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The TAPS Project. 2: Challenges and pitfalls of community interviewing

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

David Dayson*
Affiliation:
The Maudsley Hospital, Denmark Hill, London SE5 8AZ
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From November 1987 until March 1990 I worked as a researcher with the TAPS project. So far this project's task has been to evaluate the reprovision of hospital services for the long-term mentally ill from two hospitals in the North East Thames Region (Team for the Assessment of Psychiatric Services, 1988). My work involved gathering clinical and social data from over 250 patients and their carers after they had spent a year out of hospital. Most of these patients were suffering from schizophrenia. The design and first results (Team for the Assessment of Psychiatric Services, 1990) provide an objective account of this research. In contrast, this paper intends to put forth a subjective view of some of the problems encountered while obtaining these data in the community. This situation faced the researcher with unique and challenging circumstances that are not normally discussed in the scientific presentation of follow-up data. Its aim is to pre-empt similar difficulties for other community reserarch by providing guidelines. I am going to cover three areas: arranging interviews, conducting them safely, and handling situations that necessitate stepping out of the interviewer role.

Type
Articles
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1990

References

Team for the Assessment of Psychiatric Services (1988) Preliminary Report on Baseline Data from Friern and Claybury Hospitals. North East Thames Regional Health Authority.Google Scholar
Team for the Assessment of Psychiatric Services (1990) Moving Long-stay Psychiatric Patients into the Community: First Results. North East Thames Regional Health Authority.Google Scholar
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