Evaluation of Requirements for the Assessment and Construction of Interview Guides in Psychological Assessment

Structured interviews are much more valid than unstructured ones. An important prerequisite for structured interviews is the use of an interview guide of high quality. Hints for the construction of interview guides are widespread in the literature, but there is no systematic collection of generally applicable rules for the evaluation and construction of interview guides. We, therefore, systematically collected the relevant rules concerning structure, contents, and question formulation in the Requirement-profile for In-depth-Interviews in Psychological Assessment (RIPA). By applying RIPA, we get indications of the strengths and weaknesses of interview guides. In our study the following questions are answered: How well can novices understand these rules, and are they able to evaluate a part of an interview guide correctly? Fifty-five students of psychology evaluated a part of an interview guide using RIPA. The mean percentage of correct decisions varied between 63% and 89%. This shows the comprehensibility and applicability of RIPA when used for the evaluation of a part of an in-depth interview guide. It seems plausible that RIPA may also be useful for the construction of in-depth interview guides.