Unit Overview

A penny for your thoughts? If only! Getting people to speak openly and honestly about consequential community matters is an art as well as a science. It takes courage to share one's thoughts in an interview setting, and it also takes courage to assume the responsibility of collecting stories from people. The inflation-adjusted price for in-depth interviewing is surely worth more than a penny.

Stories don't tell themselves, but they have a powerful impact on shaping public understanding and driving policy objectives. Core skills needed to capture informative narratives include writing productive questions, creating comfortable rapport, and effectively managing the conversation. We'll discuss these, provide additional pointers, and run through several practice scenarios. A penny's worth indeed!

Key Terms

Highly structured interview: all subjects are asked the same questions and the interviewer controls the topic (i.e., survey). 

In-depth, semi-structured interview: one-on-one engagement with a participant who is knowledgeable or has personal insight into a topic. Interaction is guided by a set of questions but is flexible enough to encourage conversation and follow-up. 

Interview guide: sometimes called an interview schedule or interview protocol. These are the questions/topics the interviewer wants to ensure are addressed.

Probing: following up on an interviewee's comments for elaboration or clarification.

Rapport: mutual understanding, agreement, and empathy within a relationship.

Saturation: the point at which additional interviews are no longer generating new understanding because you have already heard exhaustively about the underlying issues in previous interviews. 

Unstructured interview: questions and responses are non-standardized and interview topics emerge based on subject's responses. 

What is an Interview?

An interview is an interaction between two individuals where one person asks questions that guide the conversation and the other person responds. Examples you may be familiar with are interviews on the news and job interviews. Many of the same techniques apply in research interviews, but our goals are significantly different. Unlike a job interview, our aim is to create a comfortable conversation where people feel safe being honest and are not editing themselves so that we can understand their experiences and perceptions. In qualitative research we use in-depth interviews to find out in detail how people perceive their worlds. 

Types of Interviews

• Highly structured: All subjects are asked the same questions and the interviewer controls the topic (i.e., survey). 

• In-depth, semi-structured: An interview protocol guides the conversation, with freedom for variation. This is the most commonly used approach and is intended to gain a detailed, or rich, understanding of the participant's experiences, opinions, or perceptions.

• Unstructured: Questions and responses are non-standardized to foster discovery when exploring a new research topic. This can be a helpful starting point, but it's difficult to compare interviews for analysis. 

Writing Interview Questions

Drafting an Interview Guide

It's a good idea for the interviewer to prepare a guide for themselves that keeps the meeting on track and ensures that essential ethics information is communicated. Below you will find a draft of an interview guide that contains suggested language. 

• Click on the arrow at the upper right corner of the Sample Interview Guide document to open it in a new window. 

• Select "File" at the upper left corner of the document window and choose "Make a Copy" to open an editable draft of the interview guide.

• Give the interview draft a new name and save it to a retrievable location. 

• Edit and adapt to fit your interview project. 

How many interviews should I conduct?

Because of the focus on depth rather than generalizability, qualitative research typically has small samples. Samples can range from as little as five to as many as 100. A sample of 20 to 30 participants in one-on-one interviews is fairly common. One of the biggest things to consider is the scope of the project. Are there multiple sub-groups you are interested in hearing from? Is there potential for a lot of very different experiences? Are there a wide range of topics you want to discuss? If the answer to any of these is "Yes," you’ll need a larger sample. Commonly qualitative researchers aim for saturation, or redundancy. This is when you are no longer learning anything significantly new from participants. Examples may be new, but the underlying issues and concepts have already been heard.

How Do I Establish Positive Relationships?

Active Listening

When conducting an interview we want to limit how much our experiences and opinions shape the conversation. This is quite a bit different from the usual flow of a conversation, in which people respond to what someone has said with a story from their own life. It can be difficult to remove ourselves from the conversation, but we must in order to pay close attention to what is being shared (Berg 2009: 151). Remember that the goal of interviewing is to understand the topic from the interviewee's perspective. 

This activity will help you develop careful and active listening skills. You will need a partner. You will want to sit facing one another. Decide who will be Person #1 and Person #2. You will also need a timer - a phone or watch will work. Follow the directions on the clipboards below.

Stop and Discuss

As a pair, begin by considering your experiences as speakers: 

• Did your partner repeat what you said accurately? 

• What was it like having to speak for 30 seconds straight? 

Then reflect on what it was like to listen: 

• Was it difficult to remain quiet? 

• Were you able to encourage your partner using body language or facial expressions? 

• When you repeated your partner’s words back, how accurately were you able to say them the way they were spoken?

Stop and Discuss

As a pair, provide feedback to one another on how you each did as listeners:

• Was your partner able to repeat back your words? 

• Did they use any non-verbal techniques to encourage you? 

• Are there any ways they could improve their active listening?

Finally, reflect independently on the overall experience (making notes in a journal or another written form is ideal, but you can also consider these in your head):

• Of the experiences, listener, and speaker, which did you find easier? Why might that be?

• Considering the two times you spoke, which was more challenging? Did the time make an impact? Did it matter whether it was a positive or negative focus? Was talking about the community or a more personal experience harder for you?

• How could you draw on this experience to help you when interviewing? What non-verbal techniques might you use? How could you phrase questions to create more interviewee comfort? What might be helpful techniques for organizing interview questions?

Conducting the Interview

You've developed your plan and practiced your listening skills. Now it's time to get into the nuts and bolts of conducting your interview. Below you will find three checklists with steps to take as you prepare for your interview, conduct the interview, and wrap up your thoughts after the interview has concluded. Click on the "before," "during," and "after" subheadings to extend each checklist. 

Creating Interview Transcripts

Follow the instructions below to download Otter.ai on your phone, record your interview, and share a copy of the transcript to the "Interview Transcript" form, below.

Summary

A carefully constructed interview guide provides direction for your interview and moves the conversation through topics in an organized manner. A successful guide contains clearly written questions that avoid influencing the responses provided. The goal is to understand but not influence the interviewee's perspective.  Be prepared to ask follow-up questions that encourage elaboration as needed. 

Consider how you will set the tone for your interview and how you will interact with your participant. Aim to develop conversational partnerships that create an environment of trust and comfort and support the collection of richer data.  

Managing the flow and focus of the conversation is an important interviewer responsibility. With practice, you'll be prepared to think on your feet and keep your interview on track. However things go, remember that a little "thanks" goes a long way!

Reflection Questions

Question Quandaries?

Which common question errors (i.e. double-barreled questions, leading questions, etc.) did you find most difficult to avoid when writing your interview guide?

Building Data, Building Relationships?

Conversation Jockey?

After completing the interview simulation activity, what recommendations can you make about managing difficult respondents? What strategies did you use to get the conversation back on track?