Organizing an In-Depth Interview

Dr. Philip N. Howard

Department of Communication

University of Washington

A) Create a fact sheet about the respondent for your records

1. Interviewee’s name (or code number, if the topic is a sensitive one and names keyed to code numbers are kept in a separate place), and interview number if multiple interviews.

2. Place and date of the interview.

3. Demographics: Gender, Age, Education, Ethnicity, Place of residence, Place of birth; Occupation or other position

4. Religion/Politics

B) Create a list of things you want to discuss before the substantive interview beings.

1. Explain purpose and nature of the study, telling how they came to be selected, and why they are important.

2. Assure the respondent about the ways you are ensuring anonymity or confidentiality—especially in any written reports growing out of the study—and that the responses will be treated in the strictest confidence.

3. Indicate that some of the questions may see silly or difficult to answer. There are no right or wrong answers, but the respondent should do their best to answer questions. Only interested in personal opinions and experiences.

4. Feel free to interrupt, ask clarification, criticize a line of questioning, etc.

5. Interviewer will tell respondent something about themselves – background, training, and interest in the area of inquiry.

6. Ask permission to tape record the interview, explaining why this is necessary.

C) Create a sheet of topics and questions you want to cover

1. Leading questions (What do you think about …? Is it getting better, or worse?).

2. Other people’s opinions to bring out contrast (Experts say …; I read in the paper that …; Some people think …)

3. Let the respondent complete their thoughts, but use the topics list to keep the conversation moving if the discussion looses energy.

4. Tell them your research question, explain terms, and define your working hypotheses. Save this for last, otherwise might bias the respondent.

D) Write up interview/field notes

1. Field notes are more or less chronological logs of what has happened to the interviewer, the subject and the setting during the period of observation. They are a running description of events, people, things heard and overheard, conversations among and with people. Each new physical setting and person encountered merits a description. You should also record changes in the physical setting or people. Since you are likely to encounter the same settings and people again and again, you need not repeat such descriptions, but only augment them as changes occur.

2. Summaries and notes of what the informant said generally at some point.

3. Verbatim transcription of responses that seem important.

4. Field notes of relevant extra-interview encounters with the informant.

5. Personal emotional experiences.

6. Methodological difficulties or successes.

7. Ideas – short, tentative pieces of analysis that might ultimately help answer or rephrase your research question.