Health Psychology Interview Project (50 points)
Due Date: November 2, 2021
Purpose: To learn more about Health Psychology topics from the viewpoints of both a health care professional and a
patient by conducting interviews with each. Your patient interviewee should be someone who has had significant
encounters with healthcare professionals (e.g., has been diagnosed with cancer, has diabetes, had major surgery).
For each person you interview you should get the following information:
1. Demographic information. Some information you should collect includes:
- age
- gender
- race/ethnicity
- occupation
- place of work
- educational background
- how long they’ve worked in the field (health care professionals)
- age at diagnosis(es) pertinent to the interview for the patients
- anything else you think is important.
2. Their answers to questions covering at least three topics from the textbook (of the 3 topics, ideally 2 should be from
different chapters in the textbook). For example, maybe you are interested in adherence and stress and ask the
following three questions of a health care provider: 1) what factors most affect adherence among your patients (Chapter
4); 2) do you find that patients you have a better relationship with are more likely to keep their appointments with you
(Chapter 3); 3) since stress can affect adherence, do you try to teach stress management techniques to your patients or
refer them to other professionals who can teach them such techniques? Why or why not? (Chapter 5). Analogous
questions for a patient might be: 1) what factors help you adhere to the treatments recommended for your illness (or,
what factors make it hard for you to adhere to the recommendations); 2) does your relationship with your doctor (or
other health care professional) influence your adherence to their recommendations; 3) does stress ever interfere with
your adherence? If so, have you ever tried any stress management techniques to help you cope with stress? If yes,
what? If no, why not? Did you ever seek professional help to develop better stress management? If so, describe what
that was like for you (e.g., who did you see, how long did you see that professional, was it helpful?). If not, why not?
3. You should then summarize your interviews in a paper (at least 4 pages, double-spaced) that does the following:
1. has a paragraph introducing your topic and why you were interested in it and/or why you think it is important;
2. describes the people you interviewed using the demographic information collected* (could be part of the
introduction);
3. notes how the interviewees’ answers are similar and/or different from the information in the textbook; for example, if
a patient reported the weather interferes with his ability to adhere to an exercise routine because he likes to exercise
outside you would note that the answer is not covered in your text;
4. compares and contrasts the healthcare professional’s and patient’s answers to the similar questions;
5. a brief concluding paragraph; for example, you might note how the interviews influenced you (e.g., did their answers
make you more of less interested in a health care career?)
* You should not include the interviewees’ names unless you got permission to do so.