Developing an Interview Guide
Hello Qualitative Mind,
What do kitchen renovations and semi-structured interview guides have in common? Overall, we start with a specific, tangible plan and end up doing way more than we envisioned at first. It goes like this: since we’re changing the sink, let’s change the faucet; since we’re changing the faucet, let’s choose a new backsplash and the scope of work quickly grows! A parallel situation tends to happen with interview guides where we end up adding way too many questions just in case we forget something or need a bit more information here and there.
Recently a graduate student who was about to start her qualitative project asked me if I had any resources for developing an interview guide. I shared with her one of my go-to books on the topic, InterViews: Learning the Craft of Qualitative Research Interviewing by Brinkmann and Kvale. However, I knew she was looking for specific directions on what questions to include in her interview guide and that the book was not likely to be very helpful, so we had a discussion about this. That discussion turned into a blog post…
The first thing I shared with her was along the lines of the introductory paragraph- try not to have too many questions. But, what does “too many questions” mean? Well, as with most things in qualitative research, it depends on the topic, area of research, methodology, participants’ characteristics (age, gender, familiarity with the topic, etc.), as well as the interviewer’s comfort level. In the case of this particular student, I advised her to have five to seven questions for an hour long interview (the length she has outlined in her consent form). With that being said, I also told her to have a few probes for each question so that she could ask follow up questions that aligned with the study’s objectives and research questions. I think most people conducting interviews for the first time appreciate more structure, and I truly respect that because I’ve been there.
With experience, you will likely become more comfortable with flexibility in SEMI-structured interview guides. At this point in my career (and positionality in qualitative research), my preference is to leave more room in interview guides for active listening and reciprocity during interviews. I believe research participants have a role in determining where an interview goes and, ultimately, the research findings. This does not mean you’ll talk about the sky when you’re actually trying to investigate the participants’ perceptions about the earth. In other words, it doesn’t mean that you can’t redirect your participant and bring them back to the interview topic. You can do that in a respectful way by following up with something they had previously mentioned or acknowledging where the interview went and asking permission to move on to another question. I’ve written another blog post that relates to becoming a better interviewer here. Another important point I brought up with her was pilot testing the interview guide. If possible, try to pilot test your semi-structured interview guide with people who can discuss the topic of interest without being too primed about your study. If pilot testing the interview guide before participants’ interviews isn’t a viable option, be flexible with the changes you might need to make after the first few interviews. This is a good opportunity to use the “7 Reflections for Better Responses” resource on our website to critically assess your interview guide.
The question about resources related to developing an interview guide led me to search for an article that better addressed the student’s needs. I came across a Systematic methodological review: Developing a Framework For a Qualitative Semi-structured Interview Guide by H Kallio and colleagues that covered the points I discussed here and more. Their review showed that the development of a semi-structured interview guide includes five stages:
1. Examining the suitability of semi-structured interviews as a qualitative method of data collection
2. Retrieving and using the existing literature and knowledge to better focus the interview guide
3. Developing the first draft of a semi-structured interview guide
4. Pilot testing of the interview guide
5. Finalizing the interview guide (which would be the version you might include as supplementary material in a published paper)
Developing an interview guide can be equally exciting and intimidating. Keep in mind that you can tweak things along the research process! You’re learning from your participants, and you don’t know what you don’t know until you start talking to them. Enjoy the reciprocity and exchanging views in your interviews.
Talk soon,
Maira Quintanilha