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Qualitative Research in Marriage and Family Therapy: Who is in the Interview?

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Abstract

Qualitative interviews are a rich means of gathering information from families. The qualitative interviewer has a choice of interviewing individual family members, multiple family members at the same time, or a combination. The configuration of interviewees is a choice guided by the epistemology of the researcher, research aims, and questions. This article reviews the literature on interviewing different configurations of family members. A content analysis was conducted on articles in the marriage and family therapy literature from 1990 to 2005. Over half of the articles were conducted with individual family members separate from their families. This finding is discussed in the context of the decision regarding whom to interview.

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Correspondence to Ben K. Beitin.

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Beitin, B.K. Qualitative Research in Marriage and Family Therapy: Who is in the Interview?. Contemp Fam Ther 30, 48–58 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10591-007-9054-y

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