Research Interviews: A Complete Guide to Types, Purposes, and Best Practices

What is Research Interviews: A Complete Guide to Types, Purposes, and Best Practices. Research interviews are a fundamental method of qualitative data collection used to obtain detailed information about participants’ experiences, opinions, and perspectives. There are three main types: structured, semi-structured, and unstructured. Each type has different purposes and requires specific best practices for effective and ethical implementation.

A Complete Guide to Types, Purposes, and Best Practices: Research Interviews

Understanding Research Interviews: An Introduction

The use of the interview in research marks a move away from seeing human subjects as simply manipulable and data as somehow external to individuals, and towards regarding knowledge as generated between humans, often through conversations (Kvale, 1996:11).

Regarding an interview, as Kvale (ibid.: 14) re marks, as an interview, an interchange of views between two or more people on a topic of mutual interest, sees the centrality of human inter action for knowledge production, and emphasizes the social situatedness of research data. As we suggested in previous posts, knowledge should be seen as constructed between participants, generating data rather than capta (Laing, 1967:53).

As such, the interview is not exclusively either subjective or objective, it is inter subjective (ibid.: 66). Interviews enable participants—be they interviewers or interviewees— to discuss their interpretations of the world in which they live, and to express how they regard situations from their own point of view. In these senses the interview is not simply concerned with collecting data about life: it is part of life itself, its human embeddedness is inescapable.

Three Fundamental Conceptions of the Interview

Kitwood lucidly contrasts three conceptions of it.

The Pure Information Transfer Model

The first conception is that of a potential means of pure information transfer and collection.

The Transaction with Bias Model

A second conception of the interview is that of a transaction which inevitably has bias, which is to be recognized and controlled. According to this viewpoint, Kitwood explains that ‘each participant in an interview will define the situation in a particular way. This fact can be best handled by building controls into the research design, for example by having a range of interviewers with different biases’.

The interview is best understood in terms of a theory of motivation which recognizes a range of non-rational factors governing human behavior, like emotions, unconscious needs and interpersonal in fluences. Kitwood points out that both these views of the interview regard the inherent features of interpersonal transactions as if they were ‘potential obstacles to sound research, and therefore to be removed, controlled, or at least harnessed in some way’.

The Everyday Life Encounter Model

The third conception of the interview sees it as an encounter necessarily sharing many of the features of everyday life. What is required, according to this view, is not a technique for dealing with bias, but a theory of everyday life that takes account of the relevant features of interviews. These may include role-playing, stereotyping, perception and understanding. One of the strongest advocates of this viewpoint is Cicourel (1964) who lists five of the unavoidable features of the interview situation that would normally be regarded as problematic:

1 There are many factors which inevitably differ from one interview to another, such as mutual trust, social distance and the inter viewer’s control.

2 The respondent may well feel uneasy and adopt avoidance tactics if the questioning is too deep.

3 Both interviewer and respondent are bound to hold back part of what it is in their power to state.

4 Many of the meanings which are clear to one will be relatively opaque to the other, even when the intention is genuine communication.

5 It is impossible, just as in everyday life, to bring every aspect of the encounter within rational control.

The message here is that no matter how hard an interviewer may try to be systematic and objective, the constraints of everyday life will be a part of whatever interpersonal transactions she initiates. Barker and Johnson (1998:230) argue that the interview is a particular medium for enacting or displaying people’s knowledge of cultural forms, as questions, far from being neutral, are couched in the cultural repertoires of all participants, indicating how people make sense of their social world and of each other.

Key Purposes of Research Interviews

The purposes of the interview are many and varied, for example:

Primary Research Applications

• To evaluate or assess a person in some respect;
• To select or promote an employee;
• To effect therapeutic change, as in the psychiatric interview;
• To test or develop hypotheses;
• To gather data, as in surveys or experimental situations;
• To sample respondents’ opinions, as in door step interviews.

Although in each of these situations the respective roles of the interviewer and interviewee may vary and the motives for taking part may differ, a common denominator is the transaction that takes place between seeking information on the part of one and supplying information on the part of the other.

Three Core Functions in Research

The research interview may serve three purposes. First, it may be used as the principal means of gathering information having direct bearing on the research objectives. As Tuckman describes it, ‘By providing access to what is “inside a per son’s head”, [it] makes it possible to measure what a person knows (knowledge or information), what a person likes or dislikes (values and preferences), and what a person thinks (attitudes and beliefs)’ (Tuckman, 1972).

Second, it may be used to test hypotheses or to suggest new ones; or as an explanatory device to help identify variables and relationships. And third, the interview may be used in conjunction with other methods in a research undertaking. In this connection, Kerlinger (1970) suggests that it might be used to follow up unexpected results, for example, or to validate other methods, or to go deeper into the motivations of respondents and their reasons for responding as they do.

We limit ourselves here to the use of the interview as a specific research tool. Interviews in this sense range from the formal interview in which set questions are asked and the answers recorded on a standardized schedule; through less formal interviews in which the interviewer is free to modify the sequence of questions, change the wording, explain them or add to them; to the completely informal interview where the interviewer may have a number of key issues which she raises in conversational style.

Beyond this point is located the non-directive interview in which the interviewer takes on a subordinate role. The research interview has been defined as ‘a two-person conversation initiated by the inter viewer for the specific purpose of obtaining research-relevant information, and focused by him [sic] on content specified by research objectives of systematic description, prediction, or explanation’ (Cannell and Kahn, 1968:527).

It involves the gathering of data through direct verbal interaction between individuals. In this sense it differs from the questionnaire where the respondent is required to record in some way her responses to set questions. As the interview has some things in common with the self-administered questionnaire, it is frequently compared with it. Each has advantages over the other in certain respects.

The ad vantages of the questionnaire, for instance, are: it tends to be more reliable; because it is anonymous, it encourages greater honesty; it is more economical than the interview in terms of time and money; and there is the possibility that it may be mailed.

Its disadvantages, on the other hand, are: there is often too low a percentage of returns; the interviewer is able to answer questions concerning both the purpose of the interview and any misunderstandings experienced by the interviewee, for it sometimes happens in the case of the latter that the same questions have different meanings for different people; if only closed items are used, the questionnaire will be subject to the weaknesses already discussed; if only open items are used, respondents may be unwilling to write their answers for one reason or another; questionnaires present problems to people of limited literacy; and an interview can be conducted at an appropriate speed whereas questionnaires are often filled in hurriedly.

By way of interest, we illustrate the relative merits of the interview and the questionnaire. It has been pointed out that the direct interaction of the interview is the source of both its advantages and disadvantages as a research technique (Borg, 1963). One advantage, for example, is that it allows for greater depth than is the case with other methods of data collection.

A disadvantage, on the other hand, is that it is prone to subjectivity and bias on the part of the interviewer. Oppenheim (1992:81–2) suggests that interviews have a higher response rate than questionnaires because respondents become more involved and, hence, motivated; they enable more to be said about the research than is usually mentioned in a covering letter to a questionnaire, and they are better than questionnaires for handling more difficult and open-ended questions.

Types of Research Interviews: A Comprehensive Overview

Classification Systems by Leading Researchers

The number of types of interview given is frequently a function of the sources one reads! For example:

LeCompte and Preissle (1993) give six types:

(a) standardized interviews

(b) in-depth interviews

(c) ethnographic interviews

(d) elite interviews

(e) life history interviews

(f) focus groups.

Bogdan and Biklen (1992) add to this:

(g) semi-structured interviews

(h) group inter views.

Lincoln and Guba (1985) add:

(i)structured interviews

Oppenheim (1992:65) adds to this:

(j) exploratory interviews.

Patton (1980:206) outlines four types:

(k) informal conversational interviews

(l) interview guide approaches

(m) standardized open-ended inter views

(n) closed quantitative interviews

Understanding Interview Structure: From Formal to Informal

Patton sets these out clearly thus : How is the researcher to comprehend the range of these various types? Kvale (1996:126 7) sets the several types of interview along a series of continua, arguing that interviews differ in the openness of their purpose, their degree of structure, the extent to which they are exploratory or hypothesis-testing, whether they seek description or interpretation, whether they are largely cognitive-focused or emotion-focused.

A major difference lies in the degree of structure in the interview, which, itself, reflects the purposes of the interview, for example, to generate numbers of respondents’ feelings about a given issue or to indicate unique, alternative feelings about a particular matter.

Lincoln and Guba (1985:269) suggest that the structured interview is useful when the researcher is aware of what she does not know and therefore is in a position to frame questions that will supply the knowledge required, whereas the unstructured interview is useful when the researcher is not aware of what she does not know, and therefore, relies on the respondents to tell her!

The issue here is of ‘fitness for purpose’; the more one wishes to gain comparable data— across people, across sites—the more standardized and quantitative one’s interview tends to become; the more one wishes to acquire unique, non-standardized, personalized information about how individuals view the world, the more one veers towards qualitative, open-ended, un structured interviewing. Indeed this is true not simply of interviews but of their written counterpart—questionnaires.

Oppenheim (1992:86) indicates that standardization should refer to stimulus equivalence, i.e. that every respondent should understand the interview question in the same way, rather than replicating the exact wording, as some respondents might have difficulty with, or interpret very differently, and perhaps irrelevantly, particular questions. (He also adds, that, as soon as the wording of a question is altered, however minimally, it becomes, in effect, a different question!)

Exploratory interviews (Oppenheim, 1992:65) are designed to be essentially heuristic and seek to develop hypotheses rather than to collect facts and numbers. As these frequently cover emotionally loaded topics they require skill on the part of the interviewer to handle the interview situation, enabling respondents to talk freely and emotionally and to have can dour, rich ness, depth, authenticity, honesty about their experiences.

The Five Continua Framework

Morrison (1993:34–6) sets out five continua of different ways of conceptualizing interviews. At one end of the first continuum are numbers, statistics, objective facts, and quantitative data; at the other end are transcripts of conversations, comments, subjective accounts, essentially word based qualitative data.

At one end of the second continuum are closed questions, multiple choice questions where respondents have to select from a given, predator mined range of responses that particular response which most accurately represents what they wish to have recorded for them; at the other end of the continuum are open-ended questions which do not require the selection from a given range of responses—respondents can answer the questions in their own way and in their own words, i.e. the research is responsive to participants’ own frames of reference.

At one end of the third continuum is a desire to measure responses, to compare one set of responses with another, to correlate responses, to see how many people said this, how many rated a particular item as such-and-such; at the other end of the continuum is a desire to capture the uniqueness of a particular situation, person, or program—what makes it different from others, i.e. to record the quality of a situation or response.

At one end of the fourth continuum is a de sire for formality and the precision of numbers and prescribed categories of response where the researcher knows in advance what is being sought; at the other end is a more responsive, informal intent where what is being sought is more uncertain and pre-determined. The re searcher goes into the situation and responds to what emerges.

At one end of the fifth continuum is the attempt to find regularities—of response, opinions etc.—in order to begin to make generalizations from the data, to describe what is happening; at the other end is the attempt to portray and catch uniqueness, the quality of a response, the complexity of a situation, to understand why respondents say what they say, and all of this in their own terms. One can cluster the sets of poles of the five

The left hand column is much more formal and pre-planned to a high level of detail, whilst the right hand column is far less formal and the fine detail only emerges once the researcher is in situ. Interviews in the left hand column are front loaded, that is, they require all the categories and -multiple choice questions to be worked out in advance. This usually requires a pilot to try out the material and refine it. Once the detail of this planning is completed the analysis of the data is relatively straightforward because the categories for analyzing the data have been worked out in advance, hence data analysis is rapid.

The right hand column is much more end loaded, that is, it is quicker to commence and gather data because the categories do not have to be worked out in advance, they emerge once the data have been collected. However, in order to discover the issues that emerge and to organize the data presentation, the analysis of the data takes considerably longer.

Characteristics of Qualitative Research Interviews

Kvale (1996:30) sets out key characteristics of qualitative research interviews:

• Life world The topic of the qualitative research interview is the lived world of the subjects and their relation to it.
• Meaning The interview seeks to interpret the meaning of central themes in the life world of the subject. The interviewer registers and interprets the meaning of what is said as well as how it is said.
• Qualitative The interview seeks qualitative knowledge expressed in normal language, it does not aim at quantification.
• Descriptive The interview attempts to obtain open nuanced descriptions of different aspects of the subjects’ life worlds.
• Specificity Descriptions of specific situations and action sequences are elicited, not general opinions.
• Deliberate naiveté The interviewer exhibits an openness to new and unexpected phenomena, rather than having ready-made categories and schemes of interpretation.
• Focused The interview is focused on particular themes; it is neither strictly structured with standardized questions, nor entirely ‘non-directive’.
• Ambiguity Interviewee statements can sometimes be ambiguous, reflecting contra dictions in the world the subject lives in.
• Change The process of being interviewed may produce new insights and awareness, and the subject may in the course of the interview come to change his or her descriptions and meanings about a theme.
• Sensitivity Different interviewers can produce different statements on the same themes, de pending on their sensitivity to and knowledge of the interview topic.
• Interpersonal relations The knowledge obtained is produced through the interpersonal interaction in the interview.
• Positive experience A well carried-out research interview can be a rare and enriching experience for the interviewee, who may obtain new insights into his or her life situation.

Four Main Interview Types for Research

There are four main kinds of interview that we discuss here that may be used specifically as research tools:

(a) The structured interview

(b) The unstructured interview

(c) The non-directive interview

(d) The focused interview

The Structured Interview

The structured interview is one in which the content and procedures are organized in advance. This means that the sequence and wording of the questions are determined by means of a schedule and the interviewer is left little freedom to make modifications. Where some leeway is granted her, it too is specified in advance. It is therefore characterized by being a closed situation.

The Unstructured Interview

In contrast to this, the unstructured interview is an open situation, having greater flexibility and freedom. As Kerlinger (1970) notes, although the research purposes govern the questions asked, their con tent, sequence and wording are entirely in the hands of the interviewer. This does not mean, however, that the unstructured interview is a more casual affair, for in its own way it also has to be carefully planned.

The Non-Directive Interview

The non-directive interview as a research technique derives from the therapeutic or psychiatric interview. The principal features of it are the minimal direction or control exhibited by the interviewer and the freedom the respondent has to express her subjective feelings as fully and as spontaneously as she chooses or is able. As Moser and Kalton (1977) put it: The informant is encouraged to talk about the subject under investigation (usually himself) and the course of the interview is mainly guided by him.

There are no set questions, and usually no predetermined framework for recorded answers. The interviewer confines himself to elucidating doubtful points, to rephrasing the respondent’s answers and to probing generally. It is an approach especially to be recommended when complex attitudes are involved and when one’s knowledge of them is still in a vague and unstructured form. (Moser and Kalton, 1977)

The Focused Interview

The need to introduce rather more interviewer control into the non-directive situation led to the development of the focused interview. The distinctive feature of this type is that it focuses on a respondent’s subjective responses to a known situation in which she has been involved and which has been analysed by the interviewer prior to the interview. She is thereby able to use the data from the interview to substantiate or reject previously formulated hypotheses.

As Merton and Kendall (1946) explain, In the usual depth interview, one can urge inform ants to reminisce on their experiences. In the focused interview, however, the interviewer can, when expedient, play a more active role: he can introduce more explicit verbal cues to the stimulus pattern or even represent it. In either case this usually activates a concrete report of responses by informants. (Merton and Kendall, 1946) We examine the non-directive interview and the focused interview in more detail later in the next blog posts.

FAQs

What is a research interview?

Suggested answer location: Extract from the definition paragraph “A research interview is a two-person conversation initiated by the interviewer for the specific purpose of obtaining research-relevant information, focused on content specified by research objectives of systematic description, prediction, or explanation. It involves gathering data through direct verbal interaction between individuals.”

What are the main types of research interviews?

Suggested answer location: Summarize from the types section The four main types are:

(1) Structured interviews with predetermined questions and sequences

(2) Unstructured interviews with flexible content and wording

(3) Non-directive interviews where respondents have freedom to express subjective feelings

(4) Focused interviews that examine responses to known situations.

When should I use interviews instead of questionnaires?

Suggested answer location: Extract from the comparison section “Use interviews when you need: higher response rates, greater depth of information, the ability to clarify misunderstandings, responses from people with limited literacy, or when handling complex and open-ended questions. Interviews allow for direct interaction and immediate clarification.”

What is the difference between structured and unstructured interviews?

Suggested answer location: Combine information from both definitions “Structured interviews have predetermined content, sequence, and wording with little interviewer freedom—creating a closed situation. Unstructured interviews offer flexibility where the interviewer controls content, sequence, and wording based on research purposes—creating an open situation. However, both require careful planning.”

What are the five unavoidable features of interview situations?

Suggested answer location: Extract from Cicourel’s list “According to Cicourel (1964): (1) Factors like trust and social distance vary between interviews, (2) Respondents may feel uneasy with deep questioning, (3) Both parties hold back information, (4) Meanings may be unclear despite genuine communication attempts, and (5) Not every aspect can be rationally controlled, just like in everyday life.”

What is a non-directive interview?

Suggested answer location: Extract from the non-directive section “A non-directive interview is characterized by minimal interviewer direction and maximum respondent freedom. The informant is encouraged to talk about the subject (usually themselves), guides the interview course, and there are no set questions or predetermined answer frameworks. It’s especially useful for exploring complex attitudes.”

What are the advantages of research interviews?

Suggested answer location: Extract from advantages section “Key advantages include: greater depth than other data collection methods, higher response rates due to increased involvement and motivation, ability to explain research purposes and clarify misunderstandings, better handling of difficult and open-ended questions, and the opportunity to conduct interviews at appropriate speeds.”

What is a focused interview?

Suggested answer location: Extract from focused interview section “A focused interview examines a respondent’s subjective responses to a known situation they’ve experienced, which the interviewer has analyzed beforehand. This allows the interviewer to play a more active role, introduce explicit verbal cues, and use interview data to test previously formulated hypotheses.”

How do qualitative research interviews differ from other types?

Suggested answer location: Summarize from Kvale’s characteristics “Qualitative interviews focus on the lived world of subjects, seek to interpret meaning rather than quantify, obtain nuanced descriptions in normal language, elicit specific situations rather than general opinions, remain open to unexpected phenomena, and recognize that the interview process itself may produce new insights for participants.”

What is the interview continuum concept?

Suggested answer location: Extract from Morrison’s five continua “Interviews exist along five continua: (1) quantitative data vs. qualitative transcripts, (2) closed vs. open-ended questions, (3) measurement vs. uniqueness, (4) formal precision vs. informal responsiveness, and (5) finding regularities vs. capturing uniqueness. Researchers choose positions based on whether they want comparable data or personalized information.”

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