewer adds “significantly” to it

Question 20

The highest degrees of empathy, levels four and five, are relevant primarily for

Answer 20

therapeutic interviews.

Question 21

Level three represents

Answer 21

various degrees of true empathy or understanding and may be used in all types of unstructured or semistructured (i.e., partially structured) interviews.

Question 22

The lowest levels, one and two,

Answer 22

have no place in a professional interview and should be avoided. Low-level responses, however, occur frequently in everyday conversations.

Question 23

Active Listening

Answer 23

This type of responding, sometimes called active listening, is the foundation of good interviewing skills for many different types of interviews.

Question 24

Mental Status Examination

Answer 24

primarily to diagnose psychosis, brain damage, and other major mental health problems
purpose is to evaluate a person suspected of having neurological or emotional problems in terms of variables known to be related to these problems

areas covered in the mental status examination include the person’s appearance, attitudes, and general behavior

The interviewer is also alert to the interviewee’s emotions

person’s ability to direct and deploy attention the person distracted? Can he or she stick to a task as long as needed to complete it?

Sensory factors also are considered. Is the person seeing things that are not there?

must have a broad understanding of the major mental disorders and the various forms of brain damage. There is no room for amateurs or self-appointed practitioners when a mental status examination is needed.

Question 25

Developing Interviewing Skills

Answer 25

1 - become familiar with research and theory on the interview in order to understand the principles and underlying variables in the interview.

2 - A second step in learning such skills is supervised practice

3 - one must make a conscious effort to apply the principles involved in good interviewing, such as guidelines for keeping the interaction flowing.

Question 26

Sources of Error in the Interview
Interview Validity

Answer 26

Many sources of interview error come from the extreme difficulty we have in making accurate, logical observations and judgments

been demonstrated that interviewers form an impression of the interviewee within the first minute or so and spend the rest of the interview trying to confirm that impression

Question 27

halo effect

Answer 27

labeled this tendency to judge specific traits on the basis of a general impression

Similarly, with an early negative halo, the interviewer will have difficulty seeing the positives. In short, halo effects impair objectivity and must be consciously avoided.

Question 28

Similarly, people tend to judge on the basis of one outstanding characteristic - general standoffishness

Answer 28

One prominent characteristic can bias the interviewer’s judgments and prevent an objective evaluation. In an early classic paper, Burtt (1926) noted the tendency of interviewers to make unwarranted inferences from personal appearance- physical appearance can play a major role in how a job applicant is perceived and rated

Question 29

Interview Reliability

Answer 29

unstructured interviews have low levels of reliability

Research also shows that in terms of adverse impact, interviews give fairer outcomes than many other widely used selection tools, including psychometric tests of ability and intelligence

McCarthy et al. (2010) argued that one reason for fluctuations in interview reliability is, in part, because interview procedures vary considerably in their degree of standardization in terms of interview development, administration, and/or scoring. Simply, different interviewers look for different things.

Question 30

Active Listening

Answer 30

This type of responding, sometimes called active listening, is the foundation of good interviewing skills for many different types of interviews.

Question 31

agreement among interviewers varies for different types of interviews.

Answer 31

The research suggests that a highly structured interview in which specific questions are asked in a specific order can produce highly stable results

the internal consistency reliability for scores on highly structured interviews was .79 where the interviewer was gathering information about the interviewee’s experience, .90 where interviewees responded to hypothetical dilemmas they may experience on the job, and .86 where the interviewer was gathering information about the interviewees’ past behavior

problem is that such structure can limit the content of the interview, thus defeating the purpose of providing a broad range of data.