Tailored interviewing to uncover the perspectives of children with multiple disabilities on daily activities: A qualitative analyses of interview methods and interviewer skills

Introduction Uncovering the perspective of children with multiple disabilities is important in health care to enable person‐centred health care. For occupational therapists, uncovering the child perspective on meaningful activities is necessary to set appropriate goals for treatment. It is not always evident that children with multiple disabilities can express themselves in an interview. The interviewer should adapt his communication to the child. In literature, alternative communication is widely studied, but a clear algorithm for deciding what to use to successfully gain insight into the child perspective is missing. This study aims to identify helpful interview techniques and interviewer skills and how they can be used to effectively uncover the perspective of children. Methods Videos of nine interviews with children with a mitochondrial disorder, conducted by an occupational therapist, were analysed by five researchers. The interviews were analysed to see how well the interviewee had obtained the child's perspectives followed by observation of communicative abilities of the child and the types of questions the interviewer asked. A qualitative directed content analysis of the semi‐structured interviews followed. Findings An interview pattern was observed in the children's communication leading to six successful interviews. Children communicated verbally on four different levels and also used non‐verbal communication. The interviewer used five types of questions, which varied between and within the children. The content analysis resulted in two themes: parental influences and interviewer skills. Conclusion Results show the importance of matching the type of questions to the verbal communication level of the child and revealed several interviewer skills and techniques. An overview to guide tailor‐made interviewing is presented. The interviewer has a major role in successful interviewing and thus in enabling the inclusion of the child perspective in research and care.