What is the most important task when preparing to conduct a research interview?

Interviewing for research is so much more than just a conversation. Deciding if the interviews are a good fit for your research, picking the right people to interview, preparing a questionnaire are all important steps to succeed. This guide is meant to assist you from A to Z in interviewing, including the best practices in interviewing, preparation, and analysis — generated by Ece Kural, PhD in International Relations and Founder of the knowledge management platform Scrintal.

Table of Contents

I. An Introduction to Research Interviews

II. Interview Sampling: How do I find people to interview?

III. Good questions to ask while interviewing

IV. Interview techniques and how to record interviews

I. An Introduction to Research Interviews

Decide between interviews and surveys — how to know if interviews are the right fit for the research project

You have chosen a fascinating topic, maybe you want to know more about people’s perceptions of climate change, or why they choose a certain product over another. Now what?

You should use interview methods when you are interested in capturing feelings, ideas, thoughts and experiences of your participants. This information is difficult to access from official documents, or sometimes even through surveys. Interviews are valuable for providing new information on topics that are not researched before, giving new ideas to researchers.

In deciding between the surveys and interviews, you can ask yourself the following three questions:

1. Do you have sufficient background information on a topic?
2. Are you looking for the personal narratives of the participants?
3. Do you know most of the possible answers the participants might give you?

If your answers are positive to these questions, then survey design rather than the interviews might be a better option for you. For those who would like to gather more diverse information on their topic of choice, an interview is the method to use.

What are the different types of Interviews? There are three main kinds of research interviews.

1. Structured Interview

This interview type only includes predetermined questions. The interviewer prepares a set of questions to ask during the interview and strictly follows them. There are no follow-up or on-the-spot questions. For example, interviews with climate policy experts could contain the following questions:

What impact does climate change have on policy making?

How should policy makers prepare for this?

What knowledge is required for policy makers to legislate with climate change?

What other stakeholders should be regularly involved in the policy making process to ensure that climate change is considered?

How does citizen engagement play a role in policy making when it comes to climate change?

If these questions are followed for every interviewee without any follow up questions or on-the-spot questions, then it would be considered a structured interview.

This is most useful if there are a high number of interviews to be held, and if you would like to compare the results easily. However, these types of interviews can be frustrating for interviewees as it limits their ability to speak freely.

2. Semi-structured Interview

The interviewee has predetermined questions in semi-structured interviews, however they are accompanied by follow-up questions that arise during the interview. It is the best alternative if you have some interests in a topic and speculations on which aspects of the topic are interesting, however still would like to discover further through interviewees’ knowledge. It is also easier for interviewees to be a part of semi-structured interviews as they are closer to real-life conversations.

3. Unstructured Interview

In unstructured interviews, there are non or only a couple predetermined questions, but a topic to discuss. This type is most frequently chosen during the early stages of research, or when the interviewer doesn’t want to prime the interviewee with their questions.

Once you have decided that interviewing is the right method for your research, you should start the sampling process which is choosing the right people to interview.

II. Interview Sampling: How do I find people to interview?

How to find people to interview and how to get their consent?

Finding participants to interview is the first major milestone in the interview process. The first task is to figure out who to interview. Usually the research question specifies the participants. For example, a research question on the doctors’ perception of their working conditions naturally suggests that doctors will make up the participant group. Following this example, doctors are the “population” this study is based on. You can narrow this down to “all doctors in my town”, or narrow it even further to “emergency room doctors in southern Stockholm”.

After deciding on the population, the next task is to draw participants from this population, which will be our “sample”. The doctors you interview in the end is your sample.

How many people should be in your sample?

Although there is no fixed answer to this question, there is a rule of thumb. As an interviewer, once you start anticipating the answers you will get, and you don’t hear anything interesting anymore, you should probably stop interviewing.

Some knowledge on different sample types is also helpful to get through the sampling question:

• Convenience sampling: asking people who you think are most likely to agree for an interview.
• Stratified sampling: If your population has specific sub-groups, such as age groups, class, gender, experience, etc., you might consider selecting equal numbers from each group. This would make your interview sample stratified.
• Snowball sampling: If you get a hold on some interviewees, you can consult their networks to ask around who is willing to participate in your interviews.

As an interviewer you don’t need to choose only one method of sampling, but can mix and match, for example using stratified sampling and snowballing methods.

What happens if it doesn’t work?

If you can’t get hold of the people in your population, then you should either redefine your population or even change your research question.

How do I get people to agree to be interviewed?

Once you decide on the interview type and the population, you can contact the potential interviewees. According to GDPR regulations, any research interview should have a consent form which is an ethical way of interviewing. As a comprehensive consent form this should include:

• Who you are
• The aim of your research
• What your research is about
• Why you are doing interviews
• How the interview data will be stored
• How the data and information collected will be used

Consent forms are given before starting the interviews, and inform the participants with the basic information, their rights and privacy. As part of the research ethics, the form should explain when and how participants can withdraw their data from the research, if they wish to, during and after the interview.

You can read more about handling GDPR in interviews in the post Sensitive Data and Receiving Consent according to GDPR. Once you have chosen the people to interview, it is time to start preparing yourself.

III. Good questions to ask while interviewing

The most essential preparation for the interviews is finding the right questions to ask.

What kind of questions will give the most detailed data?

In a nutshell, the best questions are:

• Plain in language and easy to understand
• The ones asking only one question, rather than two or more questions lumped into together
• Neutrally framed-not leading the interviewee in any direction
• Socially and culturally appropriate
• Logically ordered — one should lead to the other, and all of them should be related to the main research question

To be more specific, we will dig deeper into the different types of questions:

Closed Questions

If a question can only have one single answer, then it is a closed question. For example:

• Do you like working here?
• Do you use Google maps or Apple maps for navigation?

Closed questions are helpful if you are targeting an accurate and brief answer. They can be used together with open-ended questions. However, using closed ended questions frequently in an interview may hinder getting more detailed answers.

Open Questions

This is the most common type of question in the interviews as they generate detailed and out-of-box answers. For example, asking:

“How do you feel about working here” rather than saying “Do you like working here?”

“What do you think about donations to food banks” rather than saying “Do you think donating to food banks is a good idea?”

“What do you think /feel about the government’s aid?” rather than asking “Do you think the government is helping enough?”

Questions formulated in this manner are likely to generate more diverse and longer responses.

Leading Questions

Leading questions are the ones that lead your participant to one specific answer. These types of questions are the ones a good interviewer should avoid. For example:

• Do you think Math is difficult?
• Shouldn’t teachers grade students more generously?

These questions, apart from directing the question, express an opinion of their own, that math is difficult and teachers should do a better job in grading. As a result they lead the interviewee to agree with those opinions.

As part of a good preparation practice, one should notice the leading questions and rephrase them in neutral ways:

• What do you think about the difficulty level of Math?
• Is there anything you would change in teachers’ grading schemes?

These are neutrally worded versions of the exact same questions, however they are more likely to generate unbiased and free opinion of the participants.

Single Questions

interview questions that include only one point

It is a common mistake by researchers to gather more than one question to ask at once.

“What do you think about the current government and why do you think that?” is an example of two questions merged into one and asked back to back.

If you detect double questions in your questionnaire, you should split them into two and ask one by one; “What do you think about the current government?” and then follow with “Why do you think that?”

Top Tips for Preparation

1. Once you prepare an interview questionnaire, make sure that the questions are in logical order. Questions on similar topics should be placed together to help the conversation flow naturally.
2. Prepare some follow-up questions beforehand.
3. You can prepare alternative ways of asking the same questions, in case the concepts are not familiar to the interviewee.
4. Start with more simple and straightforward questions as these will put the interviewee at ease and kick start a natural conversation.
5. Before you start interviewing, it is very beneficial to hold a mock or pilot interview with friends or family. This pilot practice will make sure the questions are understandable and give you a good practice.

After getting the necessary preparations done, the next step is to conduct the interview.

IV. Interview techniques and how to record interviews

During the Interview: How to behave and record the interviews

As the interviewer, you can decide to hold the interview in a private space, such as your private room in your office, or a public place. The first important part is to consider the convenience of the interviewee and make them feel comfortable.

Secondly, the venue is important as it determines the noise level around. A noisy place is both unpleasant to hold a conversation and also is difficult for recording the interview. We will discuss the value of recording interviews in length.

There are different alternatives for capturing the interview data. The most traditional alternative is taking notes by hand. Although this alternative might be the first one to come to mind, it is very inefficient, as an average person can only write 30–35 words per minute while most people speak at a pace of 120 words. Although some people can type faster than they take notes, it might distract you from the interview process.

Recording

The best alternative for capturing information gathered through an interview is to record the full interview. The best practice is to initially ask for the permission of the interviewee to record and then record the conversation until it finishes.

Recording not only helps you retain the information you find relevant at an interview, but also gives you the chance to re-listen and discover new themes and answers you haven’t thought of during the interview.

Also as there is always the possibility to change the main interest of the research throughout the process, it is vital to record everything as the same material can be used for different purposes later on.

Which equipment to use

You can simply use your smartphone for recording, but make sure that it is in a good position in the room, close to you and the interviewee. Other alternatives are investing in recording equipment such as a dictation recorder and accessories like a microphone.

If you are conducting an online interview you can simply record the interview as video or audio directly in the communication tool (Skype and Google Meets allow such recordings).

Top tips for interview process and recording

1. Avoid noisy venues. Outside noise would disrupt the quality of the recording.
2. Have a backup device. Either check if your device is recording or have a back up device.
3. Try not to interrupt the interviewee and avoid two people talking at once. This is a mistake usually occurring in the beginning of interviews until both parties get used to each others’ pace of speaking. Although talking at the same time occurs naturally, it would decrease the recording quality.
4. Always ask for permission before recording. As part of the ethical way of doing research, do not record without permission.
5. Ask prompts to get more targeted information. Remember not to ask leading questions but ask prompts; “What did you think when the event happened?” or “What was the effect of X on Y event?” are example prompt questions.
6. Use probes to get more elaboration on an answer. Probes are for when you don’t fully understand the answer given. Example probes can be “Can you say a bit more about that?” or “Could you give a few more details?”

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