GROUP INTERVIEWS: A GOOD ALTERNATIVE TO AN INDIVIDUAL INTERVIEW?

This paper reports our study on using group interviews to select students for an undergraduate health profession programme. Group interviews typically involve a small group of applicants working together on a task under the observation of a lecturer. The interview has historically been a fundamental element of the selection process for pre-registration health profession programmes. The interview enables the applicant to demonstrate their interpersonal communication skills, knowledge of, and commitment to their potential profession. However, individual interviews are time and resource intensive for lecturers in higher education, and the number of applicants continues to rise, therefore alternative tools to sort potential students have been investigated. In order to reduce these costs both paper-based selection and group interviews have been utilised with varying outcomes for both the institution and the applicant. Practice is ahead of evaluative research when it comes to selection by group interview, therefore this paper makes reference to the research in relation to the use of group in educations settings, the views of the students and our experiences of using group interviews in comparison to paper-based selection methods and individual interviews.