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The Guided Conversation is HAIRE’s adaptable tool that aims to understand how a person’s life experiences, local area and social connections (to other people, organisations and activities) influence their wellbeing. This page outlines what you need to think about to design your own Guided Conversation.
HAIRE's Guided Conversation
In HAIRE, the target audience for conversations was older adults in rural locations across Europe. Additionally, the project was interested in how issues relating to wellbeing were being experienced in these specific locations.
Overall, the conversation’s purpose was to reflect on issues and identify what could support the participating individuals. Discussions involved what individuals could do themselves, as well as thinking about how they could be supported and by whom.
To manage the priorities of 14 project partners in Belgium, France, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, HAIRE built a quite expansive Guided Conversation. Not all Guided Conversations have to have so many components! In the sections below, the key considerations for designing a Guided Conversation are covered. Materials from HAIRE will be presented as an example of how these considerations were put into practice during the project. These materials are free to use and adapt for individuals, groups and organisations who want to design their own Guided Conversations.
Step 1: Identify your big theme and any influences that you wish to explore in relation to this theme - what are you aiming to understand?
Once a clear purpose for a Guided Conversation is determined, you can begin to think about your conversation's opening question. HAIRE was interested in wellbeing and the influence of someone's local area and living spaces on wellbeing. To reflect the big theme that the project was interested in, HAIRE's Guided Conversations started with the following question:
How do you feel about living here?
This question helped to guide the development of creative conversational prompts to support participants in sharing their opinions and experiences.
Step 2: Think about creative prompts to support conversations - what creative items can encourage people to talk about their opinions, aspirations and needs?
Creative prompts enable individuals to reflect on their circumstances and begin their responses to a Guided Conversation's opening question.
Creative prompts can take several forms. HAIRE was interested in the local area’s influence on wellbeing, as well as the living spaces of people. The project worked with a graphic designer (M-A-P Ltd.) to co-design a locally relevant collage for each pilot site. Project partners and other locals that they chose to involve in the co-design process considered important cultural symbols, organisations, local spaces and places for inclusion in the collage. An example from HAIRE's pilot site in Goes, the Netherlands can be seen below:
A similar approach was undertaken to create an imaginary indoor space, an example can be seen below:
HAIRE’s Guided Conversation also provided participants with space to write down things and doodle. This can help people when they are reflecting on issues and topics that are difficult to articulate.
Step 3: Identify sub-topics of interest that relate to the big theme - what specific topics within your bigger theme interest you?
A key aim of the Guided Conversation is to allow individuals to speak about what matters to them. Identifying sub-topics is not essential. However, individuals, organisation and agencies that wish to conduct a Guided Conversation may have sub-topics that they want to understand better.
Sub-topics are an important consideration, as their inclusion influences a Guided Conversation’s duration. In HAIRE, partners chose 20 sub-topics for inclusion in a Guided Conversation. Typically, conversations lasted 2-3 hours, but some went on for 4 hours! The duration of a Guided Conversation can be shortened by including fewer sub-topics.
A longer conversation, with numerous sub-topics, is most suited for situations where individuals conducting the Guided Conversation can revisit participants. Therefore, the conversation can pick-up from where it was left during the last visit!
Step 4: If relevant, think about how to organise your sub-topics into categories - how do your sub-topics link to each other?
When numerous sub-topics have been identified, it can be helpful to arrange them into categories. This is particularly useful if you would like to generate an overview of how individuals feel about certain aspects of their circumstances. Once more, this step is not essential.
To categorise sub-topics for HAIRE, a series of co-design workshops helped to arrange the chosen sub-topics into three overarching categories: place-based, person-centred and empowerment.
Radar diagrams can be used in Guided Conversations to provide a visual overview of how participants feel in relation to sub-topics. An example of the radar diagrams used in HAIRE can be seen below:
Radars diagrams include a subjective scoring system. Participants can be asked to score each sub-topic when they have finished talking about it. This can provide a useful way to identify problematic topics for a person. In HAIRE, the scoring system was 1-7. However, scores are not essential and, certainly, do not need to be collected for every topic!
Step 5: If relevant, think about any existing tools that you would like to include - are there any standard surveys that you would like your Guided Conversation participants to complete?
Standard surveys are recommended for projects that have a large-scale, comparitive research element. Hence, the use of existing tools in a Guided Conversation is entirely optional.
HAIRE had a research element and was interested in how in-depth responses about wellbeing and loneliness compared to academic scales that aim to quantify how individuals feel. The standardised questions from the WEMWBS-short questionnaire (see link: WEMWBS Survey Source), which measures wellbeing, and the UK’s Office for National Statistics’ recommended questions for measuring loneliness (see link: ONS Loneliness Survey Source) were included as a summary exercise at the end of HAIRE's Guided Conversation.
Step 6: Think about how your Guided Conversation will respond to the issues that individuals talk about - what will happen after a Guided Conversation has taken place?
The way in which an action plan is generated from a Guided Conversation depends on the context in which it is being applied.
In HAIRE, action plans considered three tiers – signposting, support and referral.
Signposting included making participants aware of local activities, spaces and individuals that could support their needs. The information collated during Neighbourhood Analysis is useful here.
Support included providing direct support to an individual, e.g. helping them contact an organisation and/or accompanying them to a local activity.
Referral was used for more serious issues, where professional support was needed.
Existing skills, knowledges and responsibilities, and what is feasible are important considerations when designing an action plan approach. In HAIRE, volunteers mostly made informal suggestions for actions (signposting) and then the project partners used their notes to suggest further actions for individuals (where relevant), e.g. the letters that the project’s partners in Laakdal, Belgium, sent to participants after their conversation, see example: Action Plan Letter (Laakdal, BE)
Less formal action planning can happen too. This depends on the purpose of the Guided Conversation. Sometimes the conversation itself is an action, as individuals get an opportunity to reflect on what they need to improve their wellbeing. Alternatively, reflections by those conducting the conversation can provide actions for organisations that are co-ordinating Guided Conversations. The action plan from a conversation can consist of these reflections and help to improve the processes and services of an organisation, see example: [LINK COMING SOON]
Your Final Design
In HAIRE, the result of the six steps above was a Guided Conversation that consisted of two handbooks. One handbook was used by individuals that were conducting the conversation and the other was for the participants. If you wish to create a Guided Conversation that is similar to HAIRE's, you can use the following templates:
Template for Conducting Guided Conversation
Template for Guided Conversation Participant Materials
See other examples of Guided Conversations that were developed as part of HAIRE's transferability work here: [LINK COMING SOON]. You may wish to design a Guided Conversation that are more similar to these depending on what you are interested in and who will conduct the Guided Conversation.
See the section on Guided Conversation Training Tips (, ) for important considerations around training individuals to conduct your Guided Conversation.