2.2. Qualitative Interviews

The average interview lasted about 25 minutes, ranging from 15 to 60 minutes. All 16 interviews were conducted in Finnish; only the quotations, which were used to illustrate the results, were translated into English during the reporting phase.

The interviewer encouraged participants to express their honest opinions and original prevailing thoughts, allowing them to emphasise the points that they deemed important. The semi-structured interviews allowed the interviewer to ask open questions to acquire knowledge about the informants’ reasoning, opinions and attitudes. The interview guide included 29 questions, of which most were open-ended. The guide also included certain commonly used quantitative questions, such as the interviewee’s self-assessment of his or her health on a scale from 1 to 5. The interviewees also were asked to compare their current work ability with their best lifetime work ability with the work ability score, so that 0 represented full work disability and 10 indicated work ability at its best [34]. After each quantitative question, the interviewees were encouraged to explain and elaborate on their numerical answers.

The interview guide included open-ended questions such as: What are the main reasons for you to be outside of working life? What is hindering returning to work? What would help you return to work? Other questions asked how the interviewee felt about the Kela phone call to inform him or her about the TOIKE Work Ability Centre, why individuals either did or did not contact the TOIKE centre and how they perceived the TOIKE service itself.