Planning and conducting qualitative interviews

Explore the three most common interview types—structured, semi-structured, and unstructured—and how narrative, factual, and cognitive interviews fit within this classification.

Explore unstructured interviews rooted in ethnographic tradition, emphasizing natural, deception-free conversations where participants guide the dialogue. Learn their advantages in depth and flexibility, and the challenges of time-consuming data analysis.

Explore semi-structured interviews guided by an interview guide or protocol, staying focused yet flexible to elicit in-depth responses and simplify data analysis.

Explore structured interviews, a formal, highly protocol-driven method using close-ended questions to yield quick, replicable and quantifiable data, with easy analysis and reduced bias, yet limited detail.

This lecture explains the three stages of an interview—lead in, main body, and closure—and how to design an interview guide that builds rapport and openness.

Explore types of interview questions to ask and avoid, including introductory, follow-up, probing, specifying, direct and indirect, structuring, and the role of silence, to craft an effective interview guide.

Develop your interview guide by mapping questions to your research questions and adding probing questions for depth, ensuring a natural, chronological conversation.

Plan and conduct qualitative interviews by using creative tools and resources, such as scenarios, photos, videos, and cognitive interview techniques, to elicit memories and responses while staying flexible and original.

Secure and test audio or video recording equipment, arrange a convenient time and place, and foster a friendly, comfortable interview environment to ensure participants are rested and engaged.

Prioritize interviewee well-being, build rapport, and actively listen, letting them speak and handle off-topic moments to elicit richer data. Record early, stay flexible, and use member checking to enhance validity.

Explore how to approach transcription in qualitative interviews, weigh detail levels and inclusion criteria, and justify your method with literature on reliability, validity, paradigms, and ontology.

Choose who transcribes your data—yourself or a professional service like GoTranscript—and if you do it yourself, use Express Scribe to slow audio.

Explore two major transcription approaches along a naturalism to deep naturalism continuum, balancing content focus with recording details, to ensure valid, meaningful qualitative interview data.

Choose a transcription approach that complements your analysis level and research question, and justify it transparently. Acknowledge its selective, nonobjective nature, and tailor detail (turns, pauses, length) to your study.

Explore the translation of interview transcripts and its impact on validity, transparency, and meaning. Learn to report translation clearly, focus on extracts, and analyze in the original language whenever possible.

Familiarize yourself with interview data, make initial notes, and develop working hypotheses. Build a coding framework and thematic model, then use software to analyze within-case and cross-case patterns.

Learn how to ensure validity in qualitative interview data by minimizing respondent, researcher, and reactivity biases through thoughtful questioning, transcription, member checking, audit trails, transparent analysis, and negative case analysis.

Explore researching sensitive topics and interviewing vulnerable groups, with universal tips on defining sensitivity, balancing face-to-face and distant methods, and building trust through open questions, self-disclosure, and a comfortable environment.

Plan and conduct interviews with children using creative methods (drawings, diaries, toys) while ensuring ethical approval and no-harm safeguards, and establish friendly, eye-level, open-question interviews.

Learn to plan and conduct qualitative interviews with survivors of trauma, balancing potential distress with research value, while upholding dignity, warmth, listening, and safety knowledge about rape and abuse.

Learn to plan and conduct qualitative interviews with brain injury participants, addressing recall challenges, stimuli intolerance, and emotion expression through thorough preparation, careful questioning, and debriefing.

Understand the challenges of interviewing elites, including access and power balance, and build trust through thorough preparation and background knowledge.

You have completed the course and can ask questions anytime, as instruction and the literature spark deeper interest in qualitative interviews, and the bonus section offers discounts on other courses.