“Timelining” Treatment Trajectories During Interviews About Shared Decision Making With Ethnic Minorities in Oncology: A Methodological Reflection

The use of timelines is well-established in qualitative research and has been employed across a range of studies. However, the development of timelines (timelining) during interviews on shared decision making (SDM) remains relatively uncommon. This article reflects on our experiences with integrating timelining into semi-structured interviews with ethnic minority patients and their relatives on SDM in oncology. During the interviews, the interviewer collaborated with participants to develop visual timelines on paper representing their oncological treatment trajectories. In this methodological reflection, we describe how timelining functioned throughout the interview process, structured chronologically across three phases: (1) the start of the interview, (2) the evolving timeline during the interview, and (3) the completed timeline. During multiple interview encounters the timeline functioned as active agent within the conversation. For participants, it supported recall, facilitated the articulation of their experiences, and helped them to focus on decisional moments. For the interviewer, the timeline aided the clarification of participants’ verbal accounts, supported familiarization with each participants’ particular treatment trajectory, and prompted both narrative-specific and overarching questions. Timelining supported several interviews on SDM by rendering decision making more tangible for both participants and the interviewer. It also facilitated attention to multiple treatment decisions relevant to SDM, and supported an understanding of SDM as a process unfolding across the treatment trajectory. Our reflections suggest that timelining may serve as a valuable methodological aid for exploring SDM in longitudinal and complex treatment trajectories.