Interviewing Techniques
Psychological Measurements
Lecture, Chapter 8

What is an interview?
An interview is an interactive process involving reciprocal influence of the interviewer and interviewee.
People have a tendency to behave like the models around them, social facilitation.
Good interviewers display positive attitudes during the interview.

Interview Classifications
A structured interview involves a specific set of predetermined questions asked of the interviewee.
In a standardized interview, these questions are printed and presented in similar fashion with all interviewees.
An unstructured interview involves no specific questions or guidelines for the interviewer.

Successful Interviewing
Successful interviewing encourages the flow of communication between parties.
Interviewers should avoid judgmental, evaluative, probing, hostile, or reassuring statements.
In large part, interviewers’ responses should be reflective in nature, involving active listening, paraphrasing, summarizing, and clarification.
Closed-ended questions should be avoided unless other efforts to obtain certain information have been exhausted.
Confrontation is a method used by experienced interviewers, usually reserved for methods, such as diagnosis and analysis, which extend beyond measurement and assessment.

Types of Interviews
    Evaluation Interviews
    Structured Clinical Interviews
    Case History Interview
    Mental Status Examination
    Employment Interview

Sources of Error
Conclusions can be incorrectly drawn from:
    Halo effect – tendency to judge specific traits based on a first impression
    General standoutishness: tendency toward judgment bias based on 1 or more prominent characteristics.
    Cultural misunderstandings
The more structured the interview, the higher the predictive validity and reliability (agreement among interviewers on variables or traits).

How do interviewing skills improve?
Practicing successful principles

Supervised practice

Conscious effort to form the right habits

Experience!!!