During interviews, I've found that many participants have difficulty finding words to express feelings and experiences related to emptiness. Is there a way to make it easier for them to articulate these feelings and experiences?
Hi Stephanie,
You could prepare a long list of synonyms and related words and ask your participants to select the ones they feel apply to them most. If you want to be really methodical, you could ask them to rate each of them on a seven-point scale from "not at all" to "very much". Hope this is helpful.
Your participants are adults or adoelscentes? what is their level of education?
These data help to think about instruments and ways to collect information about empty.
I find using a face chart is often useful as well as decreases biased variables. You can also put the name of the feeling under the face, but the rule of thumb where I live anyways is to use language at about an 8th-grade vocabulary. In my work and in research instead of having them simply point to the faces but I prefer to have them circle them, again to reduce bias. You can also have them use a color, either a crayon, colored pencil.... to help them identify the intensity of the feeling further. But again, be clear on which each color means, red = mad, blue = sad, .....
I have found in my work that this reduces the fear associated with common symptoms of feeling empty and works as a distraction therapy where it is safer for the participant to be more honest.
Even adults have fun with the face charts too!
Face chart, picture cards, play therapy figurines are all things I have found helpful when working with clients who find it difficult to articulate emotions/feelings. Some people have limited vocabulary for particular words.
Regarding what Molly said about faces, you might find my face-based scales (Dynamic Visual Analogue Mood Scales) useful if you think using facial expressions might be more helpful. I developed D-VAMS for people with communication problems due to stroke, but they might be of use to you, here.
They are free to use and can be found at DVAMS.com:
http://dvams.com
Thank you for all of these suggestions.
I've tried using conceptual metaphors to facilitate insight and communication during interviews and it seems helpful for articulating highly abstract experiences such as emptiness. The impoverished affective lexicon for describing the experience makes it particularly challenging.
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