Interviewing women from an ethnic minority group: finding the sample, negotiating access and conducting semi- structured interviews

While interviewing GPs in 1995 and 1996 about their referral decisions for women with menorrhagia, I became aware that some areas in the UK may have relatively poor gynaecology services ( 1 ). Moreover, in one town with a large ethnic minority (15.4 per cent of the population) GPs informed me that they believed that women of South Asian descent with menorrhagia had particular difficulties in obtaining treatment, mainly because of the shortage of female doctors ( 2 ).