7 More specific details of interviews

Interviews for qualitative research

Interviews can be conducted with an authority/ expert or opinion leader. The ideal sample is considered to consists of 5 to 10 persons of a certain group.

Varieties of interviews

Social science distinguishes unstructured, semi-structured and structured interviews (table 4). In a structured interview the interviewer follows a rigorous set of questions (sometimes with a set of predetermined answers to choose from), whereas a semi-structured interview is more open, allowing new questions to be brought up as a result of what the interviewee says. Unstructured interviews allow the interviewer to develop questions during the interview and prioritise the depth of the answers. However, ‘unstructured’ does not mean ‘impromptu’: the specific topic or topics that the interviewer wants to explore during the interview – or the logical order of conversation – should usually be thought about well in advance.

Table 4: Advantages and disadvantages of interview types

Careful planning is the key to successful interviewing. Here are some guidelines:

• Do initial research to answer basic questions about your topic.
• Plan your questions according to the expertise of your authority.
• Plan questions that can give you the most relevant information in 20 min or less (interview guide).
• Keep your questions free of your own opinions (but ask the authority for his/her opinion if this is relevant to your topic)
• Follow some of your major questions with some simple follow-up questions for more specific detail.
• Immediately clarify points you are not certain about.

Allow enough time after the first interview to rework your framework or try your interview out with a ‘friendly-user’ before you conduct the first interview and revise your questions carefully if necessary.

Conducting the interview

Arrange a face-to-face interview, or interview the author by telephone or by email. If you meet the authority face-to- face, ask to audio-tape the interview and/or bring a friend to help take notes. Transcribing interviews: you do not need to transcribe an entire interview but only key passages that help you argue in your report. This transcript belongs into the appendix.  Either you paraphrase or quote directly. In both cases you refer to material (transcript) in your appendix.

Group interviews

Group interviews which often are conducted as a discussion are a means of qualitative research and could be useful for the Kontext project. The topic of discussion needs to be precise; the leader of the discussion either allows the discussion to develop freely, or structures and moderates it with (frequent) questions.

Using and writing up interview information

Information obtained directly from an authority can be very persuasive evidence for an audience.The first challenge is an adequate analysis of the interview. The aim will be to find the relevant information with regard to the aim and the objectives of the project or the research question(s). This focus helps to find a pattern or to determine the topics and issues, which is in structured interviews strongly driven by the questions asked. These considerations result in an adequate structure and also help to distinguish relevant from irrelevant information, expected from surprising information yielded in the interviews. In case several interviews were carried out, a skillful synthesis of these interviews is asked for.

Go to the sections on writing the result and the discussion sections for more guidance.

Language focus

Writing conventions for using interview information include:

Qualitative market research often employs a method called Delphi method. The name is of course associated with forecasting or predicting the future. For further information about this technique go to