Interviews are a fundamental data collection method used in qualitative health research to help understand people's responses to illness or a particular situation. The risks associated with participating in 1 or 2 hour research interviews when a study focuses on vulnerable populations and sensitive issues are scrutinized by Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) and Human Subjects Committees. This paper shifts attention away from the risks to the benefits and describes catharsis, self-acknowledgement, sense of purpose, self-awareness, empowerment, healing, and providing a voice for the disenfranchised as the sometimes unanticipated benefits reported by interview participants.

This article proposes the use of two qualitative research methodologies-Heideggerian hermeneutics and grounded theory-as a way to understand complex human phenomena. The hermeneutic method uses "thick description," "paradigm cases," "exemplars," and "the-matic analysis" to discover meanings and ways of being (practices) in lived experiences. The aim of grounded theory methodology is to generate an analytic schema called "a substantive grounded theory' that conceptually explains basic social processes at a higher level of abstraction. While each has its own integrity and yields different outcomes, triangulation of these two qualitative methods in one study can illuminate clinical realities that elude alternative approaches. Hermeneutics reveals the uniqueness of shared meanings and common practices that can inform the way we think about our practice; grounded theory provides a conceptual framework useful for planning interventions and further quantitative research.

In spite of the increasing number of young women infected with HIV in the United States, little is known about the reproductive and mothering experiences of these women. The purpose of the grounded-theory research discussed in this article was to describe the reproductive and mothering experiences of HIV-positive women. Twenty HIV-positive women participated in 31 in-depth interviews. The grounded-theory method was used for data analysis. A communication pattern known in the psychiatric literature as a double bind was discovered to be a basic social psychological problem that affected the women's experiences with reproduction and mothering. An understanding of the power and influence of these double binds permits health care professionals to plan patient-centered programs and to individualize care specifically for HIV-positive women.

This field study used the ethnographic method to describe and analyze the labor experiences of childhood sexual abuse survivors. The sample included seven sexual abuse survivors, five nurse-midwives, and three labor and delivery nurses. Data collection included in-depth interviews, participant observation in labor and delivery over a period of six years, and anecdotal material from the literature. Analysis followed Spradley's Developmental Research Sequence and included domain, taxonomic, componential and theme analysis. Women reported both forgetting and remembering abusive incidents, and described labor sensations reminiscent of sexual abuse. A heuristic for appraising labor styles suggestive of past sexual abuse includes fighting, taking control, surrendering, and retreating. These styles are considered extremes of women's reactions to labor and are directly linked to posttraumatic stress disorder. This study demonstrated that it is important for perinatal caregivers to understand the link between childhood sexual abuse and childbirth so that they can assist women to have a positive birth experience.