PHASE I: APS Local Staff (Supervisors, Investigators, Caseworkers, etc.) Interview Questions 

Interviewer: _____________________________________

Interviewee: ____________________________________

State_________________________________

Date of interview: __________________________________

Case Number: ________________________________

Greeting: Hello, My name is xxx. I am part of a study team that was contracted by the Administration 

for Community Living under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. We are conducting a 

study of how opioid misuse affects older adults as well as APS in its attempts to help them. 

The purpose of this interview is to understand your perspectives concerning cases involving opioids. We

are conducting these interviews at the local level in several states to get a better sense of opioid cases and

how they are being handled. This interview should take about 45 minutes.

During the interview, I will refer to the word “abuse” by surrogate decision makers and by this, I mean any

types of abuse, neglect or exploitation of a victim by another person, that your agency investigates. I’m

just using “abuse” for short. 

First, I will be asking you to reflect on investigations where opioids were involved. Then, I will ask you

about the particular issues regarding these cases. After that I will come back to issues of how APS agencies

can best assist victims of abuse where opioids are concerned.

With your permission, our conversation will be tape recorded so that we will be able to capture correctly

your input and ideas. Is that all right with you? 

I expect you would be careful about this anyway, but, once we turn the recording on as we discuss, let’s

avoid referring to anyone by name, be it the victim or any other individual.

If any of my questions are unclear to you, please stop me and ask for clarification. 

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1. Roughly, how many cases of abuse involving opioids would you say that you have handled in the past

year? 

Probe: suggest they just identify whether it is probably less than five, five to 10, or over 10? (Use

groups you would use in your data analysis.)
2. How were these victims in these cases harmed by the abuse/neglect/exploitation that involved

opioids?

3. What was the long-term impact of the abuse/neglect/exploitation on the victims? 

4. Did the victims or the perpetrators ever have other allegations of abuse/neglect/exploitation? (ask for

dates of allegations/substantiations and more specifics)

5. What were the challenges, if any, that you encountered in investigating the allegations of abuse of

these particular victims? 

6. Was your APS program able to provide any intervention(s) that assisted these victims to achieve

increased safety and relief from continued abuse?

If yes, please describe intervention(s) provided and specifically how intervention(s) assisted the

victims. 

Probe: Did this enable the victims to become safe? Please explain.

If no, what barriers blocked efforts to assist the victims?

7. Do you have any thoughts or observations from these cases about what might have prevented the

abuse/neglect/exploitation by the perpetrators from occurring?

8. Overall, do you find that substantiated cases of abuse involving opioids:

• are generally more, less, or equally as difficult to work as other types of allegations? 

Probes: If more difficult, why?

• Is it harder to substantiate these cases?

Probes: If harder, why?

• Do you find that intervening and achieving a positive outcome is harder for these cases?

Probes: If harder, why?

9. When opioids are involved, is abuse, neglect, or exploitation easier to miss than abuse, neglect, or

exploitation when opioids are not involved?

Probe: Why or why not? In what ways? 

10. Based on your experience working these cases, are there ways that APS and other agencies should be

working them differently when opioids are involved?

11. In your experience, what are ways to improve prevention of the abuse of older people when opioids

are involved?
12. Do you have recommendations regarding how suspected victims of abuse involving opioids can be

better served or how these cases can be better prevented or handled?

13. Are there any other comments you would like to make about this case, abuse involving opioids in

general, or this study?

14. Do you have any recommendations for further research on abuse involving opioids?