research paper using interviews

Using an interview in a research paper

Consultant contributor: Viviane Ugalde

Using an interview can be an effective primary source for some papers and research projects. Finding an expert in the field or some other person who has knowledge of your topic can allow for you to gather unique information not available elsewhere.

There are four steps to using an interview as a source for your research.

• Know where and how to start.
• Know how to write a good question.
• Know how to conduct an interview.
• Know how to incorporate the interview into your document or project.

Step one: Where to start

First, you should determine your goals and ask yourself these questions:

• Who are the local experts on topic?
• How can I contact these people?
• Does anyone know them to help me setup the interviews?
• Are their phone numbers in the phone book or can I find them on the Internet?

Once you answer these questions and pick your interviewee, get their basic information such as their name, title, and other general details. If you reach out and your interview does not participate, don’t be discouraged. Keep looking for other interview contacts.

Step two: How to write a good question

When you have confirmed an interview, it is not time to come up with questions.

• Learning as much as you can about the person before the interview can help you create questions specific to your interview subject.
• Doing research about your interviewee’s past experience in your topic, or any texts that they have written would be great background research.

When you start to think of questions, write down more questions than you think you’ll need, and prioritize them as you go. Any good questions will answer the 5W and H questions. Asking Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How questions that you need answered for your paper, will help you form a question to ask your interviewee.

When writing a good question, try thinking of something that will help your argument.

• Is your interviewee an advocate for you position?
• Are they in any programs that are related to your research?
• How much experience do they have?

From broad questions like these, you can begin to narrow down to more specific and open-ended questions.

Step three: The interview

If at all possible, arrange to conduct the interview at the subject’s workplace. It will make them more comfortable, and you can write about their surroundings.

• Begin the interview with some small talk in order to give both of you the chance to get comfortable with one another
• Develop rapport that will make the interview easier for both of you.
• Ask open-ended questions
• Keep the conversation moving
• Stay on topic
• The more silence in the room, the more honest the answer.
• If an interesting subject comes up that is related to your research, ask a follow-up or an additional question about it.
• Ask if you can stay in contact with your interview subject in case there are any additional questions you have.

Step four: Incorporating the interview

When picking the material out of your interview, remember that people rarely speak perfectly. There will be many slang words and pauses that you can take out, as long as it does not change the meaning of the material you are using.

As you introduce your interview in the paper, start with a transition such as “according to” or other attributions. You should also be specific to the type of interview you are working with. This way, you will build a stronger ethos in your paper .

The body of your essay should clearly set up the quote or paraphrase you use from the interview responses,. Be careful not to stick a quote from the interview into the body of your essay because it sounds good. When deciding what to quote in your paper, think about what dialogue from the interview would add the most color to your interview. Quotes that illustrate what your interviewer sounded like, or what their personality is are always the best quotes to choose from.

Once you have done that, proofread your essay. Make sure the quotes you used don’t make up the majority of your paper. The interview quotes are supposed to support your argument; you are not supposed to support the interview.

For example, let’s say that you are arguing that free education is better than not. For your argument, you interview a local politician who is on your side of the argument. Rather than using a large quote that explains the stance of both sides, and why the politician chose this side, your quote is there to support the information you’ve already given. Whatever the politician says should prove what you argue, and not give new information.

Step five: Examples of citing your interviews 

Smith, Jane. Personal interview. 19 May 2018.

(E. Robbins, personal communication, January 4, 2018).

Smith also claimed that many of her students had difficulties with APA style (personal communication, November 3, 2018).

Reference list

Daly, C. & Leighton W. (2017). Interviewing a Source: Tips. Journalists Resource.

Driscoll, D. (2018 ). Interviewing. Purdue University

Hayden, K. (2012). How to Conduct an Interview to Write a Paper . Bright Hub Education, Bright Hub Inc.

Hose, C. (2017). How to Incorporate Interviews into Essays. Leaf Group Education.

Magnesi, J. (2017). How to Interview Someone for an Article or Research Paper. Career Trend, Leaf group Media.

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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.

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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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Conducting Research Interviews

• Preparation
• Conducting the Interview
• Writing the Interview (In APA styling)

What is an interview paper?

Apa format for an interview paper, example of in-text citation in an interview paper.

Important Note on Personal Interviews:

• A personal interview should NOT be included in a reference list in APA. They are not considered recoverable data (they cannot be found by a researcher). You should reference personal interviews as in-text citations instead.
• Example: (J. Doe, personal communication, December 12, 2024)

That being said, there is a general structure if you want to cite a personal interview as part of your APA works cited list:

Author, A. (Year, Month Date). Interview type.

APA format example:

Marino, B. (2024, October 18). Personal Interview.

An interview paper is a research-based essay based on information gathered in interviews with various people. While other research papers primarily cite published print sources, interview papers draw their evidence from unpublished conversations—in person, by phone or by email. The interviewees are usually individuals with expertise in the topic being discussed or participants in a study or survey. Aside from academic reports or essays, interview papers are prevalent in journalism, as spoken responses to questions form much of the basis of many newspaper or magazine articles. The nature of interview papers allows for the potential to include unique insights in your writing. Two people can interview the same person about the same subject but receive somewhat different sets of information depending on the questions they ask. Personal factors, too, can influence the outcome of an interview, as the interviewee's level of comfort and emotional condition at the time of the conversation may render them or less communicative.

An APA-formatted paper typically consists of four major sections:

• Title page: The title page informs the reader about the subject of the paper and the details of who you are and who you are writing it for.
• Abstract: Introduce the subject of your interview in-text, describing her qualifications, background and why she is suitable to answer your questions. 
• Main body: The main body comprises the content of the paper itself—an essay or a report. APA-style reports typically separate the contents by section—namely, the introduction, titled sections for each question or subject area that groups of questions fall into, and the response as a block of quoted text. Present the question you asked the interviewee when explaining her response in the text of your paper. This is important to provide the context in which the interviewee presented fact or opinion. Be clear whether the question was open-ended or close-ended. Use quotes, rather than paraphrasing, when citing specific information and facts given by the interviewee. A quote longer than 40 words should be set aside as a block quote, according to APA style.
• References: The references section is a list of the published sources used to support the points in the paper. For interview reporting where no published works exist that were referenced, no citation is necessary. Personal and research-participant interviews are unpublished, so you can omit them from the references section, but make sure to include published interviews.

When using American Psychological Association (APA) style, your interview should either be cited as personal communication or recorded in detail in your text. The APA interview writing format has specific rules for how to write an interview paper. 

• << Previous: Applying & Using the Interview
• Last Updated: Sep 13, 2024 3:22 PM
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Research Methods Guide: Interview Research

• Introduction
• Research Design & Method
• Survey Research
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Tutorial Videos: Interview Method

Interview as a Method for Qualitative Research

Goals of Interview Research

• Preferences
• They help you explain, better understand, and explore research subjects' opinions, behavior, experiences, phenomenon, etc.
• Interview questions are usually open-ended questions so that in-depth information will be collected.

Mode of Data Collection

There are several types of interviews, including:

• Face-to-Face
• Online (e.g. Skype, Googlehangout, etc)

FAQ: Conducting Interview Research

What are the important steps involved in interviews?

• Think about who you will interview
• Think about what kind of information you want to obtain from interviews
• Think about why you want to pursue in-depth information around your research topic
• Introduce yourself and explain the aim of the interview
• Devise your questions so interviewees can help answer your research question
• Have a sequence to your questions / topics by grouping them in themes
• Make sure you can easily move back and forth between questions / topics
• Make sure your questions are clear and easy to understand
• Do not ask leading questions
• Do you want to bring a second interviewer with you?
• Do you want to bring a notetaker?
• Do you want to record interviews? If so, do you have time to transcribe interview recordings?
• Where will you interview people? Where is the setting with the least distraction?
• How long will each interview take?
• Do you need to address terms of confidentiality?

Do I have to choose either a survey or interviewing method?

No.  In fact, many researchers use a mixed method - interviews can be useful as follow-up to certain respondents to surveys, e.g., to further investigate their responses.

Is training an interviewer important?

Yes, since the interviewer can control the quality of the result, training the interviewer becomes crucial.  If more than one interviewers are involved in your study, it is important to have every interviewer understand the interviewing procedure and rehearse the interviewing process before beginning the formal study.

• << Previous: Survey Research
• Next: Data Analysis >>
• Last Updated: Aug 21, 2023 10:42 AM

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• Published: 15 September 2022

Interviews in the social sciences

• Eleanor Knott   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-9131-3939 1 ,
• Aliya Hamid Rao   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-0674-4206 1 ,
• Kate Summers   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-9964-0259 1 &
• Chana Teeger   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-5046-8280 1  

Nature Reviews Methods Primers volume  2 , Article number:  73 ( 2022 ) Cite this article

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• Interdisciplinary studies

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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Introduction.

In-depth interviews are a qualitative research method that follow a deceptively familiar logic of human interaction: they are conversations where people talk with each other, interact and pose and answer questions 1 . An interview is a specific type of interaction in which — usually and predominantly — a researcher asks questions about someone’s life experience, opinions, dreams, fears and hopes and the interview participant answers the questions 1 .

Interviews will often be used as a standalone method or combined with other qualitative methods, such as focus groups or ethnography, or quantitative methods, such as surveys or experiments. Although interviewing is a frequently used method, it should not be viewed as an easy default for qualitative researchers 2 . Interviews are also not suited to answering all qualitative research questions, but instead have specific strengths that should guide whether or not they are deployed in a research project. Whereas ethnography might be better suited to trying to observe what people do, interviews provide a space for extended conversations that allow the researcher insights into how people think and what they believe. Quantitative surveys also give these kinds of insights, but they use pre-determined questions and scales, privileging breadth over depth and often overlooking harder-to-reach participants.

In-depth interviews can take many different shapes and forms, often with more than one participant or researcher. For example, interviews might be highly structured (using an almost survey-like interview guide), entirely unstructured (taking a narrative and free-flowing approach) or semi-structured (using a topic guide ). Researchers might combine these approaches within a single project depending on the purpose of the interview and the characteristics of the participant. Whatever form the interview takes, researchers should be mindful of the dynamics between interviewer and participant and factor these in at all stages of the project.

In this Primer, we focus on the most common type of interview: one researcher taking a semi-structured approach to interviewing one participant using a topic guide. Focusing on how to plan research using interviews, we discuss the necessary stages of data collection. We also discuss the stages and thought-process behind analysing interview material to ensure that the richness and interpretability of interview material is maintained and communicated to readers. The Primer also tracks innovations in interview methods and discusses the developments we expect over the next 5–10 years.

We wrote this Primer as researchers from sociology, social policy and political science. We note our disciplinary background because we acknowledge that there are disciplinary differences in how interviews are approached and understood as a method.

Experimentation

Here we address research design considerations and data collection issues focusing on topic guide construction and other pragmatics of the interview. We also explore issues of ethics and reflexivity that are crucial throughout the research project.

Research design

Participant selection.

Participants can be selected and recruited in various ways for in-depth interview studies. The researcher must first decide what defines the people or social groups being studied. Often, this means moving from an abstract theoretical research question to a more precise empirical one. For example, the researcher might be interested in how people talk about race in contexts of diversity. Empirical settings in which this issue could be studied could include schools, workplaces or adoption agencies. The best research designs should clearly explain why the particular setting was chosen. Often there are both intrinsic and extrinsic reasons for choosing to study a particular group of people at a specific time and place 3 . Intrinsic motivations relate to the fact that the research is focused on an important specific social phenomenon that has been understudied. Extrinsic motivations speak to the broader theoretical research questions and explain why the case at hand is a good one through which to address them empirically.

Next, the researcher needs to decide which types of people they would like to interview. This decision amounts to delineating the inclusion and exclusion criteria for the study. The criteria might be based on demographic variables, like race or gender, but they may also be context-specific, for example, years of experience in an organization. These should be decided based on the research goals. Researchers should be clear about what characteristics would make an individual a candidate for inclusion in the study (and what would exclude them).

The next step is to identify and recruit the study’s sample . Usually, many more people fit the inclusion criteria than can be interviewed. In cases where lists of potential participants are available, the researcher might want to employ stratified sampling , dividing the list by characteristics of interest before sampling.

When there are no lists, researchers will often employ purposive sampling . Many researchers consider purposive sampling the most useful mode for interview-based research since the number of interviews to be conducted is too small to aim to be statistically representative 4 . Instead, the aim is not breadth, via representativeness, but depth via rich insights about a set of participants. In addition to purposive sampling, researchers often use snowball sampling . Both purposive and snowball sampling can be combined with quota sampling . All three types of sampling aim to ensure a variety of perspectives within the confines of a research project. A goal for in-depth interview studies can be to sample for range, being mindful of recruiting a diversity of participants fitting the inclusion criteria.

Study design

The total number of interviews depends on many factors, including the population studied, whether comparisons are to be made and the duration of interviews. Studies that rely on quota sampling where explicit comparisons are made between groups will require a larger number of interviews than studies focused on one group only. Studies where participants are interviewed over several hours, days or even repeatedly across years will tend to have fewer participants than those that entail a one-off engagement.

Researchers often stop interviewing when new interviews confirm findings from earlier interviews with no new or surprising insights (saturation) 4 , 5 , 6 . As a criterion for research design, saturation assumes that data collection and analysis are happening in tandem and that researchers will stop collecting new data once there is no new information emerging from the interviews. This is not always possible. Researchers rarely have time for systematic data analysis during data collection and they often need to specify their sample in funding proposals prior to data collection. As a result, researchers often draw on existing reports of saturation to estimate a sample size prior to data collection. These suggest between 12 and 20 interviews per category of participant (although researchers have reported saturation with samples that are both smaller and larger than this) 7 , 8 , 9 . The idea of saturation has been critiqued by many qualitative researchers because it assumes that meaning inheres in the data, waiting to be discovered — and confirmed — once saturation has been reached 7 . In-depth interview data are often multivalent and can give rise to different interpretations. The important consideration is, therefore, not merely how many participants are interviewed, but whether one’s research design allows for collecting rich and textured data that provide insight into participants’ understandings, accounts, perceptions and interpretations.

Sometimes, researchers will conduct interviews with more than one participant at a time. Researchers should consider the benefits and shortcomings of such an approach. Joint interviews may, for example, give researchers insight into how caregivers agree or debate childrearing decisions. At the same time, they may be less adaptive to exploring aspects of caregiving that participants may not wish to disclose to each other. In other cases, there may be more than one person interviewing each participant, such as when an interpreter is used, and so it is important to consider during the research design phase how this might shape the dynamics of the interview.

Data collection

Semi-structured interviews are typically organized around a topic guide comprised of an ordered set of broad topics (usually 3–5). Each topic includes a set of questions that form the basis of the discussion between the researcher and participant (Fig.  1 ). These topics are organized around key concepts that the researcher has identified (for example, through a close study of prior research, or perhaps through piloting a small, exploratory study) 5 .

a | Elaborated topics the researcher wants to cover in the interview and example questions. b | An example topic arc. Using such an arc, one can think flexibly about the order of topics. Considering the main question for each topic will help to determine the best order for the topics. After conducting some interviews, the researcher can move topics around if a different order seems to make sense.

Topic guide

One common way to structure a topic guide is to start with relatively easy, open-ended questions (Table  1 ). Opening questions should be related to the research topic but broad and easy to answer, so that they help to ease the participant into conversation.

After these broad, opening questions, the topic guide may move into topics that speak more directly to the overarching research question. The interview questions will be accompanied by probes designed to elicit concrete details and examples from the participant (see Table  1 ).

Abstract questions are often easier for participants to answer once they have been asked more concrete questions. In our experience, for example, questions about feelings can be difficult for some participants to answer, but when following probes concerning factual experiences these questions can become less challenging. After the main themes of the topic guide have been covered, the topic guide can move onto closing questions. At this stage, participants often repeat something they have said before, although they may sometimes introduce a new topic.

Interviews are especially well suited to gaining a deeper insight into people’s experiences. Getting these insights largely depends on the participants’ willingness to talk to the researcher. We recommend designing open-ended questions that are more likely to elicit an elaborated response and extended reflection from participants rather than questions that can be answered with yes or no.

Questions should avoid foreclosing the possibility that the participant might disagree with the premise of the question. Take for example the question: “Do you support the new family-friendly policies?” This question minimizes the possibility of the participant disagreeing with the premise of this question, which assumes that the policies are ‘family-friendly’ and asks for a yes or no answer. Instead, asking more broadly how a participant feels about the specific policy being described as ‘family-friendly’ (for example, a work-from-home policy) allows them to express agreement, disagreement or impartiality and, crucially, to explain their reasoning 10 .

For an uninterrupted interview that will last between 90 and 120 minutes, the topic guide should be one to two single-spaced pages with questions and probes. Ideally, the researcher will memorize the topic guide before embarking on the first interview. It is fine to carry a printed-out copy of the topic guide but memorizing the topic guide ahead of the interviews can often make the interviewer feel well prepared in guiding the participant through the interview process.

Although the topic guide helps the researcher stay on track with the broad areas they want to cover, there is no need for the researcher to feel tied down by the topic guide. For instance, if a participant brings up a theme that the researcher intended to discuss later or a point the researcher had not anticipated, the researcher may well decide to follow the lead of the participant. The researcher’s role extends beyond simply stating the questions; it entails listening and responding, making split-second decisions about what line of inquiry to pursue and allowing the interview to proceed in unexpected directions.

Optimizing the interview

The ideal place for an interview will depend on the study and what is feasible for participants. Generally, a place where the participant and researcher can both feel relaxed, where the interview can be uninterrupted and where noise or other distractions are limited is ideal. But this may not always be possible and so the researcher needs to be prepared to adapt their plans within what is feasible (and desirable for participants).

Another key tool for the interview is a recording device (assuming that permission for recording has been given). Recording can be important to capture what the participant says verbatim. Additionally, it can allow the researcher to focus on determining what probes and follow-up questions they want to pursue rather than focusing on taking notes. Sometimes, however, a participant may not allow the researcher to record, or the recording may fail. If the interview is not recorded we suggest that the researcher takes brief notes during the interview, if feasible, and then thoroughly make notes immediately after the interview and try to remember the participant’s facial expressions, gestures and tone of voice. Not having a recording of an interview need not limit the researcher from getting analytical value from it.

As soon as possible after each interview, we recommend that the researcher write a one-page interview memo comprising three key sections. The first section should identify two to three important moments from the interview. What constitutes important is up to the researcher’s discretion 9 . The researcher should note down what happened in these moments, including the participant’s facial expressions, gestures, tone of voice and maybe even the sensory details of their surroundings. This exercise is about capturing ethnographic detail from the interview. The second part of the interview memo is the analytical section with notes on how the interview fits in with previous interviews, for example, where the participant’s responses concur or diverge from other responses. The third part consists of a methodological section where the researcher notes their perception of their relationship with the participant. The interview memo allows the researcher to think critically about their positionality and practice reflexivity — key concepts for an ethical and transparent research practice in qualitative methodology 11 , 12 .

Ethics and reflexivity

All elements of an in-depth interview can raise ethical challenges and concerns. Good ethical practice in interview studies often means going beyond the ethical procedures mandated by institutions 13 . While discussions and requirements of ethics can differ across disciplines, here we focus on the most pertinent considerations for interviews across the research process for an interdisciplinary audience.

Ethical considerations prior to interview

Before conducting interviews, researchers should consider harm minimization, informed consent, anonymity and confidentiality, and reflexivity and positionality. It is important for the researcher to develop their own ethical sensitivities and sensibilities by gaining training in interview and qualitative methods, reading methodological and field-specific texts on interviews and ethics and discussing their research plans with colleagues.

Researchers should map the potential harm to consider how this can be minimized. Primarily, researchers should consider harm from the participants’ perspective (Box  1 ). But, it is also important to consider and plan for potential harm to the researcher, research assistants, gatekeepers, future researchers and members of the wider community 14 . Even the most banal of research topics can potentially pose some form of harm to the participant, researcher and others — and the level of harm is often highly context-dependent. For example, a research project on religion in society might have very different ethical considerations in a democratic versus authoritarian research context because of how openly or not such topics can be discussed and debated 15 .

The researcher should consider how they will obtain and record informed consent (for example, written or oral), based on what makes the most sense for their research project and context 16 . Some institutions might specify how informed consent should be gained. Regardless of how consent is obtained, the participant must be made aware of the form of consent, the intentions and procedures of the interview and potential forms of harm and benefit to the participant or community before the interview commences. Moreover, the participant must agree to be interviewed before the interview commences. If, in addition to interviews, the study contains an ethnographic component, it is worth reading around this topic (see, for example, Murphy and Dingwall 17 ). Informed consent must also be gained for how the interview will be recorded before the interview commences. These practices are important to ensure the participant is contributing on a voluntary basis. It is also important to remind participants that they can withdraw their consent at any time during the interview and for a specified period after the interview (to be decided with the participant). The researcher should indicate that participants can ask for anything shared to be off the record and/or not disseminated.

In terms of anonymity and confidentiality, it is standard practice when conducting interviews to agree not to use (or even collect) participants’ names and personal details that are not pertinent to the study. Anonymizing can often be the safer option for minimizing harm to participants as it is hard to foresee all the consequences of de-anonymizing, even if participants agree. Regardless of what a researcher decides, decisions around anonymity must be agreed with participants during the process of gaining informed consent and respected following the interview.

Although not all ethical challenges can be foreseen or planned for 18 , researchers should think carefully — before the interview — about power dynamics, participant vulnerability, emotional state and interactional dynamics between interviewer and participant, even when discussing low-risk topics. Researchers may then wish to plan for potential ethical issues, for example by preparing a list of relevant organizations to which participants can be signposted. A researcher interviewing a participant about debt, for instance, might prepare in advance a list of debt advice charities, organizations and helplines that could provide further support and advice. It is important to remember that the role of an interviewer is as a researcher rather than as a social worker or counsellor because researchers may not have relevant and requisite training in these other domains.

Box 1 Mapping potential forms of harm

Social: researchers should avoid causing any relational detriment to anyone in the course of interviews, for example, by sharing information with other participants or causing interview participants to be shunned or mistreated by their community as a result of participating.

Economic: researchers should avoid causing financial detriment to anyone, for example, by expecting them to pay for transport to be interviewed or to potentially lose their job as a result of participating.

Physical: researchers should minimize the risk of anyone being exposed to violence as a result of the research both from other individuals or from authorities, including police.

Psychological: researchers should minimize the risk of causing anyone trauma (or re-traumatization) or psychological anguish as a result of the research; this includes not only the participant but importantly the researcher themselves and anyone that might read or analyse the transcripts, should they contain triggering information.

Political: researchers should minimize the risk of anyone being exposed to political detriment as a result of the research, such as retribution.

Professional/reputational: researchers should minimize the potential for reputational damage to anyone connected to the research (this includes ensuring good research practices so that any researchers involved are not harmed reputationally by being involved with the research project).

The task here is not to map exhaustively the potential forms of harm that might pertain to a particular research project (that is the researcher’s job and they should have the expertise most suited to mapping such potential harms relative to the specific project) but to demonstrate the breadth of potential forms of harm.

Ethical considerations post-interview

Researchers should consider how interview data are stored, analysed and disseminated. If participants have been offered anonymity and confidentiality, data should be stored in a way that does not compromise this. For example, researchers should consider removing names and any other unnecessary personal details from interview transcripts, password-protecting and encrypting files and using pseudonyms to label and store all interview data. It is also important to address where interview data are taken (for example, across borders in particular where interview data might be of interest to local authorities) and how this might affect the storage of interview data.

Examining how the researcher will represent participants is a paramount ethical consideration both in the planning stages of the interview study and after it has been conducted. Dissemination strategies also need to consider questions of anonymity and representation. In small communities, even if participants are given pseudonyms, it might be obvious who is being described. Anonymizing not only the names of those participating but also the research context is therefore a standard practice 19 . With particularly sensitive data or insights about the participant, it is worth considering describing participants in a more abstract way rather than as specific individuals. These practices are important both for protecting participants’ anonymity but can also affect the ability of the researcher and others to return ethically to the research context and similar contexts 20 .

Reflexivity and positionality

Reflexivity and positionality mean considering the researcher’s role and assumptions in knowledge production 13 . A key part of reflexivity is considering the power relations between the researcher and participant within the interview setting, as well as how researchers might be perceived by participants. Further, researchers need to consider how their own identities shape the kind of knowledge and assumptions they bring to the interview, including how they approach and ask questions and their analysis of interviews (Box  2 ). Reflexivity is a necessary part of developing ethical sensibility as a researcher by adapting and reflecting on how one engages with participants. Participants should not feel judged, for example, when they share information that researchers might disagree with or find objectionable. How researchers deal with uncomfortable moments or information shared by participants is at their discretion, but they should consider how they will react both ahead of time and in the moment.

Researchers can develop their reflexivity by considering how they themselves would feel being asked these interview questions or represented in this way, and then adapting their practice accordingly. There might be situations where these questions are not appropriate in that they unduly centre the researchers’ experiences and worldview. Nevertheless, these prompts can provide a useful starting point for those beginning their reflexive journey and developing an ethical sensibility.

Reflexivity and ethical sensitivities require active reflection throughout the research process. For example, researchers should take care in interview memos and their notes to consider their assumptions, potential preconceptions, worldviews and own identities prior to and after interviews (Box  2 ). Checking in with assumptions can be a way of making sure that researchers are paying close attention to their own theoretical and analytical biases and revising them in accordance with what they learn through the interviews. Researchers should return to these notes (especially when analysing interview material), to try to unpack their own effects on the research process as well as how participants positioned and engaged with them.

Box 2 Aspects to reflect on reflexively

For reflexive engagement, and understanding the power relations being co-constructed and (re)produced in interviews, it is necessary to reflect, at a minimum, on the following.

Ethnicity, race and nationality, such as how does privilege stemming from race or nationality operate between the researcher, the participant and research context (for example, a researcher from a majority community may be interviewing a member of a minority community)

Gender and sexuality, see above on ethnicity, race and nationality

Social class, and in particular the issue of middle-class bias among researchers when formulating research and interview questions

Economic security/precarity, see above on social class and thinking about the researcher’s relative privilege and the source of biases that stem from this

Educational experiences and privileges, see above

Disciplinary biases, such as how the researcher’s discipline/subfield usually approaches these questions, possibly normalizing certain assumptions that might be contested by participants and in the research context

Political and social values

Lived experiences and other dimensions of ourselves that affect and construct our identity as researchers

In this section, we discuss the next stage of an interview study, namely, analysing the interview data. Data analysis may begin while more data are being collected. Doing so allows early findings to inform the focus of further data collection, as part of an iterative process across the research project. Here, the researcher is ultimately working towards achieving coherence between the data collected and the findings produced to answer successfully the research question(s) they have set.

The two most common methods used to analyse interview material across the social sciences are thematic analysis 21 and discourse analysis 22 . Thematic analysis is a particularly useful and accessible method for those starting out in analysis of qualitative data and interview material as a method of coding data to develop and interpret themes in the data 21 . Discourse analysis is more specialized and focuses on the role of discourse in society by paying close attention to the explicit, implicit and taken-for-granted dimensions of language and power 22 , 23 . Although thematic and discourse analysis are often discussed as separate techniques, in practice researchers might flexibly combine these approaches depending on the object of analysis. For example, those intending to use discourse analysis might first conduct thematic analysis as a way to organize and systematize the data. The object and intention of analysis might differ (for example, developing themes or interrogating language), but the questions facing the researcher (such as whether to take an inductive or deductive approach to analysis) are similar.

Preparing data

Data preparation is an important step in the data analysis process. The researcher should first determine what comprises the corpus of material and in what form it will it be analysed. The former refers to whether, for example, alongside the interviews themselves, analytic memos or observational notes that may have been taken during data collection will also be directly analysed. The latter refers to decisions about how the verbal/audio interview data will be transformed into a written form, making it suitable for processes of data analysis. Typically, interview audio recordings are transcribed to produce a written transcript. It is important to note that the process of transcription is one of transformation. The verbal interview data are transformed into a written transcript through a series of decisions that the researcher must make. The researcher should consider the effect of mishearing what has been said or how choosing to punctuate a sentence in a particular way will affect the final analysis.

Box  3 shows an example transcript excerpt from an interview with a teacher conducted by Teeger as part of her study of history education in post-apartheid South Africa 24 (Box  3 ). Seeing both the questions and the responses means that the reader can contextualize what the participant (Ms Mokoena) has said. Throughout the transcript the researcher has used square brackets, for example to indicate a pause in speech, when Ms Mokoena says “it’s [pause] it’s a difficult topic”. The transcription choice made here means that we see that Ms Mokoena has taken time to pause, perhaps to search for the right words, or perhaps because she has a slight apprehension. Square brackets are also included as an overt act of communication to the reader. When Ms Mokoena says “ja”, the English translation (“yes”) of the word in Afrikaans is placed in square brackets to ensure that the reader can follow the meaning of the speech.

Decisions about what to include when transcribing will be hugely important for the direction and possibilities of analysis. Researchers should decide what they want to capture in the transcript, based on their analytic focus. From a (post)positivist perspective 25 , the researcher may be interested in the manifest content of the interview (such as what is said, not how it is said). In that case, they may choose to transcribe intelligent verbatim . From a constructivist perspective 25 , researchers may choose to record more aspects of speech (including, for example, pauses, repetitions, false starts, talking over one another) so that these features can be analysed. Those working from this perspective argue that to recognize the interactional nature of the interview setting adequately and to avoid misinterpretations, features of interaction (pauses, overlaps between speakers and so on) should be preserved in transcription and therefore in the analysis 10 . Readers interested in learning more should consult Potter and Hepburn’s summary of how to present interaction through transcription of interview data 26 .

The process of analysing semi-structured interviews might be thought of as a generative rather than an extractive enterprise. Findings do not already exist within the interview data to be discovered. Rather, researchers create something new when analysing the data by applying their analytic lens or approach to the transcripts. At a high level, there are options as to what researchers might want to glean from their interview data. They might be interested in themes, whereby they identify patterns of meaning across the dataset 21 . Alternatively, they may focus on discourse(s), looking to identify how language is used to construct meanings and therefore how language reinforces or produces aspects of the social world 27 . Alternatively, they might look at the data to understand narrative or biographical elements 28 .

A further overarching decision to make is the extent to which researchers bring predetermined framings or understandings to bear on their data, or instead begin from the data themselves to generate an analysis. One way of articulating this is the extent to which researchers take a deductive approach or an inductive approach to analysis. One example of a truly inductive approach is grounded theory, whereby the aim of the analysis is to build new theory, beginning with one’s data 6 , 29 . In practice, researchers using thematic and discourse analysis often combine deductive and inductive logics and describe their process instead as iterative (referred to also as an abductive approach ) 30 , 31 . For example, researchers may decide that they will apply a given theoretical framing, or begin with an initial analytic framework, but then refine or develop these once they begin the process of analysis.

Box 3 Excerpt of interview transcript (from Teeger 24 )

Interviewer : Maybe you could just start by talking about what it’s like to teach apartheid history.

Ms Mokoena : It’s a bit challenging. You’ve got to accommodate all the kids in the class. You’ve got to be sensitive to all the racial differences. You want to emphasize the wrongs that were done in the past but you also want to, you know, not to make kids feel like it’s their fault. So you want to use the wrongs of the past to try and unite the kids …

Interviewer : So what kind of things do you do?

Ms Mokoena : Well I normally highlight the fact that people that were struggling were not just the blacks, it was all the races. And I give examples of the people … from all walks of life, all races, and highlight how they suffered as well as a result of apartheid, particularly the whites… . What I noticed, particularly my first year of teaching apartheid, I noticed that the black kids made the others feel responsible for what happened… . I had a lot of fights…. A lot of kids started hating each other because, you know, the others are white and the others were black. And they started saying, “My mother is a domestic worker because she was never allowed an opportunity to get good education.” …

Interviewer : I didn’t see any of that now when I was observing.

Ms Mokoena : … Like I was saying I think that because of the re-emphasis of the fact that, look, everybody did suffer one way or the other, they sort of got to see that it was everybody’s struggle … . They should now get to understand that that’s why we’re called a Rainbow Nation. Not everybody agreed with apartheid and not everybody suffered. Even all the blacks, not all blacks got to feel what the others felt . So ja [yes], it’s [pause] it’s a difficult topic, ja . But I think if you get the kids to understand why we’re teaching apartheid in the first place and you show the involvement of all races in all the different sides , then I think you have managed to teach it properly. So I think because of my inexperience then — that was my first year of teaching history — so I think I — maybe I over-emphasized the suffering of the blacks versus the whites [emphasis added].

Reprinted with permission from ref. 24 , Sage Publications.

From data to codes

Coding data is a key building block shared across many approaches to data analysis. Coding is a way of organizing and describing data, but is also ultimately a way of transforming data to produce analytic insights. The basic practice of coding involves highlighting a segment of text (this may be a sentence, a clause or a longer excerpt) and assigning a label to it. The aim of the label is to communicate some sort of summary of what is in the highlighted piece of text. Coding is an iterative process, whereby researchers read and reread their transcripts, applying and refining their codes, until they have a coding frame (a set of codes) that is applied coherently across the dataset and that captures and communicates the key features of what is contained in the data as it relates to the researchers’ analytic focus.

What one codes for is entirely contingent on the focus of the research project and the choices the researcher makes about the approach to analysis. At first, one might apply descriptive codes, summarizing what is contained in the interviews. It is rarely desirable to stop at this point, however, because coding is a tool to move from describing the data to interpreting the data. Suppose the researcher is pursuing some version of thematic analysis. In that case, it might be that the objects of coding are aspects of reported action, emotions, opinions, norms, relationships, routines, agreement/disagreement and change over time. A discourse analysis might instead code for different types of speech acts, tropes, linguistic or rhetorical devices. Multiple types of code might be generated within the same research project. What is important is that researchers are aware of the choices they are making in terms of what they are coding for. Moreover, through the process of refinement, the aim is to produce a set of discrete codes — in which codes are conceptually distinct, as opposed to overlapping. By using the same codes across the dataset, the researcher can capture commonalities across the interviews. This process of refinement involves relabelling codes and reorganizing how and where they are applied in the dataset.

From coding to analysis and writing

Data analysis is also an iterative process in which researchers move closer to and further away from the data. As they move away from the data, they synthesize their findings, thus honing and articulating their analytic insights. As they move closer to the data, they ground these insights in what is contained in the interviews. The link should not be broken between the data themselves and higher-order conceptual insights or claims being made. Researchers must be able to show evidence for their claims in the data. Figure  2 summarizes this iterative process and suggests the sorts of activities involved at each stage more concretely.

As well as going through steps 1 to 6 in order, the researcher will also go backwards and forwards between stages. Some stages will themselves be a forwards and backwards processing of coding and refining when working across different interview transcripts.

At the stage of synthesizing, there are some common quandaries. When dealing with a dataset consisting of multiple interviews, there will be salient and minority statements across different participants, or consensus or dissent on topics of interest to the researcher. A strength of qualitative interviews is that we can build in these nuances and variations across our data as opposed to aggregating them away. When exploring and reporting data, researchers should be asking how different findings are patterned and which interviews contain which codes, themes or tropes. Researchers should think about how these variations fit within the longer flow of individual interviews and what these variations tell them about the nature of their substantive research interests.

A further consideration is how to approach analysis within and across interview data. Researchers may look at one individual code, to examine the forms it takes across different participants and what they might be able to summarize about this code in the round. Alternatively, they might look at how a code or set of codes pattern across the account of one participant, to understand the code(s) in a more contextualized way. Further analysis might be done according to different sampling characteristics, where researchers group together interviews based on certain demographic characteristics and explore these together.

When it comes to writing up and presenting interview data, key considerations tend to rest on what is often termed transparency. When presenting the findings of an interview-based study, the reader should be able to understand and trace what the stated findings are based upon. This process typically involves describing the analytic process, how key decisions were made and presenting direct excerpts from the data. It is important to account for how the interview was set up and to consider the active part that the researcher has played in generating the data 32 . Quotes from interviews should not be thought of as merely embellishing or adding interest to a final research output. Rather, quotes serve the important function of connecting the reader directly to the underlying data. Quotes, therefore, should be chosen because they provide the reader with the most apt insight into what is being discussed. It is good practice to report not just on what participants said, but also on the questions that were asked to elicit the responses.

Researchers have increasingly used specialist qualitative data analysis software to organize and analyse their interview data, such as NVivo or ATLAS.ti. It is important to remember that such software is a tool for, rather than an approach or technique of, analysis. That said, software also creates a wide range of possibilities in terms of what can be done with the data. As researchers, we should reflect on how the range of possibilities of a given software package might be shaping our analytical choices and whether these are choices that we do indeed want to make.

Applications

This section reviews how and why in-depth interviews have been used by researchers studying gender, education and inequality, nationalism and ethnicity and the welfare state. Although interviews can be employed as a method of data collection in just about any social science topic, the applications below speak directly to the authors’ expertise and cutting-edge areas of research.

When it comes to the broad study of gender, in-depth interviews have been invaluable in shaping our understanding of how gender functions in everyday life. In a study of the US hedge fund industry (an industry dominated by white men), Tobias Neely was interested in understanding the factors that enable white men to prosper in the industry 33 . The study comprised interviews with 45 hedge fund workers and oversampled women of all races and men of colour to capture a range of experiences and beliefs. Tobias Neely found that practices of hiring, grooming and seeding are key to maintaining white men’s dominance in the industry. In terms of hiring, the interviews clarified that white men in charge typically preferred to hire people like themselves, usually from their extended networks. When women were hired, they were usually hired to less lucrative positions. In terms of grooming, Tobias Neely identifies how older and more senior men in the industry who have power and status will select one or several younger men as their protégés, to include in their own elite networks. Finally, in terms of her concept of seeding, Tobias Neely describes how older men who are hedge fund managers provide the seed money (often in the hundreds of millions of dollars) for a hedge fund to men, often their own sons (but not their daughters). These interviews provided an in-depth look into gendered and racialized mechanisms that allow white men to flourish in this industry.

Research by Rao draws on dozens of interviews with men and women who had lost their jobs, some of the participants’ spouses and follow-up interviews with about half the sample approximately 6 months after the initial interview 34 . Rao used interviews to understand the gendered experience and understanding of unemployment. Through these interviews, she found that the very process of losing their jobs meant different things for men and women. Women often saw job loss as being a personal indictment of their professional capabilities. The women interviewed often referenced how years of devaluation in the workplace coloured their interpretation of their job loss. Men, by contrast, were also saddened by their job loss, but they saw it as part and parcel of a weak economy rather than a personal failing. How these varied interpretations occurred was tied to men’s and women’s very different experiences in the workplace. Further, through her analysis of these interviews, Rao also showed how these gendered interpretations had implications for the kinds of jobs men and women sought to pursue after job loss. Whereas men remained tied to participating in full-time paid work, job loss appeared to be a catalyst pushing some of the women to re-evaluate their ties to the labour force.

In a study of workers in the tech industry, Hart used interviews to explain how individuals respond to unwanted and ambiguously sexual interactions 35 . Here, the researcher used interviews to allow participants to describe how these interactions made them feel and act and the logics of how they interpreted, classified and made sense of them 35 . Through her analysis of these interviews, Hart showed that participants engaged in a process she termed “trajectory guarding”, whereby they sought to monitor unwanted and ambiguously sexual interactions to avoid them from escalating. Yet, as Hart’s analysis proficiently demonstrates, these very strategies — which protect these workers sexually — also undermined their workplace advancement.

Drawing on interviews, these studies have helped us to understand better how gendered mechanisms, gendered interpretations and gendered interactions foster gender inequality when it comes to paid work. Methodologically, these studies illuminate the power of interviews to reveal important aspects of social life.

Nationalism and ethnicity

Traditionally, nationalism has been studied from a top-down perspective, through the lens of the state or using historical methods; in other words, in-depth interviews have not been a common way of collecting data to study nationalism. The methodological turn towards everyday nationalism has encouraged more scholars to go to the field and use interviews (and ethnography) to understand nationalism from the bottom up: how people talk about, give meaning, understand, navigate and contest their relation to nation, national identification and nationalism 36 , 37 , 38 , 39 . This turn has also addressed the gap left by those studying national and ethnic identification via quantitative methods, such as surveys.

Surveys can enumerate how individuals ascribe to categorical forms of identification 40 . However, interviews can question the usefulness of such categories and ask whether these categories are reflected, or resisted, by participants in terms of the meanings they give to identification 41 , 42 . Categories often pitch identification as a mutually exclusive choice; but identification might be more complex than such categories allow. For example, some might hybridize these categories or see themselves as moving between and across categories 43 . Hearing how people talk about themselves and their relation to nations, states and ethnicities, therefore, contributes substantially to the study of nationalism and national and ethnic forms of identification.

One particular approach to studying these topics, whether via everyday nationalism or alternatives, is that of using interviews to capture both articulations and narratives of identification, relations to nationalism and the boundaries people construct. For example, interviews can be used to gather self–other narratives by studying how individuals construct I–we–them boundaries 44 , including how participants talk about themselves, who participants include in their various ‘we’ groupings and which and how participants create ‘them’ groupings of others, inserting boundaries between ‘I/we’ and ‘them’. Overall, interviews hold great potential for listening to participants and understanding the nuances of identification and the construction of boundaries from their point of view.

Education and inequality

Scholars of social stratification have long noted that the school system often reproduces existing social inequalities. Carter explains that all schools have both material and sociocultural resources 45 . When children from different backgrounds attend schools with different material resources, their educational and occupational outcomes are likely to vary. Such material resources are relatively easy to measure. They are operationalized as teacher-to-student ratios, access to computers and textbooks and the physical infrastructure of classrooms and playgrounds.

Drawing on Bourdieusian theory 46 , Carter conceptualizes the sociocultural context as the norms, values and dispositions privileged within a social space 45 . Scholars have drawn on interviews with students and teachers (as well as ethnographic observations) to show how schools confer advantages on students from middle-class families, for example, by rewarding their help-seeking behaviours 47 . Focusing on race, researchers have revealed how schools can remain socioculturally white even as they enrol a racially diverse student population. In such contexts, for example, teachers often misrecognize the aesthetic choices made by students of colour, wrongly inferring that these students’ tastes in clothing and music reflect negative orientations to schooling 48 , 49 , 50 . These assessments can result in disparate forms of discipline and may ultimately shape educators’ assessments of students’ academic potential 51 .

Further, teachers and administrators tend to view the appropriate relationship between home and school in ways that resonate with white middle-class parents 52 . These parents are then able to advocate effectively for their children in ways that non-white parents are not 53 . In-depth interviews are particularly good at tapping into these understandings, revealing the mechanisms that confer privilege on certain groups of students and thereby reproduce inequality.

In addition, interviews can shed light on the unequal experiences that young people have within educational institutions, as the views of dominant groups are affirmed while those from disadvantaged backgrounds are delegitimized. For example, Teeger’s interviews with South African high schoolers showed how — because racially charged incidents are often framed as jokes in the broader school culture — Black students often feel compelled to ignore and keep silent about the racism they experience 54 . Interviews revealed that Black students who objected to these supposed jokes were coded by other students as serious or angry. In trying to avoid such labels, these students found themselves unable to challenge the racism they experienced. Interviews give us insight into these dynamics and help us see how young people understand and interpret the messages transmitted in schools — including those that speak to issues of inequality in their local school contexts as well as in society more broadly 24 , 55 .

The welfare state

In-depth interviews have also proved to be an important method for studying various aspects of the welfare state. By welfare state, we mean the social institutions relating to the economic and social wellbeing of a state’s citizens. Notably, using interviews has been useful to look at how policy design features are experienced and play out on the ground. Interviews have often been paired with large-scale surveys to produce mixed-methods study designs, therefore achieving both breadth and depth of insights.

In-depth interviews provide the opportunity to look behind policy assumptions or how policies are designed from the top down, to examine how these play out in the lives of those affected by the policies and whose experiences might otherwise be obscured or ignored. For example, the Welfare Conditionality project used interviews to critique the assumptions that conditionality (such as, the withdrawal of social security benefits if recipients did not perform or meet certain criteria) improved employment outcomes and instead showed that conditionality was harmful to mental health, living standards and had many other negative consequences 56 . Meanwhile, combining datasets from two small-scale interview studies with recipients allowed Summers and Young to critique assumptions around the simplicity that underpinned the design of Universal Credit in 2020, for example, showing that the apparently simple monthly payment design instead burdened recipients with additional money management decisions and responsibilities 57 .

Similarly, the Welfare at a (Social) Distance project used a mixed-methods approach in a large-scale study that combined national surveys with case studies and in-depth interviews to investigate the experience of claiming social security benefits during the COVID-19 pandemic. The interviews allowed researchers to understand in detail any issues experienced by recipients of benefits, such as delays in the process of claiming, managing on a very tight budget and navigating stigma and claiming 58 .

These applications demonstrate the multi-faceted topics and questions for which interviews can be a relevant method for data collection. These applications highlight not only the relevance of interviews, but also emphasize the key added value of interviews, which might be missed by other methods (surveys, in particular). Interviews can expose and question what is taken for granted and directly engage with communities and participants that might otherwise be ignored, obscured or marginalized.

Reproducibility and data deposition

There is a robust, ongoing debate about reproducibility in qualitative research, including interview studies. In some research paradigms, reproducibility can be a way of interrogating the rigour and robustness of research claims, by seeing whether these hold up when the research process is repeated. Some scholars have suggested that although reproducibility may be challenging, researchers can facilitate it by naming the place where the research was conducted, naming participants, sharing interview and fieldwork transcripts (anonymized and de-identified in cases where researchers are not naming people or places) and employing fact-checkers for accuracy 11 , 59 , 60 .

In addition to the ethical concerns of whether de-anonymization is ever feasible or desirable, it is also important to address whether the replicability of interview studies is meaningful. For example, the flexibility of interviews allows for the unexpected and the unforeseen to be incorporated into the scope of the research 61 . However, this flexibility means that we cannot expect reproducibility in the conventional sense, given that different researchers will elicit different types of data from participants. Sharing interview transcripts with other researchers, for instance, downplays the contextual nature of an interview.

Drawing on Bauer and Gaskell, we propose several measures to enhance rigour in qualitative research: transparency, grounding interpretations and aiming for theoretical transferability and significance 62 .

Researchers should be transparent when describing their methodological choices. Transparency means documenting who was interviewed, where and when (without requiring de-anonymization, for example, by documenting their characteristics), as well as the questions they were asked. It means carefully considering who was left out of the interviews and what that could mean for the researcher’s findings. It also means carefully considering who the researcher is and how their identity shaped the research process (integrating and articulating reflexivity into whatever is written up).

Second, researchers should ground their interpretations in the data. Grounding means presenting the evidence upon which the interpretation relies. Quotes and extracts should be extensive enough to allow the reader to evaluate whether the researcher’s interpretations are grounded in the data. At each step, researchers should carefully compare their own explanations and interpretations with alternative explanations. Doing so systematically and frequently allows researchers to become more confident in their claims. Here, researchers should justify the link between data and analysis by using quotes to justify and demonstrate the analytical point, while making sure the analytical point offers an interpretation of quotes (Box  4 ).

An important step in considering alternative explanations is to seek out disconfirming evidence 4 , 63 . This involves looking for instances where participants deviate from what the majority are saying and thus bring into question the theory (or explanation) that the researcher is developing. Careful analysis of such examples can often demonstrate the salience and meaning of what appears to be the norm (see Table  2 for examples) 54 . Considering alternative explanations and paying attention to disconfirming evidence allows the researcher to refine their own theories in respect of the data.

Finally, researchers should aim for theoretical transferability and significance in their discussions of findings. One way to think about this is to imagine someone who is not interested in the empirical study. Articulating theoretical transferability and significance usually takes the form of broadening out from the specific findings to consider explicitly how the research has refined or altered prior theoretical approaches. This process also means considering under what other conditions, aside from those of the study, the researcher thinks their theoretical revision would be supported by and why. Importantly, it also includes thinking about the limitations of one’s own approach and where the theoretical implications of the study might not hold.

Box 4 An example of grounding interpretations in data (from Rao 34 )

In an article explaining how unemployed men frame their job loss as a pervasive experience, Rao writes the following: “Unemployed men in this study understood unemployment to be an expected aspect of paid work in the contemporary United States. Robert, a white unemployed communications professional, compared the economic landscape after the Great Recession with the tragic events of September 11, 2001:

Part of your post-9/11 world was knowing people that died as a result of terrorism. The same thing is true with the [Great] Recession, right? … After the Recession you know somebody who was unemployed … People that really should be working.

The pervasiveness of unemployment rendered it normal, as Robert indicates.”

Here, the link between the quote presented and the analytical point Rao is making is clear: the analytical point is grounded in a quote and an interpretation of the quote is offered 34 .

Limitations and optimizations

When deciding which research method to use, the key question is whether the method provides a good fit for the research questions posed. In other words, researchers should consider whether interviews will allow them to successfully access the social phenomena necessary to answer their question(s) and whether the interviews will do so more effectively than other methods. Table  3 summarizes the major strengths and limitations of interviews. However, the accompanying text below is organized around some key issues, where relative strengths and weaknesses are presented alongside each other, the aim being that readers should think about how these can be balanced and optimized in relation to their own research.

Breadth versus depth of insight

Achieving an overall breadth of insight, in a statistically representative sense, is not something that is possible or indeed desirable when conducting in-depth interviews. Instead, the strength of conducting interviews lies in their ability to generate various sorts of depth of insight. The experiences or views of participants that can be accessed by conducting interviews help us to understand participants’ subjective realities. The challenge, therefore, is for researchers to be clear about why depth of insight is the focus and what we should aim to glean from these types of insight.

Naturalistic or artificial interviews

Interviews make use of a form of interaction with which people are familiar 64 . By replicating a naturalistic form of interaction as a tool to gather social science data, researchers can capitalize on people’s familiarity and expectations of what happens in a conversation. This familiarity can also be a challenge, as people come to the interview with preconceived ideas about what this conversation might be for or about. People may draw on experiences of other similar conversations when taking part in a research interview (for example, job interviews, therapy sessions, confessional conversations, chats with friends). Researchers should be aware of such potential overlaps and think through their implications both in how the aims and purposes of the research interview are communicated to participants and in how interview data are interpreted.

Further, some argue that a limitation of interviews is that they are an artificial form of data collection. By taking people out of their daily lives and asking them to stand back and pass comment, we are creating a distance that makes it difficult to use such data to say something meaningful about people’s actions, experiences and views. Other approaches, such as ethnography, might be more suitable for tapping into what people actually do, as opposed to what they say they do 65 .

Dynamism and replicability

Interviews following a semi-structured format offer flexibility both to the researcher and the participant. As the conversation develops, the interlocutors can explore the topics raised in much more detail, if desired, or pass over ones that are not relevant. This flexibility allows for the unexpected and the unforeseen to be incorporated into the scope of the research.

However, this flexibility has a related challenge of replicability. Interviews cannot be reproduced because they are contingent upon the interaction between the researcher and the participant in that given moment of interaction. In some research paradigms, replicability can be a way of interrogating the robustness of research claims, by seeing whether they hold when they are repeated. This is not a useful framework to bring to in-depth interviews and instead quality criteria (such as transparency) tend to be employed as criteria of rigour.

Accessing the private and personal

Interviews have been recognized for their strength in accessing private, personal issues, which participants may feel more comfortable talking about in a one-to-one conversation. Furthermore, interviews are likely to take a more personable form with their extended questions and answers, perhaps making a participant feel more at ease when discussing sensitive topics in such a context. There is a similar, but separate, argument made about accessing what are sometimes referred to as vulnerable groups, who may be difficult to make contact with using other research methods.

There is an associated challenge of anonymity. There can be types of in-depth interview that make it particularly challenging to protect the identities of participants, such as interviewing within a small community, or multiple members of the same household. The challenge to ensure anonymity in such contexts is even more important and difficult when the topic of research is of a sensitive nature or participants are vulnerable.

Increasingly, researchers are collaborating in large-scale interview-based studies and integrating interviews into broader mixed-methods designs. At the same time, interviews can be seen as an old-fashioned (and perhaps outdated) mode of data collection. We review these debates and discussions and point to innovations in interview-based studies. These include the shift from face-to-face interviews to the use of online platforms, as well as integrating and adapting interviews towards more inclusive methodologies.

Collaborating and mixing

Qualitative researchers have long worked alone 66 . Increasingly, however, researchers are collaborating with others for reasons such as efficiency, institutional incentives (for example, funding for collaborative research) and a desire to pool expertise (for example, studying similar phenomena in different contexts 67 or via different methods). Collaboration can occur across disciplines and methods, cases and contexts and between industry/business, practitioners and researchers. In many settings and contexts, collaboration has become an imperative 68 .

Cheek notes how collaboration provides both advantages and disadvantages 68 . For example, collaboration can be advantageous, saving time and building on the divergent knowledge, skills and resources of different researchers. Scholars with different theoretical or case-based knowledge (or contacts) can work together to build research that is comparative and/or more than the sum of its parts. But such endeavours also carry with them practical and political challenges in terms of how resources might actually be pooled, shared or accounted for. When undertaking such projects, as Morse notes, it is worth thinking about the nature of the collaboration and being explicit about such a choice, its advantages and its disadvantages 66 .

A further tension, but also a motivation for collaboration, stems from integrating interviews as a method in a mixed-methods project, whether with other qualitative researchers (to combine with, for example, focus groups, document analysis or ethnography) or with quantitative researchers (to combine with, for example, surveys, social media analysis or big data analysis). Cheek and Morse both note the pitfalls of collaboration with quantitative researchers: that quality of research may be sacrificed, qualitative interpretations watered down or not taken seriously, or tensions experienced over the pace and different assumptions that come with different methods and approaches of research 66 , 68 .

At the same time, there can be real benefits of such mixed-methods collaboration, such as reaching different and more diverse audiences or testing assumptions and theories between research components in the same project (for example, testing insights from prior quantitative research via interviews, or vice versa), as long as the skillsets of collaborators are seen as equally beneficial to the project. Cheek provides a set of questions that, as a starting point, can be useful for guiding collaboration, whether mixed methods or otherwise. First, Cheek advises asking all collaborators about their assumptions and understandings concerning collaboration. Second, Cheek recommends discussing what each perspective highlights and focuses on (and conversely ignores or sidelines) 68 .

A different way to engage with the idea of collaboration and mixed methods research is by fostering greater collaboration between researchers in the Global South and Global North, thus reversing trends of researchers from the Global North extracting knowledge from the Global South 69 . Such forms of collaboration also align with interview innovations, discussed below, that seek to transform traditional interview approaches into more participatory and inclusive (as part of participatory methodologies).

Digital innovations and challenges

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has centred the question of technology within interview-based fieldwork. Although conducting synchronous oral interviews online — for example, via Zoom, Skype or other such platforms — has been a method used by a small constituency of researchers for many years, it became (and remains) a necessity for many researchers wanting to continue or start interview-based projects while COVID-19 prevents face-to-face data collection.

In the past, online interviews were often framed as an inferior form of data collection for not providing the kinds of (often necessary) insights and forms of immersion face-to-face interviews allow 70 , 71 . Online interviews do tend to be more decontextualized than interviews conducted face-to-face 72 . For example, it is harder to recognize, engage with and respond to non-verbal cues 71 . At the same time, they broaden participation to those who might not have been able to access or travel to sites where interviews would have been conducted otherwise, for example people with disabilities. Online interviews also offer more flexibility in terms of scheduling and time requirements. For example, they provide more flexibility around precarious employment or caring responsibilities without having to travel and be away from home. In addition, online interviews might also reduce discomfort between researchers and participants, compared with face-to-face interviews, enabling more discussion of sensitive material 71 . They can also provide participants with more control, enabling them to turn on and off the microphone and video as they choose, for example, to provide more time to reflect and disconnect if they so wish 72 .

That said, online interviews can also introduce new biases based on access to technology 72 . For example, in the Global South, there are often urban/rural and gender gaps between who has access to mobile phones and who does not, meaning that some population groups might be overlooked unless researchers sample mindfully 71 . There are also important ethical considerations when deciding between online and face-to-face interviews. Online interviews might seem to imply lower ethical risks than face-to-face interviews (for example, they lower the chances of identification of participants or researchers), but they also offer more barriers to building trust between researchers and participants 72 . Interacting only online with participants might not provide the information needed to assess risk, for example, participants’ access to a private space to speak 71 . Just because online interviews might be more likely to be conducted in private spaces does not mean that private spaces are safe, for example, for victims of domestic violence. Finally, online interviews prompt further questions about decolonizing research and engaging with participants if research is conducted from afar 72 , such as how to include participants meaningfully and challenge dominant assumptions while doing so remotely.

A further digital innovation, modulating how researchers conduct interviews and the kinds of data collected and analysed, stems from the use and integration of (new) technology, such as WhatsApp text or voice notes to conduct synchronous or asynchronous oral or written interviews 73 . Such methods can provide more privacy, comfort and control to participants and make recruitment easier, allowing participants to share what they want when they want to, using technology that already forms a part of their daily lives, especially for young people 74 , 75 . Such technology is also emerging in other qualitative methods, such as focus groups, with similar arguments around greater inclusivity versus traditional offline modes. Here, the digital challenge might be higher for researchers than for participants if they are less used to such technology 75 . And while there might be concerns about the richness, depth and quality of written messages as a form of interview data, Gibson reports that the reams of transcripts that resulted from a study using written messaging were dense with meaning to be analysed 75 .

Like with online and face-to-face interviews, it is important also to consider the ethical questions and challenges of using such technology, from gaining consent to ensuring participant safety and attending to their distress, without cues, like crying, that might be more obvious in a face-to-face setting 75 , 76 . Attention to the platform used for such interviews is also important and researchers should be attuned to the local and national context. For example, in China, many platforms are neither legal nor available 76 . There, more popular platforms — like WeChat — can be highly monitored by the government, posing potential risks to participants depending on the topic of the interview. Ultimately, researchers should consider trade-offs between online and offline interview modalities, being attentive to the social context and power dynamics involved.

The next 5–10 years

Continuing to integrate (ethically) this technology will be among the major persisting developments in interview-based research, whether to offer more flexibility to researchers or participants, or to diversify who can participate and on what terms.

Pushing the idea of inclusion even further is the potential for integrating interview-based studies within participatory methods, which are also innovating via integrating technology. There is no hard and fast line between researchers using in-depth interviews and participatory methods; many who employ participatory methods will use interviews at the beginning, middle or end phases of a research project to capture insights, perspectives and reflections from participants 77 , 78 . Participatory methods emphasize the need to resist existing power and knowledge structures. They broaden who has the right and ability to contribute to academic knowledge by including and incorporating participants not only as subjects of data collection, but as crucial voices in research design and data analysis 77 . Participatory methods also seek to facilitate local change and to produce research materials, whether for academic or non-academic audiences, including films and documentaries, in collaboration with participants.

In responding to the challenges of COVID-19, capturing the fraught situation wrought by the pandemic and the momentum to integrate technology, participatory researchers have sought to continue data collection from afar. For example, Marzi has adapted an existing project to co-produce participatory videos, via participants’ smartphones in Medellin, Colombia, alongside regular check-in conversations/meetings/interviews with participants 79 . Integrating participatory methods into interview studies offers a route by which researchers can respond to the challenge of diversifying knowledge, challenging assumptions and power hierarchies and creating more inclusive and collaborative partnerships between participants and researchers in the Global North and South.

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A pre-written interview outline for a semi-structured interview that provides both a topic structure and the ability to adapt flexibly to the content and context of the interview and the interaction between the interviewer and participant. Others may refer to the topic guide as an interview protocol.

Here we refer to the participants that take part in the study as the sample. Other researchers may refer to the participants as a participant group or dataset.

This involves dividing a population into smaller groups based on particular characteristics, for example, age or gender, and then sampling randomly within each group.

A sampling method where the guiding logic when deciding who to recruit is to achieve the most relevant participants for the research topic, in terms of being rich in information or insights.

Researchers ask participants to introduce the researcher to others who meet the study’s inclusion criteria.

Similar to stratified sampling, but participants are not necessarily randomly selected. Instead, the researcher determines how many people from each category of participants should be recruited. Recruitment can happen via snowball or purposive sampling.

A method for developing, analysing and interpreting patterns across data by coding in order to develop themes.

An approach that interrogates the explicit, implicit and taken-for-granted dimensions of language as well as the contexts in which it is articulated to unpack its purposes and effects.

A form of transcription that simplifies what has been said by removing certain verbal and non-verbal details that add no further meaning, such as ‘ums and ahs’ and false starts.

The analytic framework, theoretical approach and often hypotheses, are developed prior to examining the data and then applied to the dataset.

The analytic framework and theoretical approach is developed from analysing the data.

An approach that combines deductive and inductive components to work recursively by going back and forth between data and existing theoretical frameworks (also described as an iterative approach). This approach is increasingly recognized not only as a more realistic but also more desirable third alternative to the more traditional inductive versus deductive binary choice.

A theoretical apparatus that emphasizes the role of cultural processes and capital in (intergenerational) social reproduction.

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How to Conduct an Effective Interview; A Guide to Interview Design in Research Study

International Journal of Academic Research in Management, 11(1):39-51, 2022 https://elvedit.com/journals/IJARM/wp-content/uploads/How-to-Conduct-an-Effective-Interview-A-Guide-to-Interview-Design

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Hamed Taherdoost

Hamta Group

Date Written: August 1, 2022

Interviews are one of the most promising ways of collecting qualitative data through establishment of a communication between researcher and the interviewee. Researcher in a face to face, phone or online conversation tries to understand and explore respondents’ opinions and behavior in a specific subject. Despite the significant importance of interviews to collect data in a research study, it may look challenging to design an effective interview that provides unbiased, enough and accurate data. This article provides the common steps of designing and conducting effective interviews and lists the main ethical issues that researchers, interviewers, and participants need to consider in the interview process of a research study.

Keywords: Data Collection, Interview Design, Data Collection Methods, Academic Research Paper, Effective Interview.

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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.

Qualitative Research 101: Interviewing

5 Common Mistakes To Avoid When Undertaking Interviews

By: David Phair (PhD) and Kerryn Warren (PhD) | March 2022

Undertaking interviews is potentially the most important step in the qualitative research process. If you don’t collect useful, useable data in your interviews, you’ll struggle through the rest of your dissertation or thesis.  Having helped numerous students with their research over the years, we’ve noticed some common interviewing mistakes that first-time researchers make. In this post, we’ll discuss five costly interview-related mistakes and outline useful strategies to avoid making these.

Overview: 5 Interviewing Mistakes

• Not having a clear interview strategy /plan
• Not having good interview techniques /skills
• Not securing a suitable location and equipment
• Not having a basic risk management plan
• Not keeping your “ golden thread ” front of mind

1. Not having a clear interview strategy

The first common mistake that we’ll look at is that of starting the interviewing process without having first come up with a clear interview strategy or plan of action. While it’s natural to be keen to get started engaging with your interviewees, a lack of planning can result in a mess of data and inconsistency between interviews.

There are several design choices to decide on and plan for before you start interviewing anyone. Some of the most important questions you need to ask yourself before conducting interviews include:

• What are the guiding research aims and research questions of my study?
• Will I use a structured, semi-structured or unstructured interview approach?
• How will I record the interviews (audio or video)?
• Who will be interviewed and by whom ?
• What ethics and data law considerations do I need to adhere to?
• How will I analyze my data? 

Let’s take a quick look at some of these.

The core objective of the interviewing process is to generate useful data that will help you address your overall research aims. Therefore, your interviews need to be conducted in a way that directly links to your research aims, objectives and research questions (i.e. your “golden thread”). This means that you need to carefully consider the questions you’ll ask to ensure that they align with and feed into your golden thread. If any question doesn’t align with this, you may want to consider scrapping it.

Another important design choice is whether you’ll use an unstructured, semi-structured or structured interview approach . For semi-structured interviews, you will have a list of questions that you plan to ask and these questions will be open-ended in nature. You’ll also allow the discussion to digress from the core question set if something interesting comes up. This means that the type of information generated might differ a fair amount between interviews.

Contrasted to this, a structured approach to interviews is more rigid, where a specific set of closed questions is developed and asked for each interviewee in exactly the same order. Closed questions have a limited set of answers, that are often single-word answers. Therefore, you need to think about what you’re trying to achieve with your research project (i.e. your research aims) and decided on which approach would be best suited in your case.

It is also important to plan ahead with regards to who will be interviewed and how. You need to think about how you will approach the possible interviewees to get their cooperation, who will conduct the interviews, when to conduct the interviews and how to record the interviews. For each of these decisions, it’s also essential to make sure that all ethical considerations and data protection laws are taken into account.

Finally, you should think through how you plan to analyze the data (i.e., your qualitative analysis method) generated by the interviews. Different types of analysis rely on different types of data, so you need to ensure you’re asking the right types of questions and correctly guiding your respondents.

Simply put, you need to have a plan of action regarding the specifics of your interview approach before you start collecting data. If not, you’ll end up drifting in your approach from interview to interview, which will result in inconsistent, unusable data.

2. Not having good interview technique

While you’re generally not expected to become you to be an expert interviewer for a dissertation or thesis, it is important to practice good interview technique and develop basic interviewing skills .

Let’s go through some basics that will help the process along.

Firstly, before the interview , make sure you know your interview questions well and have a clear idea of what you want from the interview. Naturally, the specificity of your questions will depend on whether you’re taking a structured, semi-structured or unstructured approach, but you still need a consistent starting point . Ideally, you should develop an interview guide beforehand (more on this later) that details your core question and links these to the research aims, objectives and research questions.

Before you undertake any interviews, it’s a good idea to do a few mock interviews with friends or family members. This will help you get comfortable with the interviewer role, prepare for potentially unexpected answers and give you a good idea of how long the interview will take to conduct. In the interviewing process, you’re likely to encounter two kinds of challenging interviewees ; the two-word respondent and the respondent who meanders and babbles. Therefore, you should prepare yourself for both and come up with a plan to respond to each in a way that will allow the interview to continue productively.

To begin the formal interview , provide the person you are interviewing with an overview of your research. This will help to calm their nerves (and yours) and contextualize the interaction. Ultimately, you want the interviewee to feel comfortable and be willing to be open and honest with you, so it’s useful to start in a more casual, relaxed fashion and allow them to ask any questions they may have. From there, you can ease them into the rest of the questions.

As the interview progresses , avoid asking leading questions (i.e., questions that assume something about the interviewee or their response). Make sure that you speak clearly and slowly , using plain language and being ready to paraphrase questions if the person you are interviewing misunderstands. Be particularly careful with interviewing English second language speakers to ensure that you’re both on the same page.

Engage with the interviewee by listening to them carefully and acknowledging that you are listening to them by smiling or nodding. Show them that you’re interested in what they’re saying and thank them for their openness as appropriate. This will also encourage your interviewee to respond openly.

Need a helping hand?

3. Not securing a suitable location and quality equipment

Where you conduct your interviews and the equipment you use to record them both play an important role in how the process unfolds. Therefore, you need to think carefully about each of these variables before you start interviewing.

Poor location: A bad location can result in the quality of your interviews being compromised, interrupted, or cancelled. If you are conducting physical interviews, you’ll need a location that is quiet, safe, and welcoming . It’s very important that your location of choice is not prone to interruptions (the workplace office is generally problematic, for example) and has suitable facilities (such as water, a bathroom, and snacks).

If you are conducting online interviews , you need to consider a few other factors. Importantly, you need to make sure that both you and your respondent have access to a good, stable internet connection and electricity. Always check before the time that both of you know how to use the relevant software and it’s accessible (sometimes meeting platforms are blocked by workplace policies or firewalls). It’s also good to have alternatives in place (such as WhatsApp, Zoom, or Teams) to cater for these types of issues.

Poor equipment: Using poor-quality recording equipment or using equipment incorrectly means that you will have trouble transcribing, coding, and analyzing your interviews. This can be a major issue , as some of your interview data may go completely to waste if not recorded well. So, make sure that you use good-quality recording equipment and that you know how to use it correctly.

To avoid issues, you should always conduct test recordings before every interview to ensure that you can use the relevant equipment properly. It’s also a good idea to spot check each recording afterwards, just to make sure it was recorded as planned. If your equipment uses batteries, be sure to always carry a spare set.

4. Not having a basic risk management plan

Many possible issues can arise during the interview process. Not planning for these issues can mean that you are left with compromised data that might not be useful to you. Therefore, it’s important to map out some sort of risk management plan ahead of time, considering the potential risks, how you’ll minimize their probability and how you’ll manage them if they materialize.

Common potential issues related to the actual interview include cancellations (people pulling out), delays (such as getting stuck in traffic), language and accent differences (especially in the case of poor internet connections), issues with internet connections and power supply. Other issues can also occur in the interview itself. For example, the interviewee could drift off-topic, or you might encounter an interviewee who does not say much at all.

You can prepare for these potential issues by considering possible worst-case scenarios and preparing a response for each scenario. For instance, it is important to plan a backup date just in case your interviewee cannot make it to the first meeting you scheduled with them. It’s also a good idea to factor in a 30-minute gap between your interviews for the instances where someone might be late, or an interview runs overtime for other reasons. Make sure that you also plan backup questions that could be used to bring a respondent back on topic if they start rambling, or questions to encourage those who are saying too little.

In general, it’s best practice to plan to conduct more interviews than you think you need (this is called oversampling ). Doing so will allow you some room for error if there are interviews that don’t go as planned, or if some interviewees withdraw. If you need 10 interviews, it is a good idea to plan for 15. Likely, a few will cancel , delay, or not produce useful data.

5. Not keeping your golden thread front of mind

We touched on this a little earlier, but it is a key point that should be central to your entire research process. You don’t want to end up with pages and pages of data after conducting your interviews and realize that it is not useful to your research aims . Your research aims, objectives and research questions – i.e., your golden thread – should influence every design decision and should guide the interview process at all times. 

A useful way to avoid this mistake is by developing an interview guide before you begin interviewing your respondents. An interview guide is a document that contains all of your questions with notes on how each of the interview questions is linked to the research question(s) of your study. You can also include your research aims and objectives here for a more comprehensive linkage. 

You can easily create an interview guide by drawing up a table with one column containing your core interview questions . Then add another column with your research questions , another with expectations that you may have in light of the relevant literature and another with backup or follow-up questions . As mentioned, you can also bring in your research aims and objectives to help you connect them all together. If you’d like, you can download a copy of our free interview guide here .

Recap: Qualitative Interview Mistakes

In this post, we’ve discussed 5 common costly mistakes that are easy to make in the process of planning and conducting qualitative interviews.

To recap, these include:

If you have any questions about these interviewing mistakes, drop a comment below. Alternatively, if you’re interested in getting 1-on-1 help with your thesis or dissertation , check out our dissertation coaching service or book a free initial consultation with one of our friendly Grad Coaches.

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The Qualitative Interview in Psychology and the Study of Social Change: Sexual Identity Development, Minority Stress, and Health in the Generations Study

David m. frost.

University College London

Phillip L. Hammack

University of California, Santa Cruz

Bianca D. M. Wilson

University of California, Los Angeles

Stephen T. Russell

University of Texas at Austin

Marguerita Lightfoot

University of California, San Francisco

Ilan H. Meyer

Associated data.

Interviewing is considered a key form of qualitative inquiry in psychology that yields rich data on lived experience and meaning making of life events. Interviews that contain multiple components informed by specific epistemologies have the potential to provide particularly nuanced perspectives on psychological experience. We offer a methodological model for a multi-component interview that draws upon both pragmatic and constructivist epistemologies to examine generational differences in the experience of identity development, stress, and health among contemporary sexual minorities in the United States. Grounded in theories of life course, narrative, and intersectionality, we designed and implemented a multi-component protocol that was administered among a diverse sample of three generations of sexual minority individuals. For each component, we describe the purpose and utility, underlying epistemology, foundational psychological approach, and procedure, and we provide illustrative data from interviewees. We discuss procedures undertaken to ensure methodological integrity in process of data collection, illustrating the implementation of recent guidelines for qualitative inquiry in psychology. We highlight the utility of this qualitative multi-component interview to examine the way in which sexual minorities of distinct generations have made meaning of significant social change over the past half-century.

The interview method has a long and distinguished history in qualitative inquiry across the social sciences ( Platt, 2012 ). Interviewing has become increasingly widespread in psychology ( Brinkmann, 2016 ), as qualitative methods have gained prominence in the discipline ( Gergen, Josselson, & Freeman, 2015 ). More than simply providing an account of attitudes or experience, the interview represents a site of social practice in which meaning is made in the interaction ( Mishler, 1986 ; Potter & Hepburn, 2005 ). An approach that integrates multiple epistemologies acknowledges the co-constructed nature of the interview and capitalizes on the potential of this interaction to produce knowledge grounded in lived experience ( Tappan, 1997 ).

Because of its ability to provide access to meaning making about lived experience in context, the qualitative interview affords the potential to study social change. That is, because the method calls upon individuals to make meaning of life events and experiences, it produces discourse content that can be analysed for its relation to larger cultural discourses and narratives (e.g., Hammack & Toolis, 2014 , 2016 ). The personal narratives produced through qualitative interviewing thus reveal the way in which individuals are in active states of navigating social and cultural change ( Hammack & Toolis, 2014 ).

One area of considerable social change has been the meaning of sexual diversity and the rights accorded individuals who identify as sexual minorities (i.e., lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, and other individuals who do not identify as heterosexual) in the United States, Western Europe, and some Central and South American countries. These developments (for example, marriage equality for same-sex couples) highlight how social and policy changes create different environments for sexual minorities of different generations. It is clear that the coming of age of a sexual minority person in the US in the 2010s is vastly different from, for example, that of a sexual minority person in the 1960s, when homosexuality was still criminalized and considered a mental disorder (e.g., Hammack, Frost, Meyer, & Pletta, 2018 ; Russell & Fish, 2016 ).

Despite the overall improvements in the social and political climate, inequalities in health based on sexual orientation persist, and sexual minority youth continue to experience high levels of bullying and evidence high rates of suicidality relative to the general population ( Meyer, 2016 ; Russell & Fish, 2016 ). Thus, important questions about the impact of social change on the lived experience of sexual minorities remain unanswered in the research literature. Are recent social changes translating to more positive lived experiences for today’s sexual minority youth relative to older cohorts of sexual minority individuals? Does sexual identity matter less for young people who have more open-minded peers than it did for sexual minorities who came of age in less accepting times? To what extent do sexual minority youth experience prejudice and discrimination in a more progressive climate? Do contemporary sexual minority youth differ from older sexual minorities in the centrality they ascribe to a sexual minority identity (McCormack, 2012; Savin-Williams, 2005 )? How should investigators aiming to study the lived experience of sexual minorities assess and adequately account for these shifting social environments?

This paper presents a qualitative approach to answering questions surrounding the lived experience of sexual minority individuals in the context of rapid social change. We use the term “lived experience” to generally refer to people’s personal and subjective descriptions, perceptions, understandings, and interpretations of their own psychological and social experiences (e.g., Tappan, 1997 ). Specifically, the purpose of this article is to describe a methodological approach for understanding sexual identity development and minority stress in the context of social change as developed for and used within the Generations Study: a multi-site, mixed methods study of sexual identity, minority stress, and health across three generations of sexual minorities in the US. The methodological approach consists mainly of an interview protocol informed by multiple epistemologies and innovative it its integration of component methods typically used in isolation (i.e., lifeline methods, identity mapping methods, life story methods, and comparative temporal reflection). Through this integration, this new methodological approach is able to investigate generational differences in the experience of minority stress processes in tandem with identity development processes for the first time in a single study.

The minority stress framework ( Meyer, 2003 ) describes prejudice and stigma as stressors to which sexual minorities are exposed, which, in turn, have an adverse effect on their health and well-being. The minority stress framework outlines how prejudice and stigma lead to specific stress processes, including expectations of rejection, concealment of a stigmatized identity, internalization of negative beliefs about one’s social identities, and experiences of discrimination (both acute events and chronic everyday mistreatment). Like all stress, minority stress processes create strain on individuals’ ability to adapt to their environment and are therefore associated with decreases in mental health and well-being. Sexual minority individuals utilize a variety of resources located both in the individual (e.g., coping, mastery, meaning-making) and the LGBT community (e.g., connectedness, positive identity development, support from other sexual minority people), which build resilience that can reduce or eliminate the negative impact of minority stress on health (e.g., Bruce, Harper, & Bauermeister, 2015 ; Frost & Meyer, 2012; Meyer, 2015 ).

Because minority stress is a theory about socially embedded stress, historical shifts in the social environment should correspond with significant shifts in the experience of minority stress. Thus, if prejudice and stigma related to sexual minorities were reduced, we would expect a corresponding reduction in the experience of minority stressors. Not only could the level of stress exposure be changed, but also the types and quality of stressors could change with shifting norms and values. For example, internalized homophobia—a minority stressor—is related to the socialization of a sexual minority person in an environment that teaches prejudice and stigma about homosexuality and bisexuality (e.g., Herek, Gillis, & Cogan, 2009 ; Herek & McLemore, 2013 ). Both heterosexual and sexual minority people learn this as they are socialized. People who identify as sexual minorities are at risk of applying negative notions about being a sexual minority to their own sense of self, thus being exposed to internalized homophobia (e.g., Newcomb & Mustanski, 2010 ; Puckett & Levitt, 2015 ). To the extent that socialization in a more positive social environment would reduce homophobic and biphobic prejudice and stigma, then there would be no, or reduced, internalization of such negative attitudes. In this example, because the underlying social environment has changed, internalized homophobia could be eliminated as a stressor.

The Shifting Social Environment of Sexual Minorities

Despite understandable concerns about possible setbacks in LGBT-inclusive public policy in the current presidential administration, the last two decades have nonetheless witnessed significant increases in positive attitudes toward and social inclusion of sexual minorities in the US. For example, sexual minorities can now serve openly in the military and same-sex couples can now get married in all US states. Also, attitudes toward sexual minority individuals and same-sex couples have drastically improved, with most of the US population supporting same-sex marriage for the first time as of 2014 (Pew, 2016). Acceptance of and positive attitudes toward sexual minorities is very strongly related to age, with younger people having more favorable attitudes than older people (cf. Frost, Meyer, & Hammack, 2015 ).

Improving attitudes toward same-sex sexuality and relationships among younger generations have led some researchers to contend that youth and emerging adult sexual minorities come of age in a “post-gay” era (e.g., McCormack, 2012; Savin-Williams, 2005 ). This research suggests that adolescents and emerging adults with same-sex attractions, desires, and behaviors are not as marginalized and stigmatized as older cohorts have been, and thus their sexual minority identity may be a less central component of their overall self, compared with the experience of sexual identity among older cohorts of sexual minorities. This research stands in contrast to other studies, which show that sexual orientation continues to be an important aspect of youth identity and overall sense of self (e.g., Cohler & Hammack, 2007 ; Russell, Clarke, & Clary, 2009 ). Further, in spite of a more positive climate for sexual identity diversity, young sexual minorities continue to experience minority stress (e.g., Baams, Grossman, & Russell, 2015 ) and to engage with cultural discourses of stigma (e.g., Hammack & Cohler, 2011 ; Hatzenbuehler, 2017 ). There is little doubt that today many sexual minority adolescents and emerging adults are socialized in a radically different social environment than any previous generation ( Russell & Fish, 2016 ). Consistently, studies have shown that the current cohort of sexual minority youth are coming out (i.e., disclosing their sexual orientation to important others) at increasingly younger ages ( Floyd & Bakeman, 2006 ; Grov et al., 2006 ; for review, see Russell & Fish, 2016 ).

Despite the overall improvements in attitudes toward same-sex sexuality and relationships, inequalities persist ( Meyer, 2016 ). For example, federal law does not protect sexual minorities against employment discrimination. Also, sexual minorities continue to be victims of very high rates of antigay violence and bullying ( Kahn, 2016 ). Researchers continue to speculate that prejudice and related victimization underlie findings that sexual minority youth (regardless of gender) report higher rates of mental health problems, substance use, sexual risk, and suicidality than their heterosexual peers (e.g., Fish & Pasley, 2015 ; Marshal et al., 2011 ; Mohr & Husain, 2012 ; Russell & Fish, 2016 ). Thus, it is likely that sexual minority youth and emerging adults continue to experience stigma and victimization, navigating both a new, liberating narrative of “normality” regarding same-sex desire and an older narrative of stigma and subordinate status in the course of their development (e.g., Cohler & Hammack, 2007 ; Hammack, Thompson, & Pilecki, 2009 ; White, Moeller, Ivcevic, & Brackett, 2018 ). Further, sexual minority youth of color and gender non-conforming youth may experience changes in the social climate (or lack thereof) in importantly unique ways that are not accurately represented in the existing body of research evidence ( Fine, Torre, Frost, Cabana, & Avory, 2018 ). Research on sexual identity and minority stress and resilience has not adequately assessed the role of the shifting sociohistorical context in the lives and health of sexual minorities and important variability within such experiences. As a result, many claims have been made about the importance of a sexual minority identity and the extent to which the current social climate for sexual minorities has indeed “gotten better” (e.g., Savin-Williams, 2016 ), which warrant further rigorous research to fully investigate ( Frost et al., 2014 ; Hammack, 2018 ).

In addition to historical consideration of the social environment, research on sexual minorities has yet to fully integrate intersectional and life course perspectives. Specifically, a life course perspective ( Elder, 1998 ) allows for an understanding of how differences in the social and policy context, along with cohort-defining events (e.g., the Stonewall riots, the onset of AIDS, the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”) shape the identities and lived experience of each generation differently. From a developmental perspective, a life course paradigm further concerns the complex interplay between social and historical context and individual development ( Cohler & Galatzer-Levy, 2000 ; Hammack, 2005 ). Thus, specific generations of sexual minorities can be considered distinct based on differential exposure to cohort-defining events and other aspects of the social and political context that shaped the historical periods in which they “came of age” ( Hammack et al., 2018 ). Thus, a life course perspective is essential to any attempt to directly investigate the degree to which the kinds of social and policy changes described above translate to differences in the lived experiences of the current cohort of sexual minority youth relative to previous generations.

Sexual minorities are diverse with regard to many characteristics including race/ethnicity, geographic region or residence, socio-economic status, immigration status, etc., all of which shape their lived experiences. Intersectionality frameworks implore researchers pay attention to unique intersectional circumstances, especially related to sexual orientation, race/ethnicity, and gender ( Cole, 2009 ; Crenshaw, 1996; McCall, 2005 ; Rosenthal, 2016 ; Stirratt et al., 2008 ; Warner, 2008 ; Wilson et al., 2010 ). For example, lesbian and bisexual Black women have unique experiences of identity, stress, and health associated with their sexual orientation, race/ethnicity, and gender that cannot be fully captured by considering race and gender categories separately ( Bowleg, 2008 ). Researchers need to explore how multiple social statuses shape the relationship among cohort, identity, minority stress, and health.

Although our focus was primarily on the development of sexual identity, we operate from a position that recognizes that sexual identity development and the experience of minority stress does not occur in isolation and is theoretically and analytically inseparable from other identities, including but not limited to gender and race/ethnicity. Further, as Bowleg (2008) argues, “…questions about intersectionality should focus on meaningful constructs such as stress, prejudice, discrimination rather than relying on demographic questions alone” (p. 316). Thus, there is a need for qualitative research to develop experience-oriented tools to examine intersectional experiences of what it is like to live minority stress as a person who is, for example, a young queer Latina woman, rather than simply striving to identify differences in the types and frequencies of minority stress across groups defined by age cohort, sexual orientation, race/ethnicity, and gender.

Examination of intersectionality has been previously achieved through the use of tools such as identity mapping, developed by Narvaéz and colleagues (2009) and Sirin and Fine (2007) , which was designed to study the experience of minority stress at the intersection of various forms of oppression and stigmatized identities. Such tools for assessing these elements of intersectional experiences of oppression and minority stress have thus far been anchored in studies of specific temporal and geographic contexts and have yet to incorporate understandings of intersectionality with understandings of where such intersectional experiences occur within the life course. Conversely, qualitative approaches to understanding the development of identity across the life course, such as narrative life story methods (e.g., McAdams, 1995 ) and lifeline drawing techniques (e.g., Grambling & Carr, 2004 ), do not explicitly include the kind of intersectionality focus advocated for by Bowleg and other methodologists operating from critical race, feminist, and queer theoretical and methodological perspectives (e.g., Bowleg, 2008 ; Cho et al., 2013 ; Crenshaw, 1991 ). Thus, in order to understand the complex diversity of lived experiences in sexual identity development and minority stress in the context of social change, a qualitative approach is needed which combines component methods which have thus far been largely isolated in their use in psychological research.

Following a life course approach to sexual identity development, individuals are understood to make meaning of their same-sex desire in the context of specific historical, cultural, and political contexts ( Cohler & Galatzer-Levy, 2000 ; Hammack & Cohler, 2009 ). The words and narratives individuals have to understand and describe their desire are historically contingent ( Hammack, 2005 ). Thus, a qualitative approach to access this meaning making directly is essential to document how sexual minorities engage with cultural narratives that shape their sexual identity development and experiences of minority stressors in the context of rapid social change and at the intersection of multiple social identities and statuses. The field still lacks an understanding of generational differences in the experience of minority stress processes in tandem with identity development processes. Research is needed to address these questions about the role of social change across the lifespan in sexual identity development and experience of minority stress, while taking into consideration intersecting identities and social statuses. Addressing these important but unanswered questions therefore requires an integrative methodological approach that is able to examine the complex interrelations of minority stress, social change, and sexual identity development.

We present one such approach developed by the authors who are co-investigators in a national multi-phase mixed methods research project called the Generations Study, funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD Grant#: 1R01HD078526). All aspects of the research involving human subjects were approved by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) at [University of California, Los Angeles], with which all other universities’ IRBs involved in the study established a relying agreement. The Generations Study explored generation-cohort similarities and differences in sexual identity, minority stress and resilience, access to health care, and health outcomes. The study focused on three cohorts of sexual minorities in the USA.

The three cohorts were defined by the distinct nature of their social environments during two critical periods of development: adolescence and emerging adulthood. The youngest generation was 18–25 at the beginning of our study in 2015. We refer to them as the cultural inclusion generation, as they experienced an improved social context for sexual diversity in which sodomy laws had been ruled unconstitutional and the cultural discourse had shifted to that of equality, leading to inclusion of sexual minorities in the military and equal access to legal marriage. Members of the institutional advancement generation were 34–41 years old at the time of our study and had experienced childhood and adolescence at the height of the AIDS epidemic, which disproportionately impacted sexual and gender minorities and led to the development of health organizations around the country that went on to aim to serve the broader LGBT communities. This generation was also the first to have greater access to resources through the Internet. LGBT people in general, not just the gay men and transgender women who were disproportionately impacted by the epidemic, gained heightened public scrutiny and increased stigma and prejudice due to fear of HIV/AIDS but also greater political awareness and consolidation of LGBT community institutions (like health centers). Members of the identity formation generation were 52–59 years old at the time of our study and experienced the post-Stonewall environment, when homosexuality was considered a mental disorder and sodomy was illegal in many states but when the first Gay Pride event took place (in 1970) and a larger discourse of pride in sexual minority identity took hold in the LGBT community.

The qualitative approach of the Generations Study sought to address the following specific aims: (a) To describe similarities and differences among sexual minority cohorts in trajectories of the formation, expression, and experience of sexual identity; (b) To describe similarities and differences among sexual minority cohorts in trajectories of exposure to minority stress and resilience (availability of coping and social support resources); and (c) To describe similarities and differences among sexual minority cohorts in trajectories of utilization of health and social services and public health information. Reflected in the combination of these aims, the Generations Study was guided by both scholarly and practical goals. These goals include the advancement of social scientific knowledge about how social changes have shaped the experience of sexual identity development and minority stress, as well as goals to inform interventions and policy change directed at improving the health and well-being of sexual minority individuals, who continued to experience health inequalities relative to their heterosexual peers ( Meyer, 2016 ).

The Qualitative Interview: A Multi-Component Approach

Links between paradigm, epistemology, and method.

The scholarly and pragmatic aims of the Generations Study required an approach to qualitative inquiry which can best be categorized as operating within a paradigm of methodological pluralism and emphasizing paradigmatic complementarity (see Madill & Gough, 2008 , for a discussion of qualitative paradigms within psychology). Specifically, our aim was to examine participants’ accounts of their lived experiences through the combination of multiple methodological components and the accumulation of multiple researchers’ perspectives in the design of the study collection of data aimed toward achieving scholarly and practical purposes ( Madill, Jordan, & Shirley, 2000 ). The epistemological positions underpinning the design of the qualitative approach can be best described as straddling elements of constructivism and pragmatism Namely, the approach stems from constructivism in its emphasis on narrative and lived experience and that it did not assume a knowable truth or an “objective” reality of lived experience to exist, but rather that idiographic and subjective meaning of participants’ experiences could be examined through one-on-one engagement in research interviews (e.g., Ponterotto, 2005). Elements of pragmatism shaping our approach are evident in our implementation of a diversity of methods and the accumulation of multiple researchers’ perspectives for both scholarly and practical purposes ( Madill et al., 2000 ), such as informing social and health policy. As noted in recent guidelines for designing qualitative research, these epistemological positions need not be considered mutually exclusive ( Levitt, Motulsky, Wertz, Morrow, & Ponterotto, 2017 ).

This paradigmatic and epistemological position required a semi-structured interview protocol that was open enough to provide storied accounts of lived experience reflective of narrative meaning making processes, as well as specific content-oriented questions about phenomena central to the aims and research questions of the study (e.g., sex and sexual cultures, community, stress and coping, access to healthcare). Thus, the instrument included general questions about key events and trajectories in participants’ general life stories, as well as specific questions about same-sex desire awareness, sexual experiences and sexual identity development, and minority stress experiences, including stressful life events related to sexuality, experiences with stigma and expectations of discrimination based on sexuality, internalized homophobia, and perceptions of relationships between sexual minority stress and the structural and cultural dimensions of other social statuses (e.g., race/ethnicity, gender, rural residence). Given the focus of the study on identity development and individual-level meaning making of experiences of minority stress, the design of the study involved individual one-on-one interviews (rather than, for example, focus groups). Interviews were conducted by trained interviewers and lasted on average between two and a half to three hours.

Qualitative Interview Protocol

The interview protocol (provided in the online supplemental material ) was organized in eight sections. The course of the interview was designed to progressively narrow in scope from the opening section which was the broadest and most unstructured (i.e., the life story) to the most specific content-focused sections nearing the end of the interview (e.g., health care utilization). The narrowing scope of the interview allowed for the emergence of constructs relevant to the study (e.g., minority stress, coping) to emerge naturally within the participant’s discussion of his/her/their overall lived experience initially, with opportunity to obtain more specific accounts of such experiences later in the interview, as opposed to using the focal constructs of the study to guide the course of the interview from the start.

We present each section of the interview protocol below along with a discussion of the conceptual purpose, epistemological foundations, methodological intent, and exemplar data excerpts to illustrate the section’s utility. Table 1 provides an overview of the interview components and summarizes these linkages. It is important to note that the data exemplars are included for the purpose of illustrating the methodological utility of the approach and the richness of the types of data that emerged from the interview: The data presented are in no way intended to reflect the full range of study findings. The sections are presented in the order in which most interviews progressed. However, interviewers were given the freedom to change the order of the sections when warranted by the natural flow of conversation with participants.

Linkages between epistemology, method, and utility within an integrative qualitative approach.

Note - This table describes the primary elements shaping each section of the interview. However, the entire interview protocol was informed by a blending of life course, narrative, and intersectionality approaches, and thus no section was exclusively informed by a singular approach.

1. Lifeline.

The first section of the interview was designed to obtain a broad sense of participants’ life stories and overall life trajectories. Specific experiences around the focal constructs of the study could be contextualized in later sections. To facilitate this, we used two established qualitative tools to elicit life story narratives: Lifeline drawings and the life story interview.

First, participants were asked to complete a lifeline drawing activity. Lifeline techniques have been used in life course and developmental research to obtain visual depictions of events and transitions that constitute individuals’ understandings of their own life histories (e.g., de Vries, LeBlanc, Frost, Alston-Stepnitz, Stephenson, & Woodyatt, 2016 ; Gramling & Carr, 2004 , Hammack, 2006 ). Informed by both life course and life events traditions (e.g., Elder, 1998 ), lifeline tools reveal important moments of continuity and change within the life course and provide the foundation for discussion of the social and historical circumstances that shape the life course trajectory ( de Vries et al., 2016 ). In the present use, participants were asked to “Please draw a line that represents your life. The line should begin when you were born, go to today and then continue into your future. The line should go up when it was a good time in your life and down when it was a bad time in your life. Take a few minutes to think about your life and draw the line, and when you are finished we can discuss it.” Participants were provided with the visual tool, included in Figure 1 , on which they could draw their lifeline. After participants completed their drawing, interviewers asked participants to briefly describe why they drew the line the way they did (e.g., “Why did you start off the line at a high point?”; “Why did the line change directions here?”).

Example Lifeline Drawing.

The example lifeline provided in Figure 1A comes from a 24-year-old Latino gay man. His line illustrates several ups and downs in life, including early childhood bullying and problems with family, financial trouble and dropping out of college, followed by turning points characterised by weight loss, confidence gain, and re-enrolling in school. His line also notes a generally high (positive) interpretation of the present but flat trajectory headed toward the future, which he characterizes as exciting but also anxiety provoking.

A contrasting example can be seen in Figure 1B , the lifeline of a 21-year-old Latina lesbian woman. Her lifeline also can be characterized by several ups and downs, starting with immigrating to the US from Mexico when she was 5, through parental divorce, depression, and declaring a major in college. In contrast to Figure 1A , this woman’s lifeline ends in a positive upward trajectory anticipating a better future compared to her past and present.

Grounded in epistemological concerns relating to pragmatism, this section of the interview served several purposes. It provided participants with a “settling in” activity that served to build rapport with the interviewer. It provided the interviewer with broad context for how the participants viewed their overall life trajectory and key events and transitions within that trajectory. It provided a visual sketch of participants’ life trajectories that could be referenced in subsequent discussions and used later for formal analysis using narrative analytic methods ( Lieblich, Tuval-Mashiach, & Zilber, 1998 ). Finally, both the lifeline and discussion of its construction provided key data used to frame the following life story segment of the interview.

2. Life story.

Following the creation of the lifeline, the interview employed central elements of the Life Story Interview (LSI), a flexible protocol commonly used in personality and social psychology to explore identity development through a constructed life story narrative (McAdams et al., 2008). Modified versions of the LSI have been used successfully with diverse populations, including sexual minorities ( Frost, 2011 ; Hammack & Cohler, 2011 ). The portion of the LSI employed here inquired about participants’ critical life events, social influences, and values. Specifically, interviewers framed the LSI by telling participants: “Now, I’d like us to focus on a few key events that happened to you in your life. For each event, please describe what was happening, where you were, who you were with, and what you were thinking and feeling at the moment.” Participants were asked to talk about their first memory, a high point in their life, a low point in their life, and a turning point. For example, the Latino male participant ( Figure 1A ) identified the death of his aunt and cousin while he was in university as a low point, and a recent moment when he became financially stable and able to emerge from debt as his high point. In contrast, the Latina female participant ( Figure 1B ) identified her graduating high school as the high point in the life story, while her low point was a moment a few weeks before the interview in which she felt like she was “going into a depression,” having experienced “a crash” of negative emotions after being questioned by members of her family regarding her sexual orientation.

At no point during this broadest section of the interview were participants asked specifically to talk about sexual identity or minority stress, unless they brought up the topics themselves. However, the lifeline and life story, and associated narratives, were used to anchor specific events and discussions of sexual identity and minority stress in participants’ broader life histories when brought up in the following content-specific sections of the interview.

With its roots in narrative and constructivist epistemologies, the LSI provided data that was useful in understanding the meaning of significant events in participants’ life histories via processes of narrative (re)telling. Specifically, this portion of the interview provided access to the spontaneously constructed personal narrative of the interviewee. Narrative psychologists view the personal narrative as a source of coherence, continuity, and meaning making (e.g., Cohler, 1982 ; Hammack & Toolis, 2014 ; McAdams, 1990 , 1997 ). The personal narrative is especially significant for those who experience adversity or discontinuity in the anticipated life course ( Cohler, 1991 ; Hammack & Toolis, 2014 ), which describes the likely experience of sexual minorities who are socialized in a context of heterosexism and presumed heterosexuality ( Herek & McLemore, 2013 ). This portion of the interview allowed us to apply an interpretive, hermeneutic approach grounded in constructivist epistemology to the way in which our participants made meaning of significant life events. We were especially interested in the way in which events related to sexual identity development or the experience of sexual minority status might appear in the personal narrative absent specific prompting for such events. This approach allowed us to examine generational similarities and differences in the centrality of a sexual minority identity to the general life story and thus to address one of our central research questions about social change and the meaning of a sexual minority identity.

3. Identity mapping of social identities and communities.

To shift the discussion from participants’ general life histories to specific aspects of their social identities and community memberships, the interviewer guided participants through an identity mapping activity and discussion. Identity mapping activities have been successfully employed in previous research designed to elicit detailed discussions of multiple personal and social identities and how they relate to one another in the context of a focal lived experience (e.g., Cruwys et al., 2016 ; Narvaéz et al., 2009; Sirin & Fine, 2007 ). Specifically, participants were presented with the visual tool included in Figure 2 . They were asked to use that tool “as a starting point for listing the identities and roles that describe who you are. You can write words or phrases that represent different aspects of yourself. These might include social identities or labels related to gender, race, sexuality, class, occupation, different roles in your life, or any words or phrases that describe you.” As visible in the identity map provided in Figure 2 , a 38-year-old Pakistani man includes several identities pertaining to his sexual orientation (queer), race/ethnicity (Pakistani, South Asian, POC), gender (cis-gender male), as well as identities related to immigration, socioeconomic status, and health. He also notes identities related to his political views (e.g., progressive, activist) and his being a survivor of past abuse.

Example Identity Map.

Given the present study’s interest in intersectionality as it relates to the experience of sexual identity development, gender, and race/ethnicity in particular, the following discussion of participants’ identity maps focused on these core identities and their intersections. If participants did not spontaneously list something for each of these core identities, the interviewer prompted them to consider whether they would like to include them on their maps (e.g., “I noticed you did not include anything about your gender on your map…”). Such prompting was more often needed among those with typically privileged or dominant social identities that are often taken for granted in everyday life (e.g., male gender, White race/ethnicity). To prompt participants to reflect on their experiences of their intersecting core identities, interviewers asked participants a series of questions repeating versions of the following adaptable prompt for the possible intersections: “Tell me about your experience of being [SEXUAL IDENTITY] in the [RACE/ETHNICITY/GENDER] community.” These prompts were designed according to Bowleg’s (2008) recommendation that, in order to best assess intersectionality experiences, researchers should ask about them directly.

This direct discussion of intersectional identity experiences is reflected in the following experience of a 54-year-old Chinese gay man:

I feel sometime a double discrimination in both community… I think I didn’t come out to my family for the longest time, just because I hear these horror story about, especially in the Chinese culture, and probably lot of different culture can relate to it, that family’s very important, and that you don’t wanna disgrace your family. I just felt like they would disown me, and they would be ashame of me…. Then, being a Chinese gay in the gay community, [...] I don’t feel really totally accepted in the [gay community]. … I don’t consider it as my community. I always felt angry at people that said oh, “I’m only attracted to White guys only, or I’m only attracted only Asians.” Then I don’t want that, either, because I want people to like me for how I look.

As this excerpt from one interview reveals, this section of the protocol elicited narratives of intersectionality to capture the diversity of lived experience among sexual minorities typically unrepresented in traditional quantitative research.

In line with constructivist epistemological foundations, additional questions in this section of the interview focused on how participants see themselves in terms of masculinity and femininity in their gender expression, as well as what communities they feel they belong to and what it is like to be a member of such communities. Just as the life story section provided a life course anchor for specific events and experiences discussed later in the interview, the identity map served as a general sketch of identity intersections that interviewers returned to in discussing specific experiences related to sexual identity, race, and gender later in the interview. Thus, this section was designed to fulfil pragmatic epistemological goals not only for giving the participant an opportunity to nominate and describe their identities in their own words, but also providing additional foundational data for orienting the subsequent temporal reflective discussions.

4. Sex and sexual cultures.

Next, the interviewer turned the discussion to more narrowly focus on specific types of lived experience within specific life domains. The first of these more specific discussions focused on participants’ “sex life and relationships.” In this section, participants were asked to discuss their experiences of sex and relationships, including how they felt about sex and relationships, how they went about findings partners, and the things that both excited and worried them about sexuality.

Interviewers guided participants through these discussions using a series of questions designed to elicit comparative temporal reflection. Stemming from constructivist perspectives, these discussions were designed to explore the meanings participants give to their lived experiences and how they viewed their own lived experiences staying the same or changing across various ages and developmental periods. The guided discussions involving comparative temporal reflection were designed to avoid imposing an expectation of change, further allowing participants the freedom to describe and interpret the meaning of their lived experiences as stable or changing throughout the life course.

To illustrate this process of comparative temporal reflection, participants were asked to describe their sex life and relationships during adolescence and puberty and at the present time. Participants were asked to reflect on how aspects of their sex life and relationships have changed or stayed the same between puberty and adolescence to the present. If they described changes over time, interviewers prompted them to discuss why they thought the changes had occurred, the ages the changes had occurred, and specific life events or social factors that may have precipitated changes. Participants were also asked to relate their discussions to the identity map and locate them in relation to other events on their lifelines and in their life stories.

For example, in the following exchange, a 36-year-old Black woman discussed how the ways she looks for sexual and relationship partners have changed as she has gotten older, especially now that she has a child from a previous relationship. She reflected on the role that the Internet now plays—both positive and negative—in her search for sexual and relationship partners, along with her changing needs/desires from a partner.

Interviewer: How about the ways with age, what’s changed in the ways you go looking for sex, in the kinds of things you’re looking for in a relationship?

Interviewee: The kind of things I’m looking for? Nobody wants stability…. Nobody wants somebody with kids. That’s number one. [chuckles] Or, they’re young and they want kids. I’m like, “My eggs are powdered.” [chuckles] …As far as sex, my sex drive has not changed since I was 15… The sex is not an issue…. Just relationship.

Interviewer: How about the way you go about finding it? Where did you find your relationships before? How did you find [previous partner]?

Interviewee: Online…. Internet makes it a lot easier, but also Internet makes it a lot harder, because… It’s all about looks…. Going out in person, looking for relationships … is hard, because I don’t look like a lesbian from what I’ve been told. I’ve had to kind of learn to step up and be the aggressor.

As this excerpt reveals, in this section of the interview we were able to elicit narratives of sex and sexual culture in both the remembered past and the experienced present. This excerpt reveals the ways that changing personal motives for sex and relationships can be both facilitated and frustrated by elements of one’s sexual culture (e.g., online dating, community standards of attraction, gender roles). Interviewees provided rich data on understandings of intimacy and sexual minority communities that revealed the ways in which radical social change—in this case, coupled with technological change—over the past half-century impacted their understandings of identity, community, and sexual practice.

5. Challenges, stress, and coping.

Again involving comparative temporal reflection, the fifth section of the interview contained questions about challenges and stressors in participants’ lives and how they coped with them. The opening questions focused on participants’ “single greatest challenge in life,” how they “handled” that challenge, and how this challenge impacted them “as a person.” Participants were asked to locate the challenge on their lifeline to contextualize it within the broader scope of their life course development. This discussion was not focused on sexual orientation or minority stress. Indeed, we asked about “challenges” to avoid guiding participants to narratives of stress and pathology, allowing the participants’ narratives to take a natural form. This approach allowed us to document the degree to which participants’ most challenging and stressful life experiences came about, were shaped by, or involved minority stress, without explicitly prompting about sexual minority status.

After the general discussion of challenges, questions focused on participants’ experiences of minority stress and coping directly. Participants were asked if they experienced any challenges in their life specifically related to being a sexual minority person (the interviewer used the sexual identity label from each participant’s identity map). For any event that participants recalled, they were asked to narrate what happened, who was involved, how they felt about the experience, and how they coped with the experience. These prompts were used to produce an account of the experience with a clear narrative trajectory and evaluative frame. Participants were also asked to reflect back across their lives and discuss any times they struggled to accept themselves as a sexual minority person and times when they had to negotiate being out and concealing their sexual identities. This section also included an opportunity for participants to reflect on the question, “in your day-to-day experiences, do you feel that society is accepting of you and other LGB people?” and whether or not their perspectives on societal acceptance have changed over time.

The following exchange between an interviewer and a 22-year-old Asian man illustrates the kinds of narratives elicited in this section. The participant described challenges in accepting himself as gay during adolescence and how it has remained a challenge throughout his life:

Interviewee: When I was a kid, I did—I was a Boy Scout. I was on the swim team. I also did martial arts. I had a lot of very stereotypically masculine things. It was sort of okay for a while. Then I began to see small tinges of homophobia from time to time. Every single time, when I would see it, I would make a mental note of, “Prob’ly should not tell you.” Because you’ll have some offensive—they’ll shout out a homophobic slur. …When in other cases, for instance—a few years ago, actually, I was working with a project with a friend. …He said that he would not be comfortable with changing in front of me. I’ve known this guy for about three years. When he said that I was taken aback, because I told myself—I said, “Why am I friends with a bigot? Why is he the—the implicit homophobia? Why am I getting this from him?”

Interviewer: He knew you were gay and made the comment?

Interviewee: He knew I was gay, and then he made the comment. Which is, I would say, is even worse. …It reminds me to be very careful with my identity. Because there have been certain times when I’ve felt that if I were to share that bit of my identity, I would be unsafe. There have been a few times here or there. There are very few straight men that are truly comfortable with me. …There are certain people that stick out to me where just—no, it is not safe. It’s just feeling—being excluded from that community. From the greater community.

In addition to illustrating his struggle to feel fully included in society, this participant’s narrative illustrates experiences of prejudice and the cognitive burden and stress associated with managing concealment, which can be both psychologically damaging and protective (e.g., a cognitive burden of secret keeping, which can sometimes help to avoid prejudice and discrimination) ( Meyer, 2003 ).

This section of the interview ended with a discussion of participants’ use of coping strategies and access to social support available to help them deal with general challenges and challenges related to minority stress. Specifically, they were asked “what types of things helped you deal with challenges and negative experiences you’ve had related to being (sexual identity label)?” As in previous sections, participants were asked to reflect on whether or not their coping strategies and access to support have remained the same or changed over the years. Given the role of community connectedness as a coping resource in the minority stress experience (Frost & Meyer, 2012; Meyer, 2003 ), participants were also asked to reflect on the extent to which they utilized sexual minority community resources (e.g., an LGBT center) or services targeted to sexual minority communities.

6. Interpretations of social and historical change.

Again utilizing comparative temporal reflection methods, the next section of the interview focused on participants’ memories of historical events, cultural moments, and social representations of sexual minority people and issues. Participants were asked: “Can you tell me about your memories during puberty and adolescence about what was happening in society with regard to LGBT issues?” They were then prompted to reflect on how LGBT issues were talked about in the wider society at this time in their lives, from whom and where they heard LGBT issues discussed, and what they felt and thought about such mentions when they occurred. They were then asked to reflect on how LGBT issues are discussed today, and what they feel and think about such discussions.

Illustrating both perceptions of a shift in cultural discussions of LGBT issues, as well as the persistence of stigma in the dominant narratives that are told about the LGBT community, the following younger Black genderqueer person’s narrative illustrates the value of directly interrogating participants’ perceptions of social and historical moments and how they shape lived experiences of sexual identity and minority stress:

Interviewee: I don’t remember—yeah, my hometown wasn’t—so I didn’t have—I didn’t have super great Internet access all the time, as a kid. Or growing up, I didn’t— our computer was really shitty and wasn’t super great. Yeah, local media didn’t report on it. People didn’t talk about it.

Interviewer: How about now? What do you see as major issues today, with regard to LGBT people?

Interviewee: The murder of trans people I guess I’d include in that group, but also just homeless youth that are lesbian, gay, bi, queer youth that are homeless because they couldn’t stay where they lived, out of either because they weren’t accepted or violence happened or assault happened, I think is really intense and a lot more prevalent than a lot of people would realize. Yeah, and it’s not always super safe out there.

As this excerpt reveals, this section of the interview provided the opportunity for participants to offer their own interpretations of the social context of sexual identity development and minority stress at two points in their development—during adolescence (a critical period for identity development; Hammack & Toolis, 2015 ) and today. Notably, this participant reported not hearing much in the news about sexual minority people when growing up, but they remembered having access to a “space” that was accepting. They further noted a recognition of violence against trans people as characterizing the social and historical events shaping the present climate surrounding sexual minority lives. These narrative accounts allow us to examine diversity in how members of different generations have interpreted the massive social and historical changes for sexual minorities over the past half-century. They also allow us to examine generational differences in interpretations of the present social and political context for sexual and gender identity diversity.

7. Healthcare utilization.

Given the focus of the broader study on health and healthcare utilization, the last major section of the interview contained very specific questions about experiences of seeking and receiving care related to mental and physical health. Participants were asked to discuss where they go when they need care, including whether they go to or would prefer to use LGBT-specific healthcare providers. They were asked about their last experience seeking healthcare and specific aspects of that experience. Interviewers also prompted participants to discuss deterrents to seeking healthcare, how open they are about their sexual identities in healthcare contexts, and whether they have ever sought care for reasons related to sexual identity or gender expression.

To illustrate the types of narratives elicited by this section of the interview, the following example from a 39-year-old White woman exemplifies the complexities of navigating minority stress in healthcare contexts:

Healthcare’s harder to navigate in many ways. I feel like I end up making choices around what’s good for my lymphedema. Then secondary is, “Are they queer-friendly?” My GP, not particularly queer-friendly. In fact, on my—I can tell that she’s a little horrified that I’m poly on my diagnosis form for my last annual. One of the things she put was “high-risk bisexual activity” as one of my diagnoses. I don’t know how you get treated for that, [ laughs ] but I was pretty horrified, because I’d been with one man my whole life, right?

Noting how her identification as polyamorous on her medical records resulted in her provider’s assumption that she was engaging in high-risk sexual behaviour, this participant’s narrative provided a critical experiential window into the healthcare experiences of sexual minorities. Given she has a serious health problem, she noted she must privilege her seeking care for this over seeking care that is LGBT-affirming.

This portion of the interview was primarily rooted in pragmatist aims. Following from the behavioral model of health services use ( Martos, Wilson, Gordon, Lightfoot, & Meyer, 2018 ), it was designed to understand and document participants’ preferences for certain types of health care provision and allowed us to obtain data on the healthcare decisions and challenges associated with potential minority stressors in healthcare settings.

8. Reflections and goals.

In order to (a) account for imagined futures within a life course framework and (b) end the interview in a positive discussion (given that the last few sections of the interview were primarily focused on negative experiences), the last section prompted participants to discuss their goals for the future. They were asked to look back at their lifeline and tell the interviewer about their goals for the future regarding work, relationships, and family life. Finally, they were asked to consider their entire lifeline, and reflect on what they thought has been the most positive aspect of being a sexual minority (interviewers used participants’ preferred sexual identity labels).

The following excerpt from a 25-year-old Black woman provides an illustrative response to these final questions of the interview.

Interviewer: Finally, looking back over your life, what would you say has been the most positive aspect of being bisexual?

Interviewee: The struggles. It forces you to be accepting, I think, because I don’t feel like anyone who has this type of sexual orientation is any different from anyone else who is heterosexual. I think that other people would want to treat you like you’re different. I feel like it forces you to be able to express yourself and be able to be open-minded enough to accept that everybody’s not gonna accept your sexuality. You can still help them to understand you as a person, as much as they will allow. If you can be patient enough to help other people see that you’re just another person, and you just want to be respected as just that, then it makes you pretty strong.

As this excerpt reveals, this final section of the interview provided the valuable opportunity for participants to narrate their future life goals and to consider the positive value of a sexual minority identity. It also illustrates the concepts of resilience and stress-related growth, noting struggles associated with being a sexual minority person, but also the strength derived from such experiences.

Methodological Integrity

The Generations Study’s methodological approach strived to achieve methodological integrity throughout the process of data collection. In doing so, we follow the recommendations for promoting methodological integrity offered by Levitt and colleagues (2017 ). Specifically, we highlight how aspects of sampling, interviewing training, and quality assurance were implemented to enhance fidelity to the substantive focus of the study and utility of the methodological approach to achieve the study’s aims and purpose.

Sampling was central to achieving the aims of the study and allowing sufficient representation and diversity of lived experience to reflect the study’s conceptual foundations in minority stress, life course, intersectionality, and social change. For example, many qualitative studies focus on one geographic area and lack the ability to compare across locations, potentially missing important diversity in lived experiences. To address this issue, we recruited participants from culturally distinct geographic regions of the country. Each site had a catchment area of 80 miles, which included urban and non-urban areas. Based on the study’s foundations in intersectionality and life course perspectives, we used quota sampling to ensure roughly equal representation of participants across age cohort, gender, and racial/ethnic groups. Obtaining a diverse sample also contributes to the study’s potential to achieve a high degree of one form of generalizability in qualitative research— transferability ( Polit & Beck, 2010 ). Combined with thick descriptions of the data and study design, ensuring recruitment of participants from several core social status groups relevant to the phenomenon under study increases readers’ understandings of whether and under what conditions various findings may reflect the experiences of people not included in the study directly.

Several procedures were established to achieve consistency in the interviews across the four study sites and to ensure the data collected were sufficiently rich in detail pertaining to content and narrative reflection. First, interviewers from each study site met in person, were trained on the interview protocol, and conducted mock interviews. All investigators in the study listened to the mock interviews for each interviewer and provided feedback until interviewers were deemed ready to begin interviewing. Interview quality and consistency were assured through weekly in-site meetings between interviewers and the lead investigator at each site. In addition, online meetings among all interviewers across the sites took place bi-weekly using video conferencing software. Different reflexive and engagement exercises were conducted. The purpose of this engagement in reflexivity and positionality was to recognize and manage the role of researchers’ perspectives in the data collection process, to maintain consistency in the implementation of the interview protocol, and to continue to hone the skills of the interviewers ( Barry, Britten, Barber, Bradley, & Stevenson, 1999 ).

Discussion and Conclusions

Interview methods are increasingly common in qualitative psychology ( Brinkmann, 2016 ), but few interview studies specify the purpose, epistemological grounding, theoretical foundation, or procedure associated with their protocol. With greater attention to methodological standards in qualitative psychology, there is a need for greater specificity of protocols and practices to ensure integrity and fidelity in the data collection process. Our aim was to provide a model for qualitative inquiry that can address this need.

In presenting the methodological approach utilized in the Generations Study, our goal was to highlight the unique potential for a qualitative approach—employing life course, narrative, and intersectionality perspectives through a combination of component methods previously used in isolation from one another—to provide a rich and nuanced understanding of the complex lived experiences of diverse sexual minority individuals in the context of social change. At the center of this methodological approach is a novel multi-component interview protocol, the first to integrate lifeline methods, life story methods, identity mapping methods, and comparative temporal reflection about personal identity, social change, minority stress, and health. Through this integration, this new methodological approach was able to investigate generational similarities and differences in the experience of minority stress processes in tandem with identity development processes for the first time in a single study. This approach also achieves an understanding of the experience of sexual identity and minority stress at the intersection of multiple social identities and forms of oppression related to sexual orientation, gender, and race/ethnicity, rather than falling into the methodological “trap” of using simplistic additive combinations of demographic characteristics as a proxy for an intersectionality approach ( Bowleg, 2008 ).

To understand how social change has shaped the lives of sexual minority individuals, research needs to directly investigate generational differences in lived experience of sexual identity development and minority stress. The life course (e.g., Elder, 1998 ; Hammack et al., 2018 ) and intersectionality perspectives (e.g., Bowleg, 2008 ; Cole, 2009 ; Crenshaw, 1996) highlight the importance of understanding sexual identity development in relation to sociohistorical context and focus on how variability in lived experience exists within unique intersections of age cohort, gender, race/ethnicity, and geographic location ( McCall, 2005 ; Stirratt et al., 2008 ; Warner, 2008 ; Wilson et al., 2010 ). The qualitative approach we presented reflects these theoretical and methodological foundations, and as a result is positioned to address gaps in existing knowledge about how social change has shaped the lives of sexual minority individuals (e.g., Frost et al, 2015 ; Hammack, 2018 ; Meyer, 2016 ).

The general approach utilized in the content-specific sections of the interview protocol prompted participants to reflect on specific events or experiences in adolescence relative to their present experiences and the changes they see over their lives. This methodological strategy was designed to directly interrogate developmental trajectories and changes throughout the life course, along with the meanings and explanations of such trajectories. Furthermore, because each participant was asked to provide such reflection, regardless of their present age cohort, the resulting dataset as a whole allowed for generational comparisons in experiences (during the same historical period, but different ages), as well as for all individuals when they were in adolescence (same age, different historical period).

The novel structure of the interview protocol, along with the purposive sampling strategy, allows for between-cohort analyses in the study’s aims to answer nomothetic research questions focused on group differences. Additionally, the intra-individual developmental reflections discussed previously allow for change analyses oriented toward answering idiographic questions focusing on individual persons and the nuances of their lived experience. Thus, the qualitative data obtained within the present approach allows for an examination of the broader aims relating to the role of social change in the experience of sexual identity development and minority stress with a direct analytic window into the role that social change plays in these experiences. The data exemplars included in this methodological paper were intended to illustrate the utility of this approach and analytic potentials emerging from its use. However, it is important to reiterate that the data presented in the paper are for illustrative purposes only and do not reflect the breadth of findings of the Generations Study.

In addition to understanding the role that social change has played in the lives and well-being of sexual minority individuals, data produced from the present qualitative approach is intended to be useful within policy making and social change efforts ( Gergen et al., 2015 ). Specifically, the qualitative data in the Generations Study has the potential to illustrate how social policies have potentially both restricted and facilitated development of positive sexual identities and shaped the experiences of minority stress throughout the target generations’ lived experiences. Qualitative data, particularly in the form of narratives, has the potential to illuminate the intersection of lived experience and the social influence of structural factors such as cultural attitudes and social policies (e.g., Frost, 2018 ). Given sexual minorities continue to experience social and health inequalities due to their stigmatized social status ( Meyer, 2016 ), there remains a need for data on how the shifting social climate shapes their identities and lived experiences, in both negative and positive ways.

We recognise that this study is potentially unique in terms of its scope and scale, and not all qualitative researchers interested in similar questions will have access to the same amount of resources for staffing and sampling that Generations had as a result of its federal funding. However, the possibilities produced by the integration of the various component methods (i.e., lifeline drawing, life story interview, identity mapping, narrative reflection) will likely prove useful to researchers who desire the ability to simultaneously understand intersectional identity development and social change by using a single interview protocol. Thus, we intend this integrative aspect of the present methodological approach to be adaptable for future research. Similarly, the processes undertaken to promote methodological integrity in the form of fidelity and utility can serve as useful illustrations of such processes ( Levitt et al., 2017 ) and hopefully prove useful in other team-based qualitative research projects.

The qualitative approach utilized in the Generations Study is not without its limitations. As a result of the scale and collaborative nature of the research, a significant amount of effort was needed to train interviewers and engage a team of researchers across the country in simultaneous data collection efforts, thus posing a challenge to consistency in data collection. As described above, several procedures were implemented to address these concerns and promote methodological integrity, but these may not be possible in smaller scale projects. Further, the scope of the work required a significant amount of burden on the participants and researchers, both in terms of time investment and willingness to engage with emotionally difficult topics in a high degree of depth in the interviews. For these reasons, the degree to which the current approach can be useful in achieving similar aims with a smaller sample remains a question.

Despite these limitations, the success of Generations Study in achieving its aims hinges on its nuanced and multifaceted qualitative approach. Namely, the insights produced from this approach will allow for an understanding of the ways in which social change has shaped the lived experience of three diverse cohorts of sexual minority individuals through the application of life course, narrative, and intersectionality perspectives. This article outlined the qualitative approach utilized to examine the impact of social change with the hope that it can be usefully adapted for other researchers in need of tools to assess the impact of social change on the lived experience of sexual minorities or other populations of people who face the challenge of identity development within rapidly shifting social environments. By combining life course and intersectionality frameworks, along with multiple qualitative methods that allow for a variety of analytical potentials, we hope this integrative qualitative approach will prove valuable in such socially engaged qualitative research efforts.

Supplementary Material

Supplemental materials, contributor information.

David M. Frost, University College London.

Phillip L. Hammack, University of California, Santa Cruz.

Bianca D. M. Wilson, University of California, Los Angeles.

Stephen T. Russell, University of Texas at Austin.

Marguerita Lightfoot, University of California, San Francisco.

Ilan H. Meyer, University of California, Los Angeles.

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The qualitative research interview

Affiliation.

• 1 Department of Family Medicine, University of Medicine and Dentistry at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, Somerset, New Jersey 08873, USA. [email protected]
• PMID: 16573666
• DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2929.2006.02418.x

Background: Interviews are among the most familiar strategies for collecting qualitative data. The different qualitative interviewing strategies in common use emerged from diverse disciplinary perspectives resulting in a wide variation among interviewing approaches. Unlike the highly structured survey interviews and questionnaires used in epidemiology and most health services research, we examine less structured interview strategies in which the person interviewed is more a participant in meaning making than a conduit from which information is retrieved.

Purpose: In this article we briefly review the more common qualitative interview methods and then focus on the widely used individual face-to-face in-depth interview, which seeks to foster learning about individual experiences and perspectives on a given set of issues. We discuss methods for conducting in-depth interviews and consider relevant ethical issues with particular regard to the rights and protection of the participants.

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• Human errors in emergency medical services: a qualitative analysis of contributing factors. Poranen A, Kouvonen A, Nordquist H. Poranen A, et al. Scand J Trauma Resusc Emerg Med. 2024 Aug 30;32(1):78. doi: 10.1186/s13049-024-01253-7. Scand J Trauma Resusc Emerg Med. 2024. PMID: 39215372 Free PMC article.
• Postgraduate Year Two Medical Residents' Awareness of Personal Development as a Physician during the Management of Inpatients: A Qualitative Study. Tokumasu K, Obara H, Hirosawa T, Ogawa H, Otsuka F. Tokumasu K, et al. Healthcare (Basel). 2024 Aug 14;12(16):1621. doi: 10.3390/healthcare12161621. Healthcare (Basel). 2024. PMID: 39201179 Free PMC article.

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Incorporating Interview Data

Introduction

When you incorporate original interview data into your writing, you are developing new ideas by using quotations and often sources that no one else has accessed. Drawing from interviews can liven up your writing, ground your big concepts within the specific circumstances of particular individuals, and introduce you to insights you might never have considered on your own. Additionally, interviews are an exciting way for you to provide a larger audience for people who might not otherwise have opportunities to share their stories, perceptions, and experiences.

There are lots of good reasons to incorporate original interview data into your writing. But doing so also involves making many, specific writing decisions. On this page we explore some of those decisions by considering: 1) the process by which interview data is gathered; 2) models for interview incorporation; and 3) identification of ways that writing with interview data can be like writing with information from any other source (as well as some of the unique writerly considerations that interviews raise).

Contents       Before You Write       Different Models of Incorporating Interview Data       Summarizing, Paraphrasing, or Quoting       Referring to your Interviewees       Using Verbatim or Non-Verbatim

Before You Write

Of course, before you can incorporate interview data into your writing, you need to plan and conduct your interviews and begin to analyze your findings.

Interviewing is a common form of research and information gathering in many different fields and across many different genres. In order to develop and actualize a plan for why interviews will help you answer the questions you’re asking, whom you’ll interview, and what you’ll ask these subjects, you’ll want to consult a range of resources. Talk with your instructor, mentor, or advisor about common ways of approaching interviews for this assignment or in this discipline. Additionally, many undergraduate textbooks about research in the social sciences and humanities offer introductions to interviewing. We’ve listed a few great resources to help you learn more.

For comprehensive introductions to research methods used in the writing research that include some information about interviews, consider:

• Jackie Grutsch McKinney’s book Strategies for Writing Center Research —especially pages 55-69. While Grutsch McKinney’s is focused on writing center research, her close consideration of the different ways to structure interviews as well as how to plan and conduct them can be applied to all interview contexts. Additionally, her treatment of data analysis in chapter 8 provides a step-by-step guide for coding qualitative data—one of the approaches you might use to make sense of what your interview data means.
• Joyce Kinkead’s Researching Writing: An Introduction to Research Methods —especially pages 37-39. This is a potential textbook for that could be used for a class specifically about the formal study of writing. However, its direct and specific information about interviewing is applicable for any social science researcher preparing to use interviews for research.

These resources focus more specifically on qualitative research methods in particular and interviewing in particular:

• Robert Bogdan and Sari Knopp Biklen’s Qualitative Research for Education: An Introduction to Theories and Methods —especially pages 103-109. Bogdan and Knopp Biklen’s treatment of interview practices provides a brief overview of how to approach and implement this research methodology.
• Irving Seidman’s Interviewing as Qualitative Research: A Guide for Researchers in Education and the Social Sciences —especially pages 78-94. This entire book explores interview practices, logistics, and applications, but chapter six in particular usefully details particular interviewing techniques and provides transcripted examples of some of these strategic techniques in action.

The rest of the information on this page assumes that you have learned to develop and implement your interview plan, that you’ve analyzed the information you’ve gathered, and that you’re now ready to start weaving that information into your writing.

Different Models for Incorporating Interview Data

You can use interview data in many different ways. Most often, you will probably be making an argumentative or analytical point and illustrating and supporting it with evidence from your interviews. For example, in the following passage from the book Booty Capitalism: The Politics of Banking in the Philippines , Paul D. Hutchcroft, a political science professor at Australian National University, begins with an original claim, follows that with a quotation from an interview subject that exemplifies that claim, and then offers additional commentary on that issue. Note how the quotation from the interview both connects the concepts of banking and politics and introduces the prism metaphor that Hutchcroft continues into the next sentence.

The major focus of this [book] is two arenas that offer particular insights into the nature of relations between state and oligarchy in the banking system: bank supervision and selective credit allocation. “Banking,” observes one former bank president, “is a prism through which to understand power politics in the Philippines.” A study of the banking system highlights larger patterns at work within the political economy: how a predatory oligarchy extracts privilege from a patrimonial state, and how developmental policy objectives are continually choked out by a clamor of particularistic demands made by those who currently enjoy proximity to the political machinery. (7)

Generalizing about a Trend or Theme

Using information from an interview to support your claim is the primary purpose for incorporating interview data into your writing, but how you do this may change according to your specific intent. In what follows, we explore different models for weaving interview data into your writing and provide examples of what this looks like.

It is important to consider the politicization of the nationality responses in context. On the whole, the vast majority of republican executives did not try to influence the process, and the nationality question was a non-issue in the predominantly ethnically Russian regions. In my regional interviews I found that in the oblasts and krays, there were almost no reports of difficulty with the nationality question. Officials in those areas reported that respondents who were not ethnically Russian had no difficulty citing a different nationality. This finding corresponded with my observations of the enumeration process in Moscow. There were sporadic cases of respondents in ethnically mixed marriages registering one child as of one parent’s ethnic group and the other child as of the other parent’s ethnic group. However, this is a conceptual issue rather than a problem of politicization. ( 367-8 )

Quoting to Illustrate a Trend or Theme

Sometimes interviewees say things that are so strikingly similar that it is useful to draw attention to these complementary concepts and word choices by putting them together. In the following passage, Jane Calvert, a professor at the University of Edinburgh, and Joan Fujimura, a sociology professor at UW-Madison, use this strategy while writing about scientists’ responses to the new and developing field of systems biology. Note that these authors carefully tie quotations to specific anonymized interviewees through parenthetical citations.

In another US university, the decision to build an interdisciplinary research centre was top-down, initiated by university and funding administrators and initially opposed by most campus laboratory scientists. The building of new interdisciplinary structures is challenging for the existing disciplinary “fiefdoms” (Biologist19) and “silos” (Biologist9 and Biologist12) “where people feel protected and safe” (Biologist19) because they are not required to step outside of their “comfort zones” (Biologist7).

Putting Two Sources in Conversation with Each Other

Sometimes writers can use one interviewee to contribute to or complicate what another interviewee says. The following paragraph from Hutchcroft’s Booty Capitalism shows this practice at work. In addition to bringing two sources together, in this passage Hutchcroft also strategically incorporates paratextual insight gained from the interview process into his analysis. He uses the former governor’s laughter to showcase an attitude that directly contrasts with what the former bank supervisor says.

Even when the Central Bank has acted against those who milked their banks, former bank owners have been known to use personal connections, even up to the Supreme Court, to confound Central Bank discipline. Former Governor Jaime Laya noted that even martial law “didn’t seem to stop the lawsuits against Central Bank personnel.” He actually laughed as he told me how the Central Bank legal office has “never won a case.” But the former head of the bank supervision sector, who has herself been sued, doesn’t find it a laughing matter: “Why only in this country,” she exclaimed, “do the regulators go to the jail, and the bankers go scot-free?” (9)

Providing a Profile/Telling a Story

Sometimes your writing needs to focus on your interview subject as a full and complex individual. In order to analyze an issue, you need to write about this individual’s background, family, and previous experiences. In this situation, you’ll weave together information you gained from your interviews with quotations from this person. This kind of writing is common when you are using interviews to develop ethnographis case studies. In the following example of this technique, Kate Vieira, a professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at UW-Madison, tells the story of Jocélia, an undocumented Brazilian immigrant living in Massachusetts:

Jocélia, a 22 year-old Brazilian woman who grew up in a favela (shanty town) in Brazil, came to the United States to study and to earn money. When her visa expired and the small sum she had borrowed from cousins ran out, she quit her ESL classes and began to work illegally. When I met her in 2008, she had been in the United States for 4 years, had managed to buy a house for her mother in Brazil, and had plans to buy another one for herself and a car. To earn money as an undocumented worker, she held down two jobs: one from 3 p.m. to midnight and another from 5 a.m. to afternoon. One evening, exhausted from having not slept in days, she nodded off as she drove home from work, resulting in a serious accident that led her to a friend’s house in South Mills and to a Catholic retreat. When I came here, I was not a youth who had fun. I only worked, and this made me a little frustrated, you know? Sad, lonely, understand? And nobody could change my mind. I had to work . . . But the Lord showed me something different, that I can’t live only for work . . . So I went there [to the retreat] and I really felt that the Lord touched us. It was a very good experience . . . (444)

Attending to Language

As explored in greater depth in the discussion about verbatim transcription , sometimes you want to analyze or consider the language an individual uses or the implications of certain kinds of words or even pauses. For example, in the following passage, Beth Godbee, a writing and rhetoric professor at Marquette University, meticulously considers the implications of her subjects’ specific words and phrasing. Although this example is taken from Godbee’s analysis of a conversation she recorded between a writer Susan and a writing center tutor Kim as opposed to a direct interview she conducted, the attention she pays to language could just as well be applied to information from an interview.

Kim reinforces Susan’s qualifications: “You’re gonna—you’re the specialist in this area. You know these kids; you see what know the effects are, and maybe where some change could be made” (lines 558-561). Here Kim revises her projection of Susan as a “specialist” in the future tense (“gonna,” as in “you’re going to be”) to a statement of her current position (“you’re,” or “you are now”). By repairing her speech mid-utterance, Kim emphasizes Susan’s current status and qualifications to write, thereby reframing her institutional power to assert her right to speak. (185)

Summarizing, Paraphrasing, or Quoting

As the above examples show, interview data is incorporated into writing through summaries, paraphrases, or quotations. In some ways this makes working with interviews just like working from any other kind of outside. As you choose between summarizing, paraphrasing, or quoting, a guiding question for you to consider is: What is most important about this information?

• Is it the overall story it tells or the general perspective it provides? Then summarizing might be the best option.
• Is it the particular take on a complex issue? Then paraphrasing that idea in your own words to make it as understandable as possible might be best.
• Is it the memorability, specificity, or authenticity of the language the source used? Then probably go with a quote, but be sure to contextualize this quotation by providing necessary background and commentary.

Of course, in working with interview data, you might go with all three incorporation strategies by, for example, summarizing early in a paragraph to provide an overall sense of what this source is saying, paraphrasing a key idea or two, and then including a poignant quotation that exemplifies the argument you are making. For more information about quoting and paraphrasing outside sources in your writing, check out our resources on this issue .

Referring to your Interviewees

In certain writing situations, you are expected to identify the people you interviewed by using their real names. This is often the case in journalistic writing as well as when you have consulted with an expert on an issue. But, even in these writing contexts, you must receive permission from them to associate their words and insights with their names by clearly establishing whether or not they are talking with you “on the record.”

However, when you are conducting interviews for academic research, you are frequently expected to use pseudonyms so that your subjects’ responses are confidential. Protecting your subjects’ privacy should be your primary priority. They are giving you access to personal experiences and trusting you with their individual insights and observations; you must honor that trust by anonymizing their identities so that readers can’t figure out who your subjects were. Developing a research methodology that keeps all of your data confidential is an important part of the IRB (Internal Review Board) process, and in order to receive permission to do research at your institution you’ll need a plan that outlines how you’ll achieve confidentiality. Part of that plan will involve using different names for your subjects. But selecting pseudonyms is a bigger issue than just choosing different names at random.

Ruth Allen and Janine L. Wiles, Social and Community Health scholars at the University of Auckland, have closely considered the many issues surrounding pseudonym selection in connection to their original psychological and health-related research. They advocate that researchers think critically about this process and even bring their subjects into these discussions of identity and confidentiality. You need to be thoughtful about what aspects of your subjects’ true identities you are communicating or obscuring through the pseudonyms you use. The following questions are adapted from ones Allen and Wiles recommend researchers ask themselves when preparing to use pseudonyms for participants:

• Does the researcher or the participant choose the pseudonym? How does this issue get talked about with the participants?
• Is it important, valuable, or expected to use first name or also include last names and/or titles (i.e., Cara, Mr. Terrance, Dr. Jean Nichols)?
• Within the context of this writing, should the names to be associated with a specific gender, ethnicity, and/or culture? Should those nominal identity markers align with the participants’ actual identities?
• Do pseudonyms need to be selected for other people, places, activities, and organizations mentioned in the interview? And if so, who makes those choices?

How you answer these questions should be informed by your specific context. For example, in relation to that fourth question, if a participant is talking supportively about a small on-campus organization that you want to bring attention to through your writing, it might make sense to refer to this organization by name even though its size might make it harder to disguise your participant’s identity. However, if your interviewee is speaking critically about a large, multi-national corporation where she works, you might want to develop a pseudonym for that company in order to protect this individual as much as possible.

Using Verbatim or Non-Verbatim

When you are conducting interviews, you are engaging people in very focused conversation. But when we converse, we say “like” a lot and “um” and “ah.” We start sentences and then interrupt ourselves and never return to complete those earlier thoughts. Conversation is never as direct and naturally coherent as writing can be. As a result, when you’re representing other people’s speech, you need to decide if you’ll be employing what is called “verbatim transcription” or “non-verbatim transcription.”

In “verbatim transcriptions,” you write out what people say exactly as they say it. You include all the filler words, false starts, and grammatical inconsistencies. You may even choose to include coughs and laughs. Scholars have traditionally upheld verbatim accounts as being accurate depictions of the interview process, but as Blake Poland pointed out, “much of the emotional context of the interview as well as nonverbal communication are not captured at all well in audiotape records, so that the audiotape itself is not strictly a verbatim record of the interview” (291). “Non-verbatim transcriptions,” (sometimes called “intelligent transcription”) respond to this acknowledged gap between the complexities of real conversation and the limitations of writing by encouraging writers to focus on the primary substance of participants’ quotes. In “non-verbatim transcriptions, you eliminate the unnecessary utterances like “er,” “well,” and “you know” and just include the foundational meaning of the interviewees’ words.” For example:

Verbatim Transcription : Well, you see, I was [pause] the problem, as I saw it, was more of a, a matter of representation, you know? How can I, like, be the one that’s just out there just declaring the way things are when I’ve not even, like, you know, experiencing the whole process for myself? Non-verbatim Transcription : The problem, as I saw it, was more a matter of representation. How can I be the one that’s out there declaring the way things are when I’ve not even experienced the whole process for myself?

The choice to use verbatim or non-verbatim transcription in quoting your participants should be informed by intentional considerations you are making as a writer. There are good reasons to use either forms. As Mahesh Kumar has identified in a blog post for the Transcription Certification Institute, verbatim transcription is useful for showcasing the thought process by which interview participants develop their ideas. False starts and self-corrections track down how someone is thinking about an issue in real time, and some fillers can be useful expressions of personality. Additionally, some linguistics research and conversation analysis methodologies expect highly structured, verbatim transcriptions that even account for pauses and simultaneous dialogue. However, quotations presented through non-verbatim transcriptions are clearer and easier to read and enable you to present your interview subjects as articulate (Poland 292). Whether you go with verbatim or non-verbatim transcription, make sure that you are being consistent with this choice across your article, paper, report, or essay. Also, if it’s common in the genre you are writing to discuss your methodology choices, it may be useful to clarify which transcription form you have chosen to use and why this was an appropriate choice.

Works Cited

Allen, Ruth E.S., and Janine L. Wiles. “A Rose by Any Other Name: Participants Choosing Research Pseudonyms.” Qualitative Research in Psychology , Dec. 2015. Research Gate , doi: 10.1080/14780887.2015.1133746.

Bogdan, Robert C., and Sari Knopp Biklen. Qualitative Research for Education: An Introduction to Theories and Methods . 5 th ed., Pearson, 2007.

Calvert, Jane, and Joan H. Fujimura. “Calculating Life? Duelling Discourses in Interdisciplinary Systems Biology.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences , vol. 42, no. 2l, 2011. Science Direct , https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsc.2010.11.022 .

Godbee, Beth. “Toward Explaining the Transformative Power of Talk About, Around, and for Writing.” Research in the Teaching of English , vol. 47, no. 2, 2012, pp. 171-97.

Grutsch McKinney, Jackie. Strategies for Writing Center Research . Parlor Press, 2016.

Herrera, Yoshiko M. “The 2002 Russian Census: Institutional Reform at Goskomstar.”  Post-Soviet Affairs , vol, 20, no. 4, 2004, pp. 350-86.

Hutchcroft, Paul D. Booty Capitalism: The Politics of Banking in the Philippines , Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1998.

Kinkead, Joyce. Researching Writing: An Introduction to Research Methods . University Press of Colorado, 2015.

Kumar, Mahesh. “Verbatim Vs Non-Verbatim Transcription: Differences, Requirements, & Jobs.” Transcription Certification Institute , 5 December 2017. Accessed online 19 June 2017. https://blog.transcriptioncertificationinstitute.org/verbatim-vs-non-verbatim-transcription-differences-requirements-jobs/.

Poland, Blake D. “Transcription Quality as an Aspect of Rigor in Qualitative Research.” Qualitative Inquiry , no. 1, vol. 3, 1995, pp. 290-310.

Seidman, Irving. Interviewing as Qualitative Research: A Guide for Researchers in Education and the Social Sciences . 3 rd ed., Teachers College Press, 2006.

Vieira, Kate. “Undocumented in a Documentary Society: Textual Borders and Transnational Religious Literacies.”  Written Communication , vol 28, no. 4, 2011, pp. 436-61.

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Obtaining academic employment within the u.s. context: the experiences of strugglers.

1. Introduction

What are the experiences of Ph.D. graduates in obtaining academic employment within the U.S. context?

2. Theoretical Background

2.1. obtaining academic employment, 2.2. conceptual framework, 3. methodology, 3.1. research approach, 3.2. sampling, 3.3. data collection and analysis, 3.4. positionality and trustworthiness, 4. findings, 4.1. facing concerns about the best fit qualities.

I made use of everything at every step during the application process to show that I was an excellent fit! … they looked for a piece of the jigsaw puzzle. I had to interpret what was a fit and showed them that I was the piece they were looking for—the best fit. For example, they prioritized candidates graduating from comparative education programs. Also, they both required us to be able to do qualitative and quantitative data. I think I have mastered it, so … I think showing them that I was really determined and invested in the job.

The name is important. My name is a non-Western name, which certainly sounds foreign. And that’s the thing, although my application, in my opinion, was strong. Therefore, if this was true, it would be funny. So, a small detail, and I don’t think this is advice for foreign candidates to change names … because that’s an identity…. I know, and we know that’s a factor!

4.2. Negotiating Failures with a Flexible Mindset

So, as I said, when I was in the market … and if I was rejected, it didn’t reflect who I was. In addition, this process was stressful … Because at the end of the day, I might have thought: “I’m excellent. Why did they not choose me?” Blah blah blah. For example, when I applied, and that department already had one Asian faculty member. I am Southeast Asian, but Asian candidates in general are not the focus of the affirmative action policy. So, they didn’t want another Asian faculty member. Right? So, no matter how good I was, I might be disadvantaged right from the get-go.

I couldn’t move a lot because of family reasons. So, I became a visiting assistant professor at this university from 2009 to 2012. In 2012, there was a lecturer position, so I applied for it, and I became a lecturer here from 2012 to 2015. In 2015, there was a tenured-track opening, so I also applied for it, and I became an assistant professor in 2015. So, there were options to take along the way. But they were just temporary so that I would take the permanent job [assistant professor]. (Albert, an assistant professor in mathematics, who applied for the current position as an international candidate)

4.3. Introspecting to Restore Academic Identity

There is not an abundance of tenure-track jobs. So, institutions continue to rely more on adjunct and clinical faculty. … The market has become more competitive. So, I thought I should take something else … and then continue applying for something else … the administrative position that does not have contracts and stay in the position for an indefinite amount of time.

I didn’t let anyone define me. Some people say, you know, “Go publish a book chapter”. Some say “Go publish there” [in a bad journal]. I didn’t listen to them. Top or nothing! I was a Ph.D. from a not-so-famous university. I didn’t touch Harvard. I wouldn’t even have a full professorship at such an amazing university. I was a minority person and an immigrant. But I didn’t let them define me.

5. Discussion

5.1. recommendations for further research, 5.2. recommendations for practice, 6. limitations, 7. conclusions, author contributions, institutional review board statement, informed consent statement, data availability statement, acknowledgments, conflicts of interest.

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Share and Cite

Bui, B.C.; Gonzalez, E.M. Obtaining Academic Employment Within the U.S. Context: The Experiences of Strugglers. Educ. Sci. 2024 , 14 , 1015. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci14091015

Bui BC, Gonzalez EM. Obtaining Academic Employment Within the U.S. Context: The Experiences of Strugglers. Education Sciences . 2024; 14(9):1015. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci14091015

Bui, Binh Chi, and Elsa Maria Gonzalez. 2024. "Obtaining Academic Employment Within the U.S. Context: The Experiences of Strugglers" Education Sciences 14, no. 9: 1015. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci14091015

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