Interviews FAQ Damian Gordon

What books should I read about interviews? Anything and everything by Steinar Kvale “Interpreting Qualitative Data” by David Silverman “Research Design” by John Creswell

What types of interviews are there? Structured Interviews – Fixed and predetermined questions and sequence of questions. No new questions added during interview, and questions given to interviewee by interview begins. Semi-Structured Interviews – Some interview questions fully decided, others might not be fixed, and the other of questions in not fixed. The researcher has leeway in asking followup questions Unstructured Interviews – Researcher has a small set of self prompts to investigate research question. One question can lead to a number of followup questions depending on the response. They tend to be more like conversations than interviews.

Do I need to record the interview? Yes, definitely, you can use – Pen-and-paper – Audio recording – Video recording But whichever you use, you must do a verbatim recording of the interview, both questions and answers.

How do I think of questions for the interview? There really should be two sources – All questions need to come from the research question of the experiment – If you find literature with a sufficiently similar research topic, you can use or adapt those questions

How many people should I interview? 15 ±10 people is a good rule-of thumb

Are there situations where I shouldn’t use interviews? Yes, loads of situations, e.g. electoral voting behaviour, or capturing a person’s attitudes and interactions with their environments.

When should I do the interviews? Typically there are two times to do interviews; – As part of the requirements gathering process – As part of the evaluation process

Are there software packages that can help me ?? Loads – ATLAS.ti – nVIVO – MaxQDA – NUD*IST – HyperRESEARCH But, do not underestimate the power of Excel, it’s a brilliant tool when used well

Further Tips Decide on an order of questions that easily flows one to the next Try to use language that is easy to understand and relevant to the interviewee Avoid Leading questions Try to stop the interviewee using qualifiers Add a few control questions into the interview for validation Avoid smalltalk during the interview LISTEN, LISTEN, LISTEN