Basic Interviewing Skills

Interviewing skills are not simple motor skills. Rather, they involve a high-order combination of observation, empathic sensitivity, and intellectual judgment. This guidebook, now available from Waveland Press, provides a process model and a corresponding set of classroom-tested exercises designed to improve basic interviewing skills. The model—called the Skill Learning Cycle—provides an initial, guided experience for the complete interview-learning process, including planning, doing, and analyzing phases. It also stands as a model for the student to use in the future for continued growth in interviewing skills. In order to focus on the most basic interviewing skills, only the information-gathering function, which is common to all interviews, is discussed.