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• Types of Interviews in Research | Guide & Examples

Types of Interviews in Research | Guide & Examples

Published on March 10, 2022 by Tegan George . Revised on June 22, 2023.

An interview is a qualitative research method that relies on asking questions in order to collect data . Interviews involve two or more people, one of whom is the interviewer asking the questions.

There are several types of interviews, often differentiated by their level of structure.

• Structured interviews have predetermined questions asked in a predetermined order.
• Unstructured interviews are more free-flowing.
• Semi-structured interviews fall in between.

Interviews are commonly used in market research, social science, and ethnographic research .

Table of contents

What is a structured interview, what is a semi-structured interview, what is an unstructured interview, what is a focus group, examples of interview questions, advantages and disadvantages of interviews, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about types of interviews.

Structured interviews have predetermined questions in a set order. They are often closed-ended, featuring dichotomous (yes/no) or multiple-choice questions. While open-ended structured interviews exist, they are much less common. The types of questions asked make structured interviews a predominantly quantitative tool.

Asking set questions in a set order can help you see patterns among responses, and it allows you to easily compare responses between participants while keeping other factors constant. This can mitigate   research biases and lead to higher reliability and validity. However, structured interviews can be overly formal, as well as limited in scope and flexibility.

• You feel very comfortable with your topic. This will help you formulate your questions most effectively.
• You have limited time or resources. Structured interviews are a bit more straightforward to analyze because of their closed-ended nature, and can be a doable undertaking for an individual.
• Your research question depends on holding environmental conditions between participants constant.

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Semi-structured interviews are a blend of structured and unstructured interviews. While the interviewer has a general plan for what they want to ask, the questions do not have to follow a particular phrasing or order.

Semi-structured interviews are often open-ended, allowing for flexibility, but follow a predetermined thematic framework, giving a sense of order. For this reason, they are often considered “the best of both worlds.”

However, if the questions differ substantially between participants, it can be challenging to look for patterns, lessening the generalizability and validity of your results.

• You have prior interview experience. It’s easier than you think to accidentally ask a leading question when coming up with questions on the fly. Overall, spontaneous questions are much more difficult than they may seem.
• Your research question is exploratory in nature. The answers you receive can help guide your future research.

An unstructured interview is the most flexible type of interview. The questions and the order in which they are asked are not set. Instead, the interview can proceed more spontaneously, based on the participant’s previous answers.

Unstructured interviews are by definition open-ended. This flexibility can help you gather detailed information on your topic, while still allowing you to observe patterns between participants.

However, so much flexibility means that they can be very challenging to conduct properly. You must be very careful not to ask leading questions, as biased responses can lead to lower reliability or even invalidate your research.

• You have a solid background in your research topic and have conducted interviews before.
• Your research question is exploratory in nature, and you are seeking descriptive data that will deepen and contextualize your initial hypotheses.
• Your research necessitates forming a deeper connection with your participants, encouraging them to feel comfortable revealing their true opinions and emotions.

A focus group brings together a group of participants to answer questions on a topic of interest in a moderated setting. Focus groups are qualitative in nature and often study the group’s dynamic and body language in addition to their answers. Responses can guide future research on consumer products and services, human behavior, or controversial topics.

Focus groups can provide more nuanced and unfiltered feedback than individual interviews and are easier to organize than experiments or large surveys . However, their small size leads to low external validity and the temptation as a researcher to “cherry-pick” responses that fit your hypotheses.

• Your research focuses on the dynamics of group discussion or real-time responses to your topic.
• Your questions are complex and rooted in feelings, opinions, and perceptions that cannot be answered with a “yes” or “no.”
• Your topic is exploratory in nature, and you are seeking information that will help you uncover new questions or future research ideas.

Depending on the type of interview you are conducting, your questions will differ in style, phrasing, and intention. Structured interview questions are set and precise, while the other types of interviews allow for more open-endedness and flexibility.

Here are some examples.

• Semi-structured
• Unstructured
• Focus group
• Do you like dogs? Yes/No
• Do you associate dogs with feeling: happy; somewhat happy; neutral; somewhat unhappy; unhappy
• If yes, name one attribute of dogs that you like.
• If no, name one attribute of dogs that you don’t like.
• What feelings do dogs bring out in you?
• When you think more deeply about this, what experiences would you say your feelings are rooted in?

Interviews are a great research tool. They allow you to gather rich information and draw more detailed conclusions than other research methods, taking into consideration nonverbal cues, off-the-cuff reactions, and emotional responses.

However, they can also be time-consuming and deceptively challenging to conduct properly. Smaller sample sizes can cause their validity and reliability to suffer, and there is an inherent risk of interviewer effect arising from accidentally leading questions.

Here are some advantages and disadvantages of each type of interview that can help you decide if you’d like to utilize this research method.

If you want to know more about statistics , methodology , or research bias , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

• Student’s  t -distribution
• Normal distribution
• Null and Alternative Hypotheses
• Chi square tests
• Confidence interval
• Quartiles & Quantiles
• Cluster sampling
• Stratified sampling
• Data cleansing
• Reproducibility vs Replicability
• Peer review
• Prospective cohort study

Research bias

• Implicit bias
• Cognitive bias
• Placebo effect
• Hawthorne effect
• Hindsight bias
• Affect heuristic
• Social desirability bias

The four most common types of interviews are:

• Structured interviews : The questions are predetermined in both topic and order. 
• Semi-structured interviews : A few questions are predetermined, but other questions aren’t planned.
• Unstructured interviews : None of the questions are predetermined.
• Focus group interviews : The questions are presented to a group instead of one individual.

The interviewer effect is a type of bias that emerges when a characteristic of an interviewer (race, age, gender identity, etc.) influences the responses given by the interviewee.

There is a risk of an interviewer effect in all types of interviews , but it can be mitigated by writing really high-quality interview questions.

Social desirability bias is the tendency for interview participants to give responses that will be viewed favorably by the interviewer or other participants. It occurs in all types of interviews and surveys , but is most common in semi-structured interviews , unstructured interviews , and focus groups .

Social desirability bias can be mitigated by ensuring participants feel at ease and comfortable sharing their views. Make sure to pay attention to your own body language and any physical or verbal cues, such as nodding or widening your eyes.

This type of bias can also occur in observations if the participants know they’re being observed. They might alter their behavior accordingly.

A focus group is a research method that brings together a small group of people to answer questions in a moderated setting. The group is chosen due to predefined demographic traits, and the questions are designed to shed light on a topic of interest. It is one of 4 types of interviews .

Quantitative research deals with numbers and statistics, while qualitative research deals with words and meanings.

Quantitative methods allow you to systematically measure variables and test hypotheses . Qualitative methods allow you to explore concepts and experiences in more detail.

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Chapter 11. Interviewing

Introduction.

Interviewing people is at the heart of qualitative research. It is not merely a way to collect data but an intrinsically rewarding activity—an interaction between two people that holds the potential for greater understanding and interpersonal development. Unlike many of our daily interactions with others that are fairly shallow and mundane, sitting down with a person for an hour or two and really listening to what they have to say is a profound and deep enterprise, one that can provide not only “data” for you, the interviewer, but also self-understanding and a feeling of being heard for the interviewee. I always approach interviewing with a deep appreciation for the opportunity it gives me to understand how other people experience the world. That said, there is not one kind of interview but many, and some of these are shallower than others. This chapter will provide you with an overview of interview techniques but with a special focus on the in-depth semistructured interview guide approach, which is the approach most widely used in social science research.

An interview can be variously defined as “a conversation with a purpose” ( Lune and Berg 2018 ) and an attempt to understand the world from the point of view of the person being interviewed: “to unfold the meaning of peoples’ experiences, to uncover their lived world prior to scientific explanations” ( Kvale 2007 ). It is a form of active listening in which the interviewer steers the conversation to subjects and topics of interest to their research but also manages to leave enough space for those interviewed to say surprising things. Achieving that balance is a tricky thing, which is why most practitioners believe interviewing is both an art and a science. In my experience as a teacher, there are some students who are “natural” interviewers (often they are introverts), but anyone can learn to conduct interviews, and everyone, even those of us who have been doing this for years, can improve their interviewing skills. This might be a good time to highlight the fact that the interview is a product between interviewer and interviewee and that this product is only as good as the rapport established between the two participants. Active listening is the key to establishing this necessary rapport.

Patton ( 2002 ) makes the argument that we use interviews because there are certain things that are not observable. In particular, “we cannot observe feelings, thoughts, and intentions. We cannot observe behaviors that took place at some previous point in time. We cannot observe situations that preclude the presence of an observer. We cannot observe how people have organized the world and the meanings they attach to what goes on in the world. We have to ask people questions about those things” ( 341 ).

Types of Interviews

There are several distinct types of interviews. Imagine a continuum (figure 11.1). On one side are unstructured conversations—the kind you have with your friends. No one is in control of those conversations, and what you talk about is often random—whatever pops into your head. There is no secret, underlying purpose to your talking—if anything, the purpose is to talk to and engage with each other, and the words you use and the things you talk about are a little beside the point. An unstructured interview is a little like this informal conversation, except that one of the parties to the conversation (you, the researcher) does have an underlying purpose, and that is to understand the other person. You are not friends speaking for no purpose, but it might feel just as unstructured to the “interviewee” in this scenario. That is one side of the continuum. On the other side are fully structured and standardized survey-type questions asked face-to-face. Here it is very clear who is asking the questions and who is answering them. This doesn’t feel like a conversation at all! A lot of people new to interviewing have this ( erroneously !) in mind when they think about interviews as data collection. Somewhere in the middle of these two extreme cases is the “ semistructured” interview , in which the researcher uses an “interview guide” to gently move the conversation to certain topics and issues. This is the primary form of interviewing for qualitative social scientists and will be what I refer to as interviewing for the rest of this chapter, unless otherwise specified.

Informal (unstructured conversations). This is the most “open-ended” approach to interviewing. It is particularly useful in conjunction with observational methods (see chapters 13 and 14). There are no predetermined questions. Each interview will be different. Imagine you are researching the Oregon Country Fair, an annual event in Veneta, Oregon, that includes live music, artisan craft booths, face painting, and a lot of people walking through forest paths. It’s unlikely that you will be able to get a person to sit down with you and talk intensely about a set of questions for an hour and a half. But you might be able to sidle up to several people and engage with them about their experiences at the fair. You might have a general interest in what attracts people to these events, so you could start a conversation by asking strangers why they are here or why they come back every year. That’s it. Then you have a conversation that may lead you anywhere. Maybe one person tells a long story about how their parents brought them here when they were a kid. A second person talks about how this is better than Burning Man. A third person shares their favorite traveling band. And yet another enthuses about the public library in the woods. During your conversations, you also talk about a lot of other things—the weather, the utilikilts for sale, the fact that a favorite food booth has disappeared. It’s all good. You may not be able to record these conversations. Instead, you might jot down notes on the spot and then, when you have the time, write down as much as you can remember about the conversations in long fieldnotes. Later, you will have to sit down with these fieldnotes and try to make sense of all the information (see chapters 18 and 19).

Interview guide ( semistructured interview ). This is the primary type employed by social science qualitative researchers. The researcher creates an “interview guide” in advance, which she uses in every interview. In theory, every person interviewed is asked the same questions. In practice, every person interviewed is asked mostly the same topics but not always the same questions, as the whole point of a “guide” is that it guides the direction of the conversation but does not command it. The guide is typically between five and ten questions or question areas, sometimes with suggested follow-ups or prompts . For example, one question might be “What was it like growing up in Eastern Oregon?” with prompts such as “Did you live in a rural area? What kind of high school did you attend?” to help the conversation develop. These interviews generally take place in a quiet place (not a busy walkway during a festival) and are recorded. The recordings are transcribed, and those transcriptions then become the “data” that is analyzed (see chapters 18 and 19). The conventional length of one of these types of interviews is between one hour and two hours, optimally ninety minutes. Less than one hour doesn’t allow for much development of questions and thoughts, and two hours (or more) is a lot of time to ask someone to sit still and answer questions. If you have a lot of ground to cover, and the person is willing, I highly recommend two separate interview sessions, with the second session being slightly shorter than the first (e.g., ninety minutes the first day, sixty minutes the second). There are lots of good reasons for this, but the most compelling one is that this allows you to listen to the first day’s recording and catch anything interesting you might have missed in the moment and so develop follow-up questions that can probe further. This also allows the person being interviewed to have some time to think about the issues raised in the interview and go a little deeper with their answers.

Standardized questionnaire with open responses ( structured interview ). This is the type of interview a lot of people have in mind when they hear “interview”: a researcher comes to your door with a clipboard and proceeds to ask you a series of questions. These questions are all the same whoever answers the door; they are “standardized.” Both the wording and the exact order are important, as people’s responses may vary depending on how and when a question is asked. These are qualitative only in that the questions allow for “open-ended responses”: people can say whatever they want rather than select from a predetermined menu of responses. For example, a survey I collaborated on included this open-ended response question: “How does class affect one’s career success in sociology?” Some of the answers were simply one word long (e.g., “debt”), and others were long statements with stories and personal anecdotes. It is possible to be surprised by the responses. Although it’s a stretch to call this kind of questioning a conversation, it does allow the person answering the question some degree of freedom in how they answer.

Survey questionnaire with closed responses (not an interview!). Standardized survey questions with specific answer options (e.g., closed responses) are not really interviews at all, and they do not generate qualitative data. For example, if we included five options for the question “How does class affect one’s career success in sociology?”—(1) debt, (2) social networks, (3) alienation, (4) family doesn’t understand, (5) type of grad program—we leave no room for surprises at all. Instead, we would most likely look at patterns around these responses, thinking quantitatively rather than qualitatively (e.g., using regression analysis techniques, we might find that working-class sociologists were twice as likely to bring up alienation). It can sometimes be confusing for new students because the very same survey can include both closed-ended and open-ended questions. The key is to think about how these will be analyzed and to what level surprises are possible. If your plan is to turn all responses into a number and make predictions about correlations and relationships, you are no longer conducting qualitative research. This is true even if you are conducting this survey face-to-face with a real live human. Closed-response questions are not conversations of any kind, purposeful or not.

In summary, the semistructured interview guide approach is the predominant form of interviewing for social science qualitative researchers because it allows a high degree of freedom of responses from those interviewed (thus allowing for novel discoveries) while still maintaining some connection to a research question area or topic of interest. The rest of the chapter assumes the employment of this form.

Creating an Interview Guide

Your interview guide is the instrument used to bridge your research question(s) and what the people you are interviewing want to tell you. Unlike a standardized questionnaire, the questions actually asked do not need to be exactly what you have written down in your guide. The guide is meant to create space for those you are interviewing to talk about the phenomenon of interest, but sometimes you are not even sure what that phenomenon is until you start asking questions. A priority in creating an interview guide is to ensure it offers space. One of the worst mistakes is to create questions that are so specific that the person answering them will not stray. Relatedly, questions that sound “academic” will shut down a lot of respondents. A good interview guide invites respondents to talk about what is important to them, not feel like they are performing or being evaluated by you.

Good interview questions should not sound like your “research question” at all. For example, let’s say your research question is “How do patriarchal assumptions influence men’s understanding of climate change and responses to climate change?” It would be worse than unhelpful to ask a respondent, “How do your assumptions about the role of men affect your understanding of climate change?” You need to unpack this into manageable nuggets that pull your respondent into the area of interest without leading him anywhere. You could start by asking him what he thinks about climate change in general. Or, even better, whether he has any concerns about heatwaves or increased tornadoes or polar icecaps melting. Once he starts talking about that, you can ask follow-up questions that bring in issues around gendered roles, perhaps asking if he is married (to a woman) and whether his wife shares his thoughts and, if not, how they negotiate that difference. The fact is, you won’t really know the right questions to ask until he starts talking.

There are several distinct types of questions that can be used in your interview guide, either as main questions or as follow-up probes. If you remember that the point is to leave space for the respondent, you will craft a much more effective interview guide! You will also want to think about the place of time in both the questions themselves (past, present, future orientations) and the sequencing of the questions.

Researcher Note

Suggestion : As you read the next three sections (types of questions, temporality, question sequence), have in mind a particular research question, and try to draft questions and sequence them in a way that opens space for a discussion that helps you answer your research question.

Type of Questions

Experience and behavior questions ask about what a respondent does regularly (their behavior) or has done (their experience). These are relatively easy questions for people to answer because they appear more “factual” and less subjective. This makes them good opening questions. For the study on climate change above, you might ask, “Have you ever experienced an unusual weather event? What happened?” Or “You said you work outside? What is a typical summer workday like for you? How do you protect yourself from the heat?”

Opinion and values questions , in contrast, ask questions that get inside the minds of those you are interviewing. “Do you think climate change is real? Who or what is responsible for it?” are two such questions. Note that you don’t have to literally ask, “What is your opinion of X?” but you can find a way to ask the specific question relevant to the conversation you are having. These questions are a bit trickier to ask because the answers you get may depend in part on how your respondent perceives you and whether they want to please you or not. We’ve talked a fair amount about being reflective. Here is another place where this comes into play. You need to be aware of the effect your presence might have on the answers you are receiving and adjust accordingly. If you are a woman who is perceived as liberal asking a man who identifies as conservative about climate change, there is a lot of subtext that can be going on in the interview. There is no one right way to resolve this, but you must at least be aware of it.

Feeling questions are questions that ask respondents to draw on their emotional responses. It’s pretty common for academic researchers to forget that we have bodies and emotions, but people’s understandings of the world often operate at this affective level, sometimes unconsciously or barely consciously. It is a good idea to include questions that leave space for respondents to remember, imagine, or relive emotional responses to particular phenomena. “What was it like when you heard your cousin’s house burned down in that wildfire?” doesn’t explicitly use any emotion words, but it allows your respondent to remember what was probably a pretty emotional day. And if they respond emotionally neutral, that is pretty interesting data too. Note that asking someone “How do you feel about X” is not always going to evoke an emotional response, as they might simply turn around and respond with “I think that…” It is better to craft a question that actually pushes the respondent into the affective category. This might be a specific follow-up to an experience and behavior question —for example, “You just told me about your daily routine during the summer heat. Do you worry it is going to get worse?” or “Have you ever been afraid it will be too hot to get your work accomplished?”

Knowledge questions ask respondents what they actually know about something factual. We have to be careful when we ask these types of questions so that respondents do not feel like we are evaluating them (which would shut them down), but, for example, it is helpful to know when you are having a conversation about climate change that your respondent does in fact know that unusual weather events have increased and that these have been attributed to climate change! Asking these questions can set the stage for deeper questions and can ensure that the conversation makes the same kind of sense to both participants. For example, a conversation about political polarization can be put back on track once you realize that the respondent doesn’t really have a clear understanding that there are two parties in the US. Instead of asking a series of questions about Republicans and Democrats, you might shift your questions to talk more generally about political disagreements (e.g., “people against abortion”). And sometimes what you do want to know is the level of knowledge about a particular program or event (e.g., “Are you aware you can discharge your student loans through the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program?”).

Sensory questions call on all senses of the respondent to capture deeper responses. These are particularly helpful in sparking memory. “Think back to your childhood in Eastern Oregon. Describe the smells, the sounds…” Or you could use these questions to help a person access the full experience of a setting they customarily inhabit: “When you walk through the doors to your office building, what do you see? Hear? Smell?” As with feeling questions , these questions often supplement experience and behavior questions . They are another way of allowing your respondent to report fully and deeply rather than remain on the surface.

Creative questions employ illustrative examples, suggested scenarios, or simulations to get respondents to think more deeply about an issue, topic, or experience. There are many options here. In The Trouble with Passion , Erin Cech ( 2021 ) provides a scenario in which “Joe” is trying to decide whether to stay at his decent but boring computer job or follow his passion by opening a restaurant. She asks respondents, “What should Joe do?” Their answers illuminate the attraction of “passion” in job selection. In my own work, I have used a news story about an upwardly mobile young man who no longer has time to see his mother and sisters to probe respondents’ feelings about the costs of social mobility. Jessi Streib and Betsy Leondar-Wright have used single-page cartoon “scenes” to elicit evaluations of potential racial discrimination, sexual harassment, and classism. Barbara Sutton ( 2010 ) has employed lists of words (“strong,” “mother,” “victim”) on notecards she fans out and asks her female respondents to select and discuss.

Background/Demographic Questions

You most definitely will want to know more about the person you are interviewing in terms of conventional demographic information, such as age, race, gender identity, occupation, and educational attainment. These are not questions that normally open up inquiry. [1] For this reason, my practice has been to include a separate “demographic questionnaire” sheet that I ask each respondent to fill out at the conclusion of the interview. Only include those aspects that are relevant to your study. For example, if you are not exploring religion or religious affiliation, do not include questions about a person’s religion on the demographic sheet. See the example provided at the end of this chapter.

Temporality

Any type of question can have a past, present, or future orientation. For example, if you are asking a behavior question about workplace routine, you might ask the respondent to talk about past work, present work, and ideal (future) work. Similarly, if you want to understand how people cope with natural disasters, you might ask your respondent how they felt then during the wildfire and now in retrospect and whether and to what extent they have concerns for future wildfire disasters. It’s a relatively simple suggestion—don’t forget to ask about past, present, and future—but it can have a big impact on the quality of the responses you receive.

Question Sequence

Having a list of good questions or good question areas is not enough to make a good interview guide. You will want to pay attention to the order in which you ask your questions. Even though any one respondent can derail this order (perhaps by jumping to answer a question you haven’t yet asked), a good advance plan is always helpful. When thinking about sequence, remember that your goal is to get your respondent to open up to you and to say things that might surprise you. To establish rapport, it is best to start with nonthreatening questions. Asking about the present is often the safest place to begin, followed by the past (they have to know you a little bit to get there), and lastly, the future (talking about hopes and fears requires the most rapport). To allow for surprises, it is best to move from very general questions to more particular questions only later in the interview. This ensures that respondents have the freedom to bring up the topics that are relevant to them rather than feel like they are constrained to answer you narrowly. For example, refrain from asking about particular emotions until these have come up previously—don’t lead with them. Often, your more particular questions will emerge only during the course of the interview, tailored to what is emerging in conversation.

Once you have a set of questions, read through them aloud and imagine you are being asked the same questions. Does the set of questions have a natural flow? Would you be willing to answer the very first question to a total stranger? Does your sequence establish facts and experiences before moving on to opinions and values? Did you include prefatory statements, where necessary; transitions; and other announcements? These can be as simple as “Hey, we talked a lot about your experiences as a barista while in college.… Now I am turning to something completely different: how you managed friendships in college.” That is an abrupt transition, but it has been softened by your acknowledgment of that.

Probes and Flexibility

Once you have the interview guide, you will also want to leave room for probes and follow-up questions. As in the sample probe included here, you can write out the obvious probes and follow-up questions in advance. You might not need them, as your respondent might anticipate them and include full responses to the original question. Or you might need to tailor them to how your respondent answered the question. Some common probes and follow-up questions include asking for more details (When did that happen? Who else was there?), asking for elaboration (Could you say more about that?), asking for clarification (Does that mean what I think it means or something else? I understand what you mean, but someone else reading the transcript might not), and asking for contrast or comparison (How did this experience compare with last year’s event?). “Probing is a skill that comes from knowing what to look for in the interview, listening carefully to what is being said and what is not said, and being sensitive to the feedback needs of the person being interviewed” ( Patton 2002:374 ). It takes work! And energy. I and many other interviewers I know report feeling emotionally and even physically drained after conducting an interview. You are tasked with active listening and rearranging your interview guide as needed on the fly. If you only ask the questions written down in your interview guide with no deviations, you are doing it wrong. [2]

The Final Question

Every interview guide should include a very open-ended final question that allows for the respondent to say whatever it is they have been dying to tell you but you’ve forgotten to ask. About half the time they are tired too and will tell you they have nothing else to say. But incredibly, some of the most honest and complete responses take place here, at the end of a long interview. You have to realize that the person being interviewed is often discovering things about themselves as they talk to you and that this process of discovery can lead to new insights for them. Making space at the end is therefore crucial. Be sure you convey that you actually do want them to tell you more, that the offer of “anything else?” is not read as an empty convention where the polite response is no. Here is where you can pull from that active listening and tailor the final question to the particular person. For example, “I’ve asked you a lot of questions about what it was like to live through that wildfire. I’m wondering if there is anything I’ve forgotten to ask, especially because I haven’t had that experience myself” is a much more inviting final question than “Great. Anything you want to add?” It’s also helpful to convey to the person that you have the time to listen to their full answer, even if the allotted time is at the end. After all, there are no more questions to ask, so the respondent knows exactly how much time is left. Do them the courtesy of listening to them!

Conducting the Interview

Once you have your interview guide, you are on your way to conducting your first interview. I always practice my interview guide with a friend or family member. I do this even when the questions don’t make perfect sense for them, as it still helps me realize which questions make no sense, are poorly worded (too academic), or don’t follow sequentially. I also practice the routine I will use for interviewing, which goes something like this:

• Introduce myself and reintroduce the study
• Provide consent form and ask them to sign and retain/return copy
• Ask if they have any questions about the study before we begin
• Ask if I can begin recording
• Ask questions (from interview guide)
• Turn off the recording device
• Ask if they are willing to fill out my demographic questionnaire
• Collect questionnaire and, without looking at the answers, place in same folder as signed consent form
• Thank them and depart

A note on remote interviewing: Interviews have traditionally been conducted face-to-face in a private or quiet public setting. You don’t want a lot of background noise, as this will make transcriptions difficult. During the recent global pandemic, many interviewers, myself included, learned the benefits of interviewing remotely. Although face-to-face is still preferable for many reasons, Zoom interviewing is not a bad alternative, and it does allow more interviews across great distances. Zoom also includes automatic transcription, which significantly cuts down on the time it normally takes to convert our conversations into “data” to be analyzed. These automatic transcriptions are not perfect, however, and you will still need to listen to the recording and clarify and clean up the transcription. Nor do automatic transcriptions include notations of body language or change of tone, which you may want to include. When interviewing remotely, you will want to collect the consent form before you meet: ask them to read, sign, and return it as an email attachment. I think it is better to ask for the demographic questionnaire after the interview, but because some respondents may never return it then, it is probably best to ask for this at the same time as the consent form, in advance of the interview.

What should you bring to the interview? I would recommend bringing two copies of the consent form (one for you and one for the respondent), a demographic questionnaire, a manila folder in which to place the signed consent form and filled-out demographic questionnaire, a printed copy of your interview guide (I print with three-inch right margins so I can jot down notes on the page next to relevant questions), a pen, a recording device, and water.

After the interview, you will want to secure the signed consent form in a locked filing cabinet (if in print) or a password-protected folder on your computer. Using Excel or a similar program that allows tables/spreadsheets, create an identifying number for your interview that links to the consent form without using the name of your respondent. For example, let’s say that I conduct interviews with US politicians, and the first person I meet with is George W. Bush. I will assign the transcription the number “INT#001” and add it to the signed consent form. [3] The signed consent form goes into a locked filing cabinet, and I never use the name “George W. Bush” again. I take the information from the demographic sheet, open my Excel spreadsheet, and add the relevant information in separate columns for the row INT#001: White, male, Republican. When I interview Bill Clinton as my second interview, I include a second row: INT#002: White, male, Democrat. And so on. The only link to the actual name of the respondent and this information is the fact that the consent form (unavailable to anyone but me) has stamped on it the interview number.

Many students get very nervous before their first interview. Actually, many of us are always nervous before the interview! But do not worry—this is normal, and it does pass. Chances are, you will be pleasantly surprised at how comfortable it begins to feel. These “purposeful conversations” are often a delight for both participants. This is not to say that sometimes things go wrong. I often have my students practice several “bad scenarios” (e.g., a respondent that you cannot get to open up; a respondent who is too talkative and dominates the conversation, steering it away from the topics you are interested in; emotions that completely take over; or shocking disclosures you are ill-prepared to handle), but most of the time, things go quite well. Be prepared for the unexpected, but know that the reason interviews are so popular as a technique of data collection is that they are usually richly rewarding for both participants.

One thing that I stress to my methods students and remind myself about is that interviews are still conversations between people. If there’s something you might feel uncomfortable asking someone about in a “normal” conversation, you will likely also feel a bit of discomfort asking it in an interview. Maybe more importantly, your respondent may feel uncomfortable. Social research—especially about inequality—can be uncomfortable. And it’s easy to slip into an abstract, intellectualized, or removed perspective as an interviewer. This is one reason trying out interview questions is important. Another is that sometimes the question sounds good in your head but doesn’t work as well out loud in practice. I learned this the hard way when a respondent asked me how I would answer the question I had just posed, and I realized that not only did I not really know how I would answer it, but I also wasn’t quite as sure I knew what I was asking as I had thought.

—Elizabeth M. Lee, Associate Professor of Sociology at Saint Joseph’s University, author of Class and Campus Life , and co-author of Geographies of Campus Inequality

How Many Interviews?

Your research design has included a targeted number of interviews and a recruitment plan (see chapter 5). Follow your plan, but remember that “ saturation ” is your goal. You interview as many people as you can until you reach a point at which you are no longer surprised by what they tell you. This means not that no one after your first twenty interviews will have surprising, interesting stories to tell you but rather that the picture you are forming about the phenomenon of interest to you from a research perspective has come into focus, and none of the interviews are substantially refocusing that picture. That is when you should stop collecting interviews. Note that to know when you have reached this, you will need to read your transcripts as you go. More about this in chapters 18 and 19.

Your Final Product: The Ideal Interview Transcript

A good interview transcript will demonstrate a subtly controlled conversation by the skillful interviewer. In general, you want to see replies that are about one paragraph long, not short sentences and not running on for several pages. Although it is sometimes necessary to follow respondents down tangents, it is also often necessary to pull them back to the questions that form the basis of your research study. This is not really a free conversation, although it may feel like that to the person you are interviewing.

Final Tips from an Interview Master

Annette Lareau is arguably one of the masters of the trade. In Listening to People , she provides several guidelines for good interviews and then offers a detailed example of an interview gone wrong and how it could be addressed (please see the “Further Readings” at the end of this chapter). Here is an abbreviated version of her set of guidelines: (1) interview respondents who are experts on the subjects of most interest to you (as a corollary, don’t ask people about things they don’t know); (2) listen carefully and talk as little as possible; (3) keep in mind what you want to know and why you want to know it; (4) be a proactive interviewer (subtly guide the conversation); (5) assure respondents that there aren’t any right or wrong answers; (6) use the respondent’s own words to probe further (this both allows you to accurately identify what you heard and pushes the respondent to explain further); (7) reuse effective probes (don’t reinvent the wheel as you go—if repeating the words back works, do it again and again); (8) focus on learning the subjective meanings that events or experiences have for a respondent; (9) don’t be afraid to ask a question that draws on your own knowledge (unlike trial lawyers who are trained never to ask a question for which they don’t already know the answer, sometimes it’s worth it to ask risky questions based on your hypotheses or just plain hunches); (10) keep thinking while you are listening (so difficult…and important); (11) return to a theme raised by a respondent if you want further information; (12) be mindful of power inequalities (and never ever coerce a respondent to continue the interview if they want out); (13) take control with overly talkative respondents; (14) expect overly succinct responses, and develop strategies for probing further; (15) balance digging deep and moving on; (16) develop a plan to deflect questions (e.g., let them know you are happy to answer any questions at the end of the interview, but you don’t want to take time away from them now); and at the end, (17) check to see whether you have asked all your questions. You don’t always have to ask everyone the same set of questions, but if there is a big area you have forgotten to cover, now is the time to recover ( Lareau 2021:93–103 ).

Sample: Demographic Questionnaire

ASA Taskforce on First-Generation and Working-Class Persons in Sociology – Class Effects on Career Success

Supplementary Demographic Questionnaire

Thank you for your participation in this interview project. We would like to collect a few pieces of key demographic information from you to supplement our analyses. Your answers to these questions will be kept confidential and stored by ID number. All of your responses here are entirely voluntary!

What best captures your race/ethnicity? (please check any/all that apply)

• White (Non Hispanic/Latina/o/x)
• Black or African American
• Hispanic, Latino/a/x of Spanish
• Asian or Asian American
• American Indian or Alaska Native
• Middle Eastern or North African
• Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander
• Other : (Please write in: ________________)

What is your current position?

• Grad Student
• Full Professor

Please check any and all of the following that apply to you:

• I identify as a working-class academic
• I was the first in my family to graduate from college
• I grew up poor

What best reflects your gender?

• Transgender female/Transgender woman
• Transgender male/Transgender man
• Gender queer/ Gender nonconforming

Anything else you would like us to know about you?

Example: Interview Guide

In this example, follow-up prompts are italicized.  Note the sequence of questions.  That second question often elicits an entire life history , answering several later questions in advance.

Introduction Script/Question

Thank you for participating in our survey of ASA members who identify as first-generation or working-class.  As you may have heard, ASA has sponsored a taskforce on first-generation and working-class persons in sociology and we are interested in hearing from those who so identify.  Your participation in this interview will help advance our knowledge in this area.

• The first thing we would like to as you is why you have volunteered to be part of this study? What does it mean to you be first-gen or working class?  Why were you willing to be interviewed?
• How did you decide to become a sociologist?
• Can you tell me a little bit about where you grew up? ( prompts: what did your parent(s) do for a living?  What kind of high school did you attend?)
• Has this identity been salient to your experience? (how? How much?)
• How welcoming was your grad program? Your first academic employer?
• Why did you decide to pursue sociology at the graduate level?
• Did you experience culture shock in college? In graduate school?
• Has your FGWC status shaped how you’ve thought about where you went to school? debt? etc?
• Were you mentored? How did this work (not work)?  How might it?
• What did you consider when deciding where to go to grad school? Where to apply for your first position?
• What, to you, is a mark of career success? Have you achieved that success?  What has helped or hindered your pursuit of success?
• Do you think sociology, as a field, cares about prestige?
• Let’s talk a little bit about intersectionality. How does being first-gen/working class work alongside other identities that are important to you?
• What do your friends and family think about your career? Have you had any difficulty relating to family members or past friends since becoming highly educated?
• Do you have any debt from college/grad school? Are you concerned about this?  Could you explain more about how you paid for college/grad school?  (here, include assistance from family, fellowships, scholarships, etc.)
• (You’ve mentioned issues or obstacles you had because of your background.) What could have helped?  Or, who or what did? Can you think of fortuitous moments in your career?
• Do you have any regrets about the path you took?
• Is there anything else you would like to add? Anything that the Taskforce should take note of, that we did not ask you about here?

Further Readings

Britten, Nicky. 1995. “Qualitative Interviews in Medical Research.” BMJ: British Medical Journal 31(6999):251–253. A good basic overview of interviewing particularly useful for students of public health and medical research generally.

Corbin, Juliet, and Janice M. Morse. 2003. “The Unstructured Interactive Interview: Issues of Reciprocity and Risks When Dealing with Sensitive Topics.” Qualitative Inquiry 9(3):335–354. Weighs the potential benefits and harms of conducting interviews on topics that may cause emotional distress. Argues that the researcher’s skills and code of ethics should ensure that the interviewing process provides more of a benefit to both participant and researcher than a harm to the former.

Gerson, Kathleen, and Sarah Damaske. 2020. The Science and Art of Interviewing . New York: Oxford University Press. A useful guidebook/textbook for both undergraduates and graduate students, written by sociologists.

Kvale, Steiner. 2007. Doing Interviews . London: SAGE. An easy-to-follow guide to conducting and analyzing interviews by psychologists.

Lamont, Michèle, and Ann Swidler. 2014. “Methodological Pluralism and the Possibilities and Limits of Interviewing.” Qualitative Sociology 37(2):153–171. Written as a response to various debates surrounding the relative value of interview-based studies and ethnographic studies defending the particular strengths of interviewing. This is a must-read article for anyone seriously engaging in qualitative research!

Pugh, Allison J. 2013. “What Good Are Interviews for Thinking about Culture? Demystifying Interpretive Analysis.” American Journal of Cultural Sociology 1(1):42–68. Another defense of interviewing written against those who champion ethnographic methods as superior, particularly in the area of studying culture. A classic.

Rapley, Timothy John. 2001. “The ‘Artfulness’ of Open-Ended Interviewing: Some considerations in analyzing interviews.” Qualitative Research 1(3):303–323. Argues for the importance of “local context” of data production (the relationship built between interviewer and interviewee, for example) in properly analyzing interview data.

Weiss, Robert S. 1995. Learning from Strangers: The Art and Method of Qualitative Interview Studies . New York: Simon and Schuster. A classic and well-regarded textbook on interviewing. Because Weiss has extensive experience conducting surveys, he contrasts the qualitative interview with the survey questionnaire well; particularly useful for those trained in the latter.

• I say “normally” because how people understand their various identities can itself be an expansive topic of inquiry. Here, I am merely talking about collecting otherwise unexamined demographic data, similar to how we ask people to check boxes on surveys. ↵
• Again, this applies to “semistructured in-depth interviewing.” When conducting standardized questionnaires, you will want to ask each question exactly as written, without deviations! ↵
• I always include “INT” in the number because I sometimes have other kinds of data with their own numbering: FG#001 would mean the first focus group, for example. I also always include three-digit spaces, as this allows for up to 999 interviews (or, more realistically, allows for me to interview up to one hundred persons without having to reset my numbering system). ↵

A method of data collection in which the researcher asks the participant questions; the answers to these questions are often recorded and transcribed verbatim. There are many different kinds of interviews - see also semistructured interview , structured interview , and unstructured interview .

A document listing key questions and question areas for use during an interview.  It is used most often for semi-structured interviews.  A good interview guide may have no more than ten primary questions for two hours of interviewing, but these ten questions will be supplemented by probes and relevant follow-ups throughout the interview.  Most IRBs require the inclusion of the interview guide in applications for review.  See also interview and  semi-structured interview .

A data-collection method that relies on casual, conversational, and informal interviewing.  Despite its apparent conversational nature, the researcher usually has a set of particular questions or question areas in mind but allows the interview to unfold spontaneously.  This is a common data-collection technique among ethnographers.  Compare to the semi-structured or in-depth interview .

A form of interview that follows a standard guide of questions asked, although the order of the questions may change to match the particular needs of each individual interview subject, and probing “follow-up” questions are often added during the course of the interview.  The semi-structured interview is the primary form of interviewing used by qualitative researchers in the social sciences.  It is sometimes referred to as an “in-depth” interview.  See also interview and  interview guide .

The cluster of data-collection tools and techniques that involve observing interactions between people, the behaviors, and practices of individuals (sometimes in contrast to what they say about how they act and behave), and cultures in context.  Observational methods are the key tools employed by ethnographers and Grounded Theory .

Follow-up questions used in a semi-structured interview  to elicit further elaboration.  Suggested prompts can be included in the interview guide  to be used/deployed depending on how the initial question was answered or if the topic of the prompt does not emerge spontaneously.

A form of interview that follows a strict set of questions, asked in a particular order, for all interview subjects.  The questions are also the kind that elicits short answers, and the data is more “informative” than probing.  This is often used in mixed-methods studies, accompanying a survey instrument.  Because there is no room for nuance or the exploration of meaning in structured interviews, qualitative researchers tend to employ semi-structured interviews instead.  See also interview.

The point at which you can conclude data collection because every person you are interviewing, the interaction you are observing, or content you are analyzing merely confirms what you have already noted.  Achieving saturation is often used as the justification for the final sample size.

An interview variant in which a person’s life story is elicited in a narrative form.  Turning points and key themes are established by the researcher and used as data points for further analysis.

Introduction to Qualitative Research Methods Copyright © 2023 by Allison Hurst is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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In This Article Expand or collapse the "in this article" section Interview Methodology

Introduction, general overviews.

• Interview Styles
• Focused Interviews and Focus Groups
• Sensitive Topics
• Recording the Data
• Transcribing Interviews
• Coding and Analysis of Interview Data
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Interview Methodology by Heather Hamill LAST REVIEWED: 29 April 2019 LAST MODIFIED: 27 March 2014 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199756384-0105

Interview methodology is perhaps the oldest of all the social science methodologies. Asking interview participants a series of informal questions to obtain knowledge has been a common practice among anthropologists and sociologists since the inception of their disciplines. Within sociology, the early-20th-century urban ethnographers of the Chicago School did much to prompt interest in the method. In essence, interviewing is a method of eliciting information. It is a “conversation between people in which one person has the role of the researcher” ( Arksey and Knight 1999 , cited under General Overviews ; p. 2). Interviews can be carried out face to face, over the telephone and Internet, or in a group setting. The interview can vary from a spontaneous conversation to a highly structured, closed interview style associated with social survey research. Semistructured or open-ended interviews are commonly used in qualitative research. They are often aided by an interview guide, schedule, or aide memoire that contains topics, themes, or issues to be covered during the course of the interview rather than a sequence of standardized questions. The intention is that the interviewer remains flexible and responsive throughout the interview so that the sequence of questions can change, their content can evolve, and the interviewer can probe more deeply into initial responses to gain a more detailed or “in-depth” answer to the question. Interviews may also vary considerably in length. Thus the elicitation skills of the interviewer have a strong effect on the quality and richness of the interview data. Interview data is often recorded and then transcribed to produce text that can be analyzed using qualitative and quantitative methods of data analysis. In general, the overall sample size of an interview study is relatively small because of the amount of data that is generated in great depth and detail from interviewing. Thus, when thinking about who to interview and how many interviews to carry out, a non-probabilistic sampling strategy is generally most appropriate, and while empirical generalizations cannot be made, theory can be generated from this kind of data. Interview methodology is particularly useful for researchers who take a phenomenological approach. That is, they are concerned with the way in which individuals interpret and assign meaning to their social world. It is also commonly used in more open-ended inductive research whereby the researcher observes specific patterns within the interview data, formulates hypotheses to be explored with additional data, and finally develops theory.

Although sociologists had been carrying out interviewed-based research for some time, it was the work of Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss (see Glaser and Strauss 1967 ) that pioneered the integration of qualitative interviews into their field studies and subsequently developed the grounded theory approach to qualitative data analysis. There are a large number of very high quality ethnographic monographs that contain detailed accounts of how researchers negotiated access to research groups and individuals, the relationship between researcher and respondent, ethical concerns, what questions were asked and how they were framed, and the general highs and lows of interviewing. First published in 1943, Whyte 1993 is supremely well written and remains a classic ethnography, and the appendix contains rich and relevant details as to how the author elicited information from his respondents. Spradley 1979 was among the first to systematically outline interviewing as a distinct methodology, and this was followed by a plethora of methodology textbooks, such as Arksey and Knight 1999 , Patton 2002 , Hammersley and Atkinson 2007 (cited under Interview Styles ), and Kvale and Brinkmann 2009 , that all provide very detailed guidance on how to design an interview-based piece of research and how to best elicit information by interviewing respondents. Fielding’s edited four-volume Interviewing II ( Fielding 2009 ) and Gubrium, et al. 2012 both provide comprehensive overviews of the method.

Arksey, Hilary, and Peter Knight. 1999. Interviewing for social scientists: An introductory resource with examples . London: SAGE.

This practical guide to interviewing covers a wide range of issues such as theories of interviewing, research design, and application and interpretation of interview data. Aimed at undergraduate and graduate students, it mainly focuses on interviewing within the context of small-scale studies with tight time and resource constraints.

Fielding, Nigel G., ed. 2009. Interviewing II . London: SAGE.

A four-volume collection of essays of which the wide-ranging contributions comprehensively cover all the theoretical and practical aspects of interviewing methodology.

Glaser, Barney G., and Anselm L. Strauss. 1967. The discovery of grounded theory: Strategies for qualitative research . Chicago: Aldine.

The principles of grounded theory were first articulated in this book. The authors contrast grounded theories derived directly from the data with theories derived from a deductive approach.

Gubrium, Jaber F., James A. Holstein, Amir B. Marvasti, and Karyn D. McKinney, eds. 2012. The SAGE handbook of interview research: The complexity of the craft . 2d ed. Thousand Oaks, CA, and London: SAGE.

A comprehensive guide to interviewing, this second edition emphasizes the dynamic, interactional, and reflexive aspects of the research interview.

Kvale, Steinar, and Svend Brinkmann. 2009. InterViews: Learning the craft of qualitative research interviewing . 2d ed. Los Angeles and London: SAGE.

An easy-to-read guide to interviewing. The authors propose that interviewing is a craft rather than just a method. The book emphasizes learning from “best practice,” and there are numerous examples and learning exercises to help facilitate that goal.

Patton, Michael Q. 2002. Qualitative research and evaluation methods . 3d ed. Thousand Oaks, CA, and London: SAGE.

In chapter 7, Patton provides a comprehensive guide to qualitative interviewing. This chapter highlights the variations in qualitative interviews and the interview guides or schedules that can be used. It provides a very useful guide as to how to formulate and ask questions and offers practical tips about recording and transcribing interviews. The chapter also covers focus groups, group interviews, ethics, and the relationship between researcher and interview participants.

Spradley, James P. 1979. The ethnographic interview . New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

A guide to ethnography informed by symbolic interactionism. Chapters 1 to 5 remain a very relevant and useful guide to interviewing.

Whyte, William Foote. 1993. Street corner society: The social structure of an Italian slum . 4th ed. Chicago and London: Univ. of Chicago Press.

DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226922669.001.0001

The appendix describes in great detail how Whyte carried out his ethnographic research. He writes about how he had to learn not only when it was appropriate to ask questions, but also how to ask those questions—and that, once he was established in the neighborhood, much of his data was gathered during casual conversations.

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Chapter 10: Qualitative Data Collection & Analysis Methods

10.1 Interview Research

Interviewing is a qualitative research technique and a valuable skill. Interviews are used by market researchers to learn how to sell their products; journalists use interviews to get information from a whole host of people, from VIPs to random people on the street. From the social scientific perspective, interviews are a method of data collection that involves two or more people exchanging information through a series of questions and answers. The questions are designed by a researcher to elicit information from interview participant(s) on a specific topic or set of topics. Typically interviews involve an in-person meeting between two people, an interviewer and an interviewee. But as you will discover in this chapter, interviews need not be limited to two people, nor must they occur in person.

Research Methods for the Social Sciences: An Introduction Copyright © 2020 by Valerie Sheppard is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Interviews in the social sciences

Vol: 2 (2005) > Issue: 1 (January)

Primer | DOI: 10.1038/s43586-022-00150-6

• Department of Methodology, London School of Economics, London, UK

In-depth interviews are a versatile form of qualitative data collection used by researchers across the social sciences. They allow individuals to explain, in their own words, how they understand and interpret the world around them. Interviews

In-depth interviews are a versatile form of qualitative data collection used by researchers across the social sciences. They allow individuals to explain, in their own words, how they understand and interpret the world around them. Interviews represent a deceptively familiar social encounter in which people interact by asking and answering questions. They are, however, a very particular type of conversation, guided by the researcher and used for specific ends. This dynamic introduces a range of methodological, analytical and ethical challenges, for novice researchers in particular. In this Primer, we focus on the stages and challenges of designing and conducting an interview project and analysing data from it, as well as strategies to overcome such challenges.

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Fig. 1 : How to develop a topic guide arc.

Fig. 2 : The iterative nature of analysing interview data.

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Citations (39)

Associated articles.

• Brinkmann, S. & Kvale, S. Doing Interviews Vol. 2 (Sage, 2018). This book offers a good general introduction to the practice and design of interview-based studies.
• Silverman, D. A Very Short, Fairly Interesting And Reasonably Cheap Book About Qualitative Research (Sage, 2017).
• Yin, R. K. Case Study Research And Applications: Design And Methods (Sage, 2018).
• Small, M. L. How many cases do I need?’ On science and the logic of case selection in field-based research. Ethnography 10 , 5–38 (2009). This article convincingly demonstrates how the logic of qualitative research differs from quantitative research and its goal of representativeness.
• Gerson, K. & Damaske, S. The Science and Art of Interviewing (Oxford Univ. Press, 2020).
• Glaser, B. G. & Strauss, A. L. The Discovery Of Grounded Theory: Strategies For Qualitative Research (Aldine, 1967).
• Braun, V. & Clarke, V. To saturate or not to saturate? Questioning data saturation as a useful concept for thematic analysis and sample-size rationales. Qual. Res. Sport Exerc. Health 13 , 201–216 (2021).
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Interviews in the social sciences

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Qualitative Interviewing

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Qualitative interviewing is a foundational method in qualitative research and is widely used in health research and the social sciences. Both qualitative semi-structured and in-depth unstructured interviews use verbal communication, mostly in face-to-face interactions, to collect data about the attitudes, beliefs, and experiences of participants. Interviews are an accessible, often affordable, and effective method to understand the socially situated world of research participants. The approach is typically informed by an interpretive framework where the data collected is not viewed as evidence of the truth or reality of a situation or experience but rather a context-bound subjective insight from the participants. The researcher needs to be open to new insights and to privilege the participant’s experience in data collection. The data from qualitative interviews is not generalizable, but its exploratory nature permits the collection of rich data which can answer questions about which little is already known. This chapter introduces the reader to qualitative interviewing, the range of traditions within which interviewing is utilized as a method, and highlights the advantages and some of the challenges and misconceptions in its application. The chapter also provides practical guidance on planning and conducting interview studies. Three case examples are presented to highlight the benefits and risks in the use of interviewing with different participants, providing situated insights as well as advice about how to go about learning to interview if you are a novice.

• In-depth interviews
• Semi-structured interviews
• Qualitative interviewing
• Interview study design
• Interview methodology
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Nathan, S., Newman, C., Lancaster, K. (2019). Qualitative Interviewing. In: Liamputtong, P. (eds) Handbook of Research Methods in Health Social Sciences. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-5251-4_77

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9.2 Qualitative interviews

Learning objectives.

• Define interviews from the social scientific perspective
• Identify when it is appropriate to employ interviews as a data-collection strategy
• Identify the primary aim of in-depth interviews
• Describe what makes qualitative interview techniques unique
• Define the term interview guide and describe how to construct an interview guide
• Outline the guidelines for constructing good qualitative interview questions
• Describe how writing field notes and journaling function in qualitative research
• Identify the strengths and weaknesses of interviews

Knowing how to create and conduct a good interview is an essential skill. Interviews are used by market researchers to learn how to sell their products, and journalists use interviews to get information from a whole host of people from VIPs to random people on the street. Police use interviews to investigate crimes.

In social science,  interviews are a method of data collection that involves two or more people exchanging information through a series of questions and answers. The questions are designed by the researcher to elicit information from interview participants on a specific topic or set of topics. These topics are informed by the research questions. Typically, interviews involve an in-person meeting between two people—an interviewer and an interviewee — but interviews need not be limited to two people, nor must they occur in-person.

The question of when to conduct an interview might be on your mind. Interviews are an excellent way to gather detailed information. They also have an advantage over surveys—they can change as you learn more information. In a survey, you cannot change what questions you ask if a participant’s response sparks some follow-up question in your mind. All participants must get the same questions. The questions you decided to put on your survey during the design stage determine what data you get. In an interview, however, you can follow up on new and unexpected topics that emerge during the conversation. Trusting in emergence and learning from participants are hallmarks of qualitative research. In this way, interviews are a useful method to use when you want to know the story behind the responses you might receive in a written survey.

Interviews are also useful when the topic you are studying is rather complex, requires lengthy explanation, or needs a dialogue between two people to thoroughly investigate. Also, if people will describe the process by which a phenomenon occurs, like how a person makes a decision, then interviews may be the best method for you. For example, you could use interviews to gather data about how people reach the decision not to have children and how others in their lives have responded to that decision. To understand these “how’s” you would need to have some back-and-forth dialogue with respondents. When they begin to tell you their story, inevitably new questions that hadn’t occurred to you from prior interviews would come up because each person’s story is unique. Also, because the process of choosing not to have children is complex for many people, describing that process by responding to closed-ended questions on a survey wouldn’t work particularly well.

Interview research is especially useful when:

• You wish to gather very detailed information
• You anticipate wanting to ask respondents follow-up questions based on their responses
• You plan to ask questions that require lengthy explanation
• You are studying a complex or potentially confusing topic to respondents
• You are studying processes, such as how people make decisions

Qualitative interviews are sometimes called intensive or in-depth interviews. These interviews are semi-structured ; the researcher has a particular topic about which she would like to hear from the respondent, but questions are open-ended and may not be asked in exactly the same way or in exactly the same order to each and every respondent. For in-depth interviews , the primary aim is to hear from respondents about what they think is important about the topic at hand and to hear it in their own words. In this section, we’ll take a look at how to conduct qualitative interviews, analyze interview data, and identify some of the strengths and weaknesses of this method.

Constructing an interview guide

Qualitative interviews might feel more like a conversation than an interview to respondents, but the researcher is in fact usually guiding the conversation with the goal in mind of gathering specific information from a respondent. Qualitative interviews use open-ended questions, which are questions that a researcher poses but does not provide answer options for. Open-ended questions are more demanding of participants than closed-ended questions because they require participants to come up with their own words, phrases, or sentences to respond.

In a qualitative interview, the researcher usually develops an interview guide in advance to refer to during the interview (or memorizes in advance of the interview). An interview guide is a list of questions or topics that the interviewer hopes to cover during the course of an interview. It is called a guide because it is simply that—it is used to guide the interviewer, but it is not set in stone. Think of an interview guide like an agenda for the day or a to-do list—both probably contain all the items you hope to check off or accomplish, though it probably won’t be the end of the world if you don’t accomplish everything on the list or if you don’t accomplish it in the exact order that you have it written down. Perhaps new events will come up that cause you to rearrange your schedule just a bit, or perhaps you simply won’t get to everything on the list.

Interview guides should outline issues that a researcher feels are likely to be important. Because participants are asked to provide answers in their own words and to raise points they believe are important, each interview is likely to flow a little differently. While the opening question in an in-depth interview may be the same across all interviews, from that point on, what the participant says will shape how the interview proceeds. Sometimes participants answer a question on the interview guide before it is asked. When the interviewer comes to that question later on in the interview, it’s a good idea to acknowledge that they already addressed part of this question and ask them if they have anything to add to their response.  All of this uncertainty can make in-depth interviewing exciting and rather challenging. It takes a skilled interviewer to be able to ask questions; listen to respondents; and pick up on cues about when to follow up, when to move on, and when to simply let the participant speak without guidance or interruption.

As we’ve discussed, interview guides can list topics or questions. The specific format of an interview guide might depend on your style, experience, and comfort level as an interviewer or with your topic. Figure 9.1 provides an example of an interview guide for a study of how young people experience workplace sexual harassment. The guide is topic-based, rather than a list of specific questions. The ordering of the topics is important, though how each comes up during the interview may vary.

For interview guides that use questions, there can also be specific words or phrases for follow-up in case the participant does not mention those topics in their responses. These probes , as well as the questions are written out in the interview guide, but may not always be used. Figure 9.2 provides an example of an interview guide that uses questions rather than topics.

As you might have guessed, interview guides do not appear out of thin air. They are the result of thoughtful and careful work on the part of a researcher. As you can see in both of the preceding guides, the topics and questions have been organized thematically and in the order in which they are likely to proceed (though keep in mind that the flow of a qualitative interview is in part determined by what a respondent has to say). Sometimes qualitative interviewers may create two versions of the interview guide: one version contains a very brief outline of the interview, perhaps with just topic headings, and another version contains detailed questions underneath each topic heading. In this case, the researcher might use the very detailed guide to prepare and practice in advance of actually conducting interviews and then just bring the brief outline to the interview. Bringing an outline, as opposed to a very long list of detailed questions, to an interview encourages the researcher to actually listen to what a participant is saying. An overly detailed interview guide can be difficult to navigate during an interview and could give respondents the mis-impression the interviewer is more interested in the questions than in the participant’s answers.

Constructing an interview guide often begins with brainstorming. There are no rules at the brainstorming stage—simply list all the topics and questions that come to mind when you think about your research question. Once you’ve got a pretty good list, you can begin to pare it down by cutting questions and topics that seem redundant and group similar questions and topics together. If you haven’t done so yet, you may also want to come up with question and topic headings for your grouped categories. You should also consult the scholarly literature to find out what kinds of questions other interviewers have asked in studies of similar topics and what theory indicates might be important. As with quantitative survey research, it is best not to place very sensitive or potentially controversial questions at the very beginning of your qualitative interview guide. You need to give participants the opportunity to warm up to the interview and to feel comfortable talking with you. Finally, get some feedback on your interview guide. Ask your friends, other researchers, and your professors for some guidance and suggestions once you’ve come up with what you think is a strong guide. Chances are they’ll catch a few things you hadn’t noticed. Once you begin your interviews, your participants may also suggest revisions or improvements.

In terms of the specific questions you include in your guide, there are a few guidelines worth noting. First, avoid questions that can be answered with a simple yes or no. Try to rephrase your questions in a way that invites longer responses from your interviewees. If you choose to include yes or no questions, be sure to include follow-up questions. Remember, one of the benefits of qualitative interviews is that you can ask participants for more information—be sure to do so. While it is a good idea to ask follow-up questions, try to avoid asking “why” as your follow-up question, as this particular question can come off as confrontational, even if that is not your intent. Often people won’t know how to respond to “why,” perhaps because they don’t even know why themselves. Instead of asking “why,” you say something like, “Could you tell me a little more about that?” This allows participants to explain themselves further without feeling that they’re being doubted or questioned in a hostile way.

Also, try to avoid phrasing your questions in a leading way. For example, rather than asking, “Don’t you think most people who don’t want to have children are selfish?” you could ask, “What comes to mind for you when you hear someone doesn’t want to have children?” Finally, remember to keep most, if not all, of your questions open-ended. The key to a successful qualitative interview is giving participants the opportunity to share information in their own words and in their own way. Documenting the decisions made along the way regarding which questions are used, thrown out, or revised can help a researcher remember the thought process behind the interview guide when she is analyzing the data. Additionally, it promotes the rigor of the qualitative project as a whole, ensuring the researcher is proceeding in a reflective and deliberate manner that can be checked by others reviewing her study.

Recording qualitative data

Even after the interview guide is constructed, the interviewer is not yet ready to begin conducting interviews. The researcher has to decide how to collect and maintain the information that is provided by participants. Researchers keep field notes or written recordings produced by the researcher during the data collection process.  Field notes can be taken before, during, or after interviews. Field notes help researchers document what they observe, and in so doing, they form the first step of data analysis. Field notes may contain many things—observations of body language or environment, reflections on whether interview questions are working well, and connections between ideas that participants share.

Unfortunately, even the most diligent researcher cannot write down everything that is seen or heard during an interview. In particular, it is difficult for a researcher to be truly present and observant if she is also writing down everything the participant is saying. For this reason, it is quite common for interviewers to create audio recordings of the interviews they conduct. Recording interviews allows the researcher to focus on the interaction with the interview participant.

Of course, not all participants will feel comfortable being recorded and sometimes even the interviewer may feel that the subject is so sensitive that recording would be inappropriate. If this is the case, it is up to the researcher to balance excellent note-taking with exceptional question-asking and even better listening.

Whether you will be recording your interviews or not (and especially if not), practicing the interview in advance is crucial. Ideally, you’ll find a friend or two willing to participate in a couple of trial runs with you. Even better, find a friend or two who are similar in at least some ways to your sample. They can give you the best feedback on your questions and your interview demeanor.

Another issue interviewers face is documenting the decisions made during the data collection process. Qualitative research is open to new ideas that emerge through the data collection process. For example, a participant might suggest a new concept you hadn’t thought of before or define a concept in a new way. This may lead you to create new questions or ask questions in a different way to future participants. These processes should be documented in a process called journaling or memoing. Journal entries are notes to yourself about reflections or methodological decisions that emerge during the data collection process. Documenting these are important, as you’d be surprised how quickly you can forget what happened. Journaling makes sure that when it comes time to analyze your data, you remember how, when, and why certain changes were made. The discipline of journaling in qualitative research helps to ensure the rigor of the research process—that is its trustworthiness and authenticity which we will discuss later in this chapter.

Strengths and weaknesses of qualitative interviews

As we’ve mentioned in this section, qualitative interviews are an excellent way to gather detailed information. Any topic can be explored in much more depth with interviews than with almost any other method. Not only are participants given the opportunity to elaborate in a way that is not possible with other methods such as survey research, but they also are able share information with researchers in their own words and from their own perspectives. Whereas, quantitative research asks participants to fit their perspectives into the limited response options provided by the researcher. And because qualitative interviews are designed to elicit detailed information, they are especially useful when a researcher’s aim is to study social processes or the “how” of various phenomena. Yet another, and sometimes overlooked, benefit of in-person qualitative interviews is that researchers can make observations beyond those that a respondent is orally reporting. A respondent’s body language, and even their choice of time and location for the interview, might provide a researcher with useful data.

Of course, all these benefits come with some drawbacks. As with quantitative survey research, qualitative interviews rely on respondents’ ability to accurately and honestly recall specific details about their lives, circumstances, thoughts, opinions, or behaviors. Further, as you may have already guessed, qualitative interviewing is time-intensive and can be quite expensive. Creating an interview guide, identifying a sample, and conducting interviews are just the beginning. Writing out what was said in interviews and analyzing the qualitative interview data are time consuming processes. Keep in mind you are also asking for more of participants’ time than if you’d simply mailed them a questionnaire containing closed-ended questions. Conducting qualitative interviews is not only labor-intensive but can also be emotionally taxing. Seeing and hearing the impact that social problems have on respondents is difficult. Researchers embarking on a qualitative interview project should keep in mind their own abilities to receive stories that may be difficult to hear.

Key Takeaways

• Understanding how to design and conduct interview research is a useful skill to have.
• In a social scientific interview, two or more people exchange information through a series of questions and answers.
• Interview research is often used when detailed information is required and when a researcher wishes to examine processes.
• In-depth interviews are semi-structured interviews where the researcher has topics and questions in mind to ask, but questions are open-ended and flow according to how the participant responds to each.
• Interview guides can vary in format but should contain some outline of the topics you hope to cover during the course of an interview.
• Qualitative interviews allow respondents to share information in their own words and are useful for gathering detailed information and understanding social processes.
• Field notes and journaling are ways to document thoughts and decisions about the research process
• Drawbacks of qualitative interviews include reliance on respondents’ accuracy and their intensity in terms of time, expense, and possible emotional strain.
• Field notes- written notes produced by the researcher during the data collection process
• In-depth interviews- interviews in which researchers hear from respondents about what they think is important about the topic at hand in the respondent’s own words
• Interviews- a method of data collection that involves two or more people exchanging information through a series of questions and answers
• Interview guide- a list of questions or topics that the interviewer hopes to cover during the course of an interview
• Journaling- making notes of emerging issues and changes during the research process
• Semi-structured interviews- questions are open ended and may not be asked in exactly the same way or in exactly the same order to each and every respondent

Image attributions

interview restaurant a pair by alda2 CC-0

questions by geralt CC-0

Figure 9.1 is copied from Blackstone, A. (2012) Principles of sociological inquiry: Qualitative and quantitative methods. Saylor Foundation. Retrieved from: https://saylordotorg.github.io/text_principles-of-sociological-inquiry-qualitative-and-quantitative-methods/ Shared under CC-BY-NC-SA 3.0 License

writing by StockSnap CC-0

Foundations of Social Work Research Copyright © 2020 by Rebecca L. Mauldin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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How to Conduct a Sociology Research Interview

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Interviewing is a method of qualitative research (used by sociologists and other social scientists) in which the researcher asks open-ended questions orally. This research method is useful for collecting data that reveal the values, perspectives, experiences and worldviews of the population under study. Interviewing is often paired with other research methods including survey research , focus groups , and ethnographic observation .

Key Takeaways: Research Interviews in Sociology

• Sociologists sometimes conduct in-depth interviews, which involve asking open-ended questions.
• One advantage of in-depth interviews is that they are flexible, and the researcher can ask follow-up questions to the respondent’s answers.
• The steps necessary for conducting an in-depth interview include preparing for data collection, conducting the interviews, transcribing and analyzing the data, and disseminating the study results.

Interviews, or in-depth interviews, are different from survey interviews in that they are less structured. In survey interviews, the questionnaires are rigidly structured—the questions must all be asked in the same order, in the same way, and only the pre-defined answer choices can be given. In-depth qualitative interviews, on the other hand, are more flexible.

In an in-depth interview, the interviewer has a general plan of inquiry and may also have a specific set of questions or topics to discuss. However, it is not necessary for the interviewer to stick to predetermined questions, nor is it necessary to ask questions in a particular order. The interviewer must, however, be fully familiar with the subject in order to have an idea of potential questions to ask, and must plan so that things proceed smoothly and naturally. Ideally, the respondent does most of the talking while the interviewer listens, takes notes, and guides the conversation in the direction it needs to go. In such a scenario, the respondent’s answers to the initial questions should shape the subsequent questions. The interviewer needs to be able to listen, think, and talk almost simultaneously.

Steps of the Interviewing Process

Although in-depth interviews are more flexible than survey studies, it is important for researchers to follow particular steps in order to ensure that useful data is collected. Below, we’ll review the steps of preparing for and conducting in-depth interviews, and for using the data.

Determining the Topic

First, it's necessary that the researcher decides on the purpose of the interviews and the topics that should be discussed in order to meet that purpose. Are you interested in a population's experience of a life event, set of circumstances, a place, or their relationships with other people? Are you interested in their identity and how their social surroundings and experiences influence it? It's the researcher's job to identify which questions to ask and topics to bring up to elucidate data that will address the research question.

Planning Interview Logistics

Next, the researcher must plan the interview process. How many people must you interview? What variety of demographic characteristics should they have? Where will you find your participants and how will you recruit them? Where will interviews take place and who will do the interviewing? Are there any ethical considerations that must be accounted for? A researcher must answer these questions and others before conducting interviews.

Conducting Interviews

Now you're ready to conduct your interviews. Meet with your participants and/or assign other researchers to conduct interviews, and work your way through the entire population of research participants. Typically interviews are conducted face-to-face, but they can also be done via telephone or video chat. Each interview should be recorded. Researchers sometimes take notes by hand, but more commonly a digital audio recording device is used.

Transcribing Interview Data

Once you've collected your interview data you must turn it into usable data by transcribing it—creating a written text of the conversations that composed the interview. Some find this to be a cumbersome and time-consuming task. Efficiency can be achieved with voice-recognition software, or by hiring a transcription service. However, many researchers find the process of transcription a useful way to become intimately familiar with the data, and may even begin to see patterns within it during this stage.

Data Analysis

Interview data can be analyzed after it has been transcribed. With in-depth interviews, analysis takes the form of reading through the transcripts to code them for patterns and themes that provide a response to the research question. Sometimes unexpected findings occur, and these findings should not be discounted even though they may not relate to the initial research question.

Validating the Data

Next, depending on the research question and the type of answer sought, a researcher may wish to verify the reliability and validity of the information gathered by checking the data against other sources.

Sharing Research Results

Finally, no research is complete until it is reported, whether written, orally presented, or published through other forms of media.

• Social Surveys: Questionnaires, Interviews, and Telephone Polls
• Pilot Study in Research
• Tips on Conducting an Interview
• How to Conduct Interviews for News Stories
• Abstract Writing for Sociology
• Types of Medical School Interviews and What to Expect
• Data Sources For Sociological Research
• The Different Types of Sampling Designs in Sociology
• Definition and Overview of Grounded Theory
• Definition of Idiographic and Nomothetic
• Top Tips for Acing a Teacher Interview
• Teacher Interview Questions and Suggested Answers
• What Is a Research Paper?
• An Overview of Qualitative Research Methods
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Qualitative research method-interviewing and observation

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Department of Pharmacy Practice, Kulliyyah of Pharmacy, International Islamic University Malaysia, Kuantan Campus, Pahang, Malaysia

Buckley and Chiang define research methodology as “a strategy or architectural design by which the researcher maps out an approach to problem-finding or problem-solving.”[ 1 ] According to Crotty, research methodology is a comprehensive strategy ‘that silhouettes our choice and use of specific methods relating them to the anticipated outcomes,[ 2 ] but the choice of research methodology is based upon the type and features of the research problem.[ 3 ] According to Johnson et al . mixed method research is “a class of research where the researcher mixes or combines quantitative and qualitative research techniques, methods, approaches, theories and or language into a single study.[ 4 ] In order to have diverse opinions and views, qualitative findings need to be supplemented with quantitative results.[ 5 ] Therefore, these research methodologies are considered to be complementary to each other rather than incompatible to each other.[ 6 ]

Qualitative research methodology is considered to be suitable when the researcher or the investigator either investigates new field of study or intends to ascertain and theorize prominent issues.[ 6 , 7 ] There are many qualitative methods which are developed to have an in depth and extensive understanding of the issues by means of their textual interpretation and the most common types are interviewing and observation.[ 7 ]

Interviewing

This is the most common format of data collection in qualitative research. According to Oakley, qualitative interview is a type of framework in which the practices and standards be not only recorded, but also achieved, challenged and as well as reinforced.[ 8 ] As no research interview lacks structure[ 9 ] most of the qualitative research interviews are either semi-structured, lightly structured or in-depth.[ 9 ] Unstructured interviews are generally suggested in conducting long-term field work and allow respondents to let them express in their own ways and pace, with minimal hold on respondents’ responses.[ 10 ]

Pioneers of ethnography developed the use of unstructured interviews with local key informants that is., by collecting the data through observation and record field notes as well as to involve themselves with study participants. To be precise, unstructured interview resembles a conversation more than an interview and is always thought to be a “controlled conversation,” which is skewed towards the interests of the interviewer.[ 11 ] Non-directive interviews, form of unstructured interviews are aimed to gather in-depth information and usually do not have pre-planned set of questions.[ 11 ] Another type of the unstructured interview is the focused interview in which the interviewer is well aware of the respondent and in times of deviating away from the main issue the interviewer generally refocuses the respondent towards key subject.[ 11 ] Another type of the unstructured interview is an informal, conversational interview, based on unplanned set of questions that are generated instantaneously during the interview.[ 11 ]

In contrast, semi-structured interviews are those in-depth interviews where the respondents have to answer preset open-ended questions and thus are widely employed by different healthcare professionals in their research. Semi-structured, in-depth interviews are utilized extensively as interviewing format possibly with an individual or sometimes even with a group.[ 6 ] These types of interviews are conducted once only, with an individual or with a group and generally cover the duration of 30 min to more than an hour.[ 12 ] Semi-structured interviews are based on semi-structured interview guide, which is a schematic presentation of questions or topics and need to be explored by the interviewer.[ 12 ] To achieve optimum use of interview time, interview guides serve the useful purpose of exploring many respondents more systematically and comprehensively as well as to keep the interview focused on the desired line of action.[ 12 ] The questions in the interview guide comprise of the core question and many associated questions related to the central question, which in turn, improve further through pilot testing of the interview guide.[ 7 ] In order to have the interview data captured more effectively, recording of the interviews is considered an appropriate choice but sometimes a matter of controversy among the researcher and the respondent. Hand written notes during the interview are relatively unreliable, and the researcher might miss some key points. The recording of the interview makes it easier for the researcher to focus on the interview content and the verbal prompts and thus enables the transcriptionist to generate “verbatim transcript” of the interview.

Similarly, in focus groups, invited groups of people are interviewed in a discussion setting in the presence of the session moderator and generally these discussions last for 90 min.[ 7 ] Like every research technique having its own merits and demerits, group discussions have some intrinsic worth of expressing the opinions openly by the participants. On the contrary in these types of discussion settings, limited issues can be focused, and this may lead to the generation of fewer initiatives and suggestions about research topic.

Observation

Observation is a type of qualitative research method which not only included participant's observation, but also covered ethnography and research work in the field. In the observational research design, multiple study sites are involved. Observational data can be integrated as auxiliary or confirmatory research.[ 11 ]

Research can be visualized and perceived as painstaking methodical efforts to examine, investigate as well as restructure the realities, theories and applications. Research methods reflect the approach to tackling the research problem. Depending upon the need, research method could be either an amalgam of both qualitative and quantitative or qualitative or quantitative independently. By adopting qualitative methodology, a prospective researcher is going to fine-tune the pre-conceived notions as well as extrapolate the thought process, analyzing and estimating the issues from an in-depth perspective. This could be carried out by one-to-one interviews or as issue-directed discussions. Observational methods are, sometimes, supplemental means for corroborating research findings.

ReviseSociology

A level sociology revision – education, families, research methods, crime and deviance and more!

Interviews in Social Research: Advantages and Disadvantages

The strengths of unstructured interviews are that they are respondent led, flexible, allow empathy and can be empowering, the limitations are poor reliability due to interviewer characteristics and bias, time, and low representativeness.

Table of Contents

Last Updated on September 11, 2023 by Karl Thompson

An interview involves an interviewer asking questions verbally to a respondent. Interviews involve a more direct interaction between the researcher and the respondent than questionnaires. Interviews can either be conducted face to face, via phone, video link or social media.

This post has primarily been written for students studying the Research Methods aspect of A-level sociology, but it should also be useful for students studying methods for psychology, business studies and maybe other subjects too!

Types of interview

Structured or formal interviews are those in which the interviewer asks the interviewee the same questions in the same way to different respondents. This will typically involve reading out questions from a pre-written and pre-coded structured questionnaire, which forms the interview schedule. The most familiar form of this is with market research, where you may have been stopped on the street with a researcher ticking boxes based on your responses.

Unstructured or Informal interviews (also called discovery interviews) are more like a guided conversation. Here the interviewer has a list of topics they want the respondent to talk about, but the interviewer has complete freedom to vary the specific questions from respondent to respondent, so they can follow whatever lines of enquiry they think are most appropriated, depending on the responses given by each respondent.

Semi-Structured interviews are those in which respondents have a list of questions, but they are free to ask further, differentiated questions based on the responses given. This allows more flexibility that the structured interview yet more structure than the informal interview.

Group interviews – Interviews can be conducted either one to one (individual interviews) or in a a group, in which the interviewer interviews two or more respondents at a time. Group discussions among respondents may lead to deeper insight than just interviewing people along, as respondents ‘encourage’ each other.

Focus groups are a type of group interview in which respondents are asked to discuss certain topics.

Interviews: key terms

The Interview Schedule – A list of questions or topic areas the interviewer wishes to ask or cover in the course of the interview. The more structured the interview, the more rigid the interiew schedule will be. Before conducting an interview it is usual for the reseracher to know something about the topic area and the respondents themselves, and so they will have at least some idea of the questions they are likely to ask: even if they are doing ‘unstructred interviews’ an interviewer will have some kind of interview schedule, even if it is just a list of broad topic areas to discuss, or an opening question.

Transcription of interviews -Transcription is the process of writing down (or typing up) what respondents say in an interview. In order to be able to transcribe effectively interviews will need to be recorded.

The problem of Leading Questions – In Unstructured Interviews, the interviewer should aim to avoid asking leading questions.

The Strengths and Limitations of Unstructured Interviews 

The strengths of unstructured interviews

The key strength of unstructured interviews is good validity , but for this to happen questioning should be as open ended as possible to gain genuine, spontaneous information rather than ‘rehearsed responses’ and questioning needs to be sufficient enough to elicit in-depth answers rather than glib, easy answers.

Respondent led – unstructured interviews are ‘respondent led’ – this is because the researcher listens to what the respondent says and then asks further questions based on what the respondent says. This should allow respondents to express themselves and explain their views more fully than with structured interviews.

Flexibility – the researcher can change his or her mind about what the most important questions are as the interview develops. Unstructured Interviews thus avoid the imposition problem – respondents are less constrained than with structured interviews or questionnaires in which the questions are written in advance by the researcher. This is especially advantageous in group interviews, where interaction between respondents can spark conversations that the interviewer hadn’t thought would of happened in advance, which could then be probed further with an unstructured methodology.

Rapport and empathy – unstructured interviews encourage a good rapport between interviewee and interviewer. Because of their informal nature, like guided conversations, unstructured interviews are more likely to make respondents feel at ease than with the more formal setting of a structured questionnaire or experiment. This should encourage openness, trust and empathy.

Checking understanding – unstructured interviews also allow the interviewer to check understanding. If an interviewee doesn’t understand a question, the interviewer is free to rephrase it, or to ask follow up questions to clarify aspects of answers that were not clear in the first instance.

Unstructured interviews are good for sensitive topics because they are more likely to make respondents feel at ease with the interviewer. They also allow the interviewer to show more sympathy (if required) than with the colder more mechanical quantitative methods.

They are good for finding out why respondents do not do certain things . For example postal surveys asking why people do not claim benefits have very low response rates, but informal interviews are perfect for researching people who may have low literacy skills.

Empowerment for respondents – the researcher and respondents are on a more equal footing than with more quantitative methods. The researcher doesn’t assume they know best. This empowers the respondents. Feminists researchers in particular believe that the unstructured interview can neutralise the hierarchical, exploitative power relations that they believe to be inherent in the more traditional interview structure. They see the traditional interview as a site for the exploitation and subordination of women, with the interviewers potentially creating outcomes against their interviewees’ interests. In traditional interview formats the interviewer directs the questioning and takes ownership of the material; in the feminist (unstructured) interview method the woman would recount her experiences in her own words with the interviewer serving only as a guide to the account.

Practical advantages – there are few practical advantages with this method, but compared to full-blown participant observation, they are a relatively quick method for gaining in-depth data. They are also a good method to combine with overt participant observation in order to get respondents to further explain the meanings behind their actions. So in short, they are impractical, unless you’re in the middle of a year long Participant Observation study (it’s all relative!).

The Limitations of unstructured interviews

The main theoretical disadvantage is the lack of reliability – unstructured Interviews lack reliability because each interview is unique – a variety of different questions are asked and phrased in a variety of different ways to different respondents.

They are also difficult to repeat, because the s uccess of the interview depends on the bond of trust between the researcher and the respondent – another researcher who does not relate to the respondent may thus get different answers. Group interviews are especially difficult to repeat, given that the dynamics of the interview are influenced not just by the values of the researcher, but also by group dynamics. One person can change the dynamic of a group of three or four people enormously.

Validity can be undermined in several ways:

• respondents might prefer to give rational responses rather than fuller emotional ones (it’s harder to talk frankly about emotions with strangers)
• respondents may not reveal their true thoughts and feelings because they do not coincide with their own self-image, so they simply withhold information
• respondents may give answers they think the interviewer wants to hear, in attempt to please them!

We also need to keep in mind that interviews can only tap into what people SAY about their values, beliefs and actions, we don’t actually get to see these in action, like we would do with observational studies such as Participant Observation. This has been a particular problem with self-report studies of criminal behaviour. These have been tested using polygraphs, and follow up studies of school and criminal records and responses found to be lacking in validity, so much so that victim-surveys have become the standard method for measuring crime rather than self-report studies.

Interviewer bias might undermine the validity of unstructured interviews – this is where the values of the researcher interfere with the results. The researcher may give away whether they approve or disapprove of certain responses in their body language or tone of voice (or wording of probing questions) and this in turn might encourage or discourage respondents from being honest.

The characteristics of the interviewer might also bias the results and undermine the validity – how honest the respondent is in the course of an hour long interview might depend on the class, gender, or ethnicity of the interviewer.

Sudman and Bradburn (1974) conducted a review of literature and found that responses varied depending on the relative demographics of the interviewer and respondent. For example white interviewers received more socially acceptable responses from black respondents than they did from white respondents. Similar findings have been found with different ethnicities, age, social class and religion.

Unstructured interviews also lack representativeness – because they are time consuming, it is difficult to get a large enough sample to be representative of large populations.

It is difficult to quantify data , compare answers and find stats and trends because the data gained is qualitative.

Practical disadvantages – unstructured Interviews may take a relatively long time to conduct. Some interviews can take hours. They also need to be taped and transcribed, and in the analysis phase there may be a lot of information that is not directly relevant to one’s research topic that needs to be sifted through.

Interpersonal skills and training – A further practical problem is that some researchers may lack the interpersonal skills required to conduct informal unstructured interviews. Training might need to be more thorough for researchers undertaking unstructured interviews – to avoid the problem of interviewer bias.

Shapiro and Eberhart (1947) showed that interviewers who were more prepared to probe received fuller answers, and both response rate and extensiveness of response are greater for more experienced interviewers.

There are few ethical problems , assuming that informed consent is gained and confidentially ensured. Although having said this, the fact that the researcher is getting more in-depth data, more of an insight into who the person really is, does offer the potential for the information to do more harm to the respondent if it got into the wrong hands (but this in turn depends on the topics discussed and the exact content of the interviews.

Sociological perspectives on interviews

Interviews of any kind are not a preferred method for positivists because there is no guarantee that responses aren’t artefacts of the interview situation, rather than a reflection of underlying social reality.

If interviews must be used, Positivists prefer structured interviews that follow a standardised schedule, with each question asked to each respondent in the same way. Interviewers should be neutral, show no emotion, avoid suggesting replies, and not skip questions.

Fo r Interactionists , interviews are based on mutual participant observation. The context of the interview is intrinsic to understanding responses and no distinction between research interviews and other social interaction is recognised. Data are valid when mutual understanding between interviewer and respondent is agreed.

Interactionists prefer non-standardised interviews because they allow respondents to shape the interview according to their own world view.

Denzin (2009) goes as far as to argue that what positivists might perceive as problems with interviews are not problems, just part of the process and thus as valid as the data collected. Thus issues of self-presentation, the power relations between interviewer and respondent and opportunities for fabrication are all part of the context and part of the valid-reality that we are trying to get to.

Related Posts

For more posts on research methods please see my research methods page.

Examples of studies using interviews – Using Interviews to research education .

Participant Observation  –   A related qualitative research method – detailed class notes on overt and covert participant observation. 

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Recommended further reading: Gilbert and Stoneman (2016) Researching Social Life

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Edited by 2012 DPDF Governing Global Production Research Director Layna Mosley.

Interviews are a frequent and important part of empirical research in political science, but graduate programs rarely offer discipline-specific training in selecting interviewees, conducting interviews, and using the data thus collected. Interview Research in Political Science addresses this vital need, offering hard-won advice for both graduate students and faculty members. The contributors to this book have worked in a variety of field locations and settings and have interviewed a wide array of informants, from government officials to members of rebel movements and victims of wartime violence, from lobbyists and corporate executives to workers and trade unionists.

The authors encourage scholars from all subfields of political science to use interviews in their research, and they provide a set of lessons and tools for doing so. The book addresses how to construct a sample of interviewees; how to collect and report interview data; and how to address ethical considerations and the Institutional Review Board process. Other chapters discuss how to link interview-based evidence with causal claims; how to use proxy interviews or an interpreter to improve access; and how to structure interview questions. A useful appendix contains examples of consent documents, semistructured interview prompts, and interview protocols.

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Many of us avoid discussing politics with someone who holds an opposing viewpoint, assuming the exchange will turn nasty or awkward. But having those conversations is far more gratifying than we expect, a new research paper suggests. 

Across a series of experiments involving hundreds of U.S. adults, a team of scientists found that individuals underestimate the social connection they can make with a stranger who disagrees with them. The findings are published in Psychological Science . 

These low expectations may help to explain why people think those on the opposite side of the political spectrum have more extreme views than they actually do, behavioral scientists Kristina A. Wald (University of Pennsylvania), Michael Kardas (Oklahoma State University), and Nicholas Epley (University of Chicago) wrote in an article about their research.  

“Mistakenly fearing a negative interaction may create misplaced partisan divides,” they wrote, “not only keeping people from connecting with each other but also keeping people from learning about each other and from each other.” 

The experimenters found evidence, through experiments conducted online and in person, that people prefer to avoid hot-button issues, especially with people who disagree with them. People also tend to advise their friends and relatives to avoid such conversations.   

But Wald, Kardas, and Epley believed people would find discussing their political differences to be a more positive experience than expected, at least partly because people fail to appreciate the extent to which conversations are informative and draw people closer together.  

To test their theory, they asked nearly 200 participants in one experiment for their opinions on divisive political and religious topics, such as abortion and climate change. The researchers then divided the participants into pairs and assigned them to discuss one of these topics. Some participants were told in advance whether their partners agreed with them or not, but others entered the discussions unaware of their partners’ views.  

All the participants reported how positively or negatively they expected the conversation to be, then engaged in the discussion while being video recorded. Afterward, the participants rated their sentiments about the dialogue. Research assistants also viewed the videos of the conversations and evaluated them across several dimensions.  

As predicted, the participants underestimated how positive their conversation experience would be, but this tendency was largest when they disagreed with their partner.  Participants in this disagreement condition also underestimated the similarities in their opinions. Coders who watched the videos of these conversations confirmed that participants tended to stay on topic, and that the conversations were consistently positive whether the participants agreed or disagreed. 

In another experiment, the researchers tested their hypothesis that people underestimate how the process of conversation itself—actual back-and-forth dialogue—connects people. To do so, they randomly assigned participants to discuss a divisive topic they agreed or disagreed on, but they also randomly assigned participants to either have a conversation about the topic in a dialogue format or to simply learn of their partners’ beliefs on the topic in a monologue format. In the monologue format, each person separately recorded themselves talking about their opinion and then watched the other person’s recording.   

Overall, the participants underestimated how positive their interactions would be, especially when they disagreed with their partner, the researchers noted. But this tendency was especially strong when people actually had a conversation with their partner rather than simply learning of their beliefs in a monologue. The social forces in conversation that draw people together through back-and-forth dialogue are not only powerful, but they appear to be even more powerful than people expect.  

The researchers cautioned that their experiments involved participants talking with strangers; the experiments did not reveal how disagreements unfold among family and friends. Still, they said their findings illustrate the benefits of talking and listening to others rather than typing and broadcasting in debates on social media .  

Our reluctance to discuss our differences denies us some positive social interactions , the authors concluded. 

“Misunderstanding the outcomes of a conversation,” they wrote, “could lead people to avoid discussing disagreements more often, creating a misplaced barrier to learning, social connection, free inquiry, and free expression.” 

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Reference  

Wald, K. A., Kardas, M., & Epley, N. (2024). Misplaced divides? Discussing political disagreements with strangers can be unexpectedly positive. Psychological Science . https://doi.org/10.1177/09567976241230005   

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The Interview: Julie Urban

Posted: April 3, 2024

The associate research professor in the Department of Entomology is at the forefront of efforts to halt the spread of the invasive spotted lanternfly

Photo credit: Michael Houtz

I was born and raised in Toledo, Ohio, and earned a bachelor's degree at the University of Dayton and a doctorate in human factors psychology from the University of Central Florida, with a research focus on military team performance. Upon graduation, I accepted a tenure track faculty position in psychology at Dowling College in Long Island, New York.

In teaching the history of psychology, I encountered the field of behavioral ecology, which brings an evolutionary perspective to the study of behavior, and it blew my mind. When teaching this material in class, I heard myself say, "If I had to do it all over again, I would study this" — "this" meaning evolutionary biology. I knew what I had to do but didn't know where it would lead. I resigned from my faculty position of four years. I could do so because my husband, Kevin Kinser, had just completed his doctorate in higher education and was offered a faculty position at Louisiana State University.

For two years, I taught psychology as an adjunct at Southeastern Louisiana University while taking undergraduate science classes at Louisiana State. Then, Kevin got a position at the University at Albany. To provide additional context, my desire was to work in a DNA laboratory. As luck would have it, the lab in evolutionary genetics belonged to an entomologist, Jason Cryan, at the New York State Museum in Albany. He was starting a project on planthoppers — sap-feeding insects that not only "sing" via substrate-borne vibration, but also display many fantastical and unexplored features, such as elaborate wax plumes, elongated head structures and a "fairyland of symbioses" with multiple bacteria and fungi.

Up to that point in my life, I had never voluntarily touched an insect. But planthoppers had me immediately hooked, and still do. Fast-forward five years: In 2008, I was awarded a doctorate in evolutionary biology, focusing on planthopper evolution with a special emphasis on the family Fulgoridae (aka lanternflies).

I was in my first science job at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh in 2014 when I learned that Lycorma delicatula, the spotted lanternfly, had been detected in the U.S. in Berks County, Pennsylvania. I was asked to serve as an adviser on the spotted lanternfly for the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service and the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, and I continue in that role today. In 2016, I had the opportunity to join the Department of Entomology at Penn State, where I've been leading several large, collaborative grant projects on spotted lanternfly research and outreach.

I found the balance and passion I sought in my museum work and work at Penn State. Studying the basic biology of lanternflies and other understudied planthoppers is hugely rewarding because there is so much to discover. That discovery process fuels my passion to share what I've learned in my teaching, mentorship to the students and postdocs in my lab, and to growers and public science audiences.

For the first time, I can see how our work directly impacts growers , who are a new audience to me. This has required me to shift my basic evolutionary biology research to more applied pest management research. But the most important thing I have learned is that in science at any level, it is OK not to be knowledgeable about an area. Success and progress come from a constant willingness to learn more.

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America’s happiness score drops amid a youth ‘midlife crisis’

The United States is no longer among the world’s 20 happiest countries, according to a new report — with young people hit particularly hard and reporting lower levels of well-being than any other age group.

The United States fell from 15th in 2023 to 23rd in this year’s World Happiness Report , which was released Wednesday to mark the United Nations’ International Day of Happiness. The country’s results varied dramatically among different age groups, however, with young people under age 30 ranking 62nd out of 143 countries for happiness, while U.S. adults age 60 and above ranked 10th.

This is the first time the United States has slipped out of the top 20 since the report was first launched in 2012. But a similar downward trend in youth well-being is also seen in Canada, which ranked 15th overall but 58th among young people this year.

Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, director of the University of Oxford’s Wellbeing Research Center and an editor of the report, said in an interview Wednesday that the findings are concerning “because youth well-being and mental health is highly predictive of a whole host of subjective and objective indicators of quality of life as people age and go through the course of life.”

The report’s findings show “that in North America, and the U.S. in particular, youth now start lower than the adults in terms of well-being,” he said. “And that’s very disconcerting, because essentially it means that they’re at the level of their midlife crisis today and obviously begs the question of what’s next for them?”

The report is based on data from Gallup World Poll surveys from 2021 to 2023 that is analyzed by some of the world’s leading experts on well-being. The number of participants varies, but about 1,000 people usually respond from each country each year, rating their current life satisfaction on a scale from zero to 10. The happiness report is then based on a three-year average of those figures.

Nordic countries once again dominate the 2024 rankings, with Finland occupying the No. 1 spot for the seventh year in a row, followed by Denmark, Iceland and Sweden.

The report found that happiness has decreased for all age groups in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand since 2006 to 2010, with a particularly notable drop for young people — and young females recorded even lower scores than males. Youth happiness has also fallen in Western Europe, albeit less dramatically.

De Neve said the findings for youth in the United States in particular were “really striking.” He said questions remain about the reasons behind the trend.

Normally, well-being is reflected in a U-curve, he noted, whereby “youth start higher, then they drop in well-being virtually all the way down to a midlife crisis, which is typically the late 30s, early 40s,” before rising again in later life — unlike in the U.S. data.

There’s “no real smoking gun” that explains this drop in youth happiness, which began just over a decade ago, he said. Issues such as polarization, social media use and growing health and income disparities could play a role, he said.

Many young adults began college or a career amid a pandemic and have faced high housing prices, misinformation exacerbated by social media, and a loneliness epidemic , as The Washington Post has previously reported .

The researchers met Tuesday with U.S. Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy, who “spoke of K-12 high school students … talking about sort of a change in culture where there’s no longer a culture of speaking to each other,” De Neve added. “And that is really horrible because we all know from well-being science that nothing’s more important than your social capital — having quality connections and people to rely on and speak with on a very frequent basis.”

The study found that “social support” and “social interactions of all kinds” are important for happiness and reducing loneliness . But in many countries, including the United States and Canada, loneliness is “significantly higher for the Millennials than for the Boomers” — a pattern also seen in Southeast Asia and Western Europe, but not in Central or Eastern Europe, the report said.

De Neve noted that the “general negative trend for youth well-being in the United States [was] exacerbated during covid, and youth in the U.S. have not recovered from the drop.”

Yet the research found that the pandemic also had the effect of making people more likely to help others in need. “This increase in benevolence has been large for all generations,” the report said, but the increase was especially large “for the Millennials and Generation Z, who are even more likely than their predecessors to help others in need.”