Skype, as a free communication service, provides the opportunity of calling, seeing, messaging, and sharing with people wherever they are (Anonymous, 2013b). However, 560 million people have ever used it (Anonymous, 2012). In 2012, the total number of Skype users was 31 million. One of the programs released in the past decade is Skype (Anonymous, 2013a).

Investigators’ interest in using an interactive synchronous method has encouraged them to apply online communication services (Fielding, 2010 Sullivan, 2012). Synchronous approaches focus on text-based chat rooms, instant messenger protocols, and videoconferencing (Stewart & Williams, 2005 Stieger & Gortiz, 2006). Emails, bulletin boards, and discussion groups are the most commonly used methods for asynchronous online interviewing (Hooley et al., 2012). Two types of online interviews such as focus group interviews and one-on-one interviews could be performed by both synchronous (real-time) and asynchronous (non-real-time) arenas. Over the last few decades, the technological changes in growth of the Internet have developed the experience of online interviewing in qualitative inquiry and have reduced the problems related to face-to-face interviews (Hooley, Wellens, & Marriott, 2012). Time and financial constraints, geographical dispersion, and physical mobility boundaries of research populations have presented some problems for conventional face-to-face interviews (Cater, 2011). Interviewing is the most widely used form of data collection in qualitative research (Creswell, 2007).

Online skype