If you're preparing for an interview, consider interview guides as a way to structure the conversation you want to have with the interviewee. Interview guides help give a general summary of an interview, no matter what type of interview it is. For this reason, it's quite common for interviewers to create audio recordings of the interviews they conduct. Some studies are longitudinal and conduct several interviews with the same subjects over a period of time.
In this case, the researcher could use the detailed guide to prepare and practice before conducting the interviews and then bring a brief summary to the interview. Make sure you have all the forms, tapes, and materials marked with a code for that interview, so that you don't waste time when you start the data analysis trying to figure out what grades go with each participant. If you are going to visit different companies, prepare an information note that describes each company, how it uses its product, the main problems the company is facing, and the agenda for the day. During the development of this study, and particularly with the interview guide, I was grateful for the work done earlier, which allowed me to understand how people thought about and discussed these issues.
Creswell (200) argued that qualitative research interviews focused on a few open-ended questions that “aim to obtain points of view and opinions from participants (e.g., participants are asked to respond in their own words and to raise points that they consider important), so each interview is likely to flow a little differently. When analyzing the results, documenting your decisions regarding the questions that are used, discarded, or reviewed can help you remember the thought process behind the interview guide. The in-depth interview is a central method of collecting qualitative data, characterized by the fact that the researcher asks the respondents a series of open-ended questions or raises topics for debate. These interviews are considered semi-structured because the researcher has a particular topic for the respondent, but the questions are open-ended and may not be phrased in exactly the same way or order to each respondent.
If, for example, you hear people constantly use a particular word that you weren't familiar with, you could ask what it means and use it in the interview. It's crucial to practice the interview beforehand, whether you record your interviews or not. Interviews can be standardized or structured so that each respondent is presented with the same list of open and closed questions. Qualitative interviews provide participants with the opportunity to delve deeper in ways that are not possible with other methods, such as survey research.
The interviewer effect is a type of bias that arises when a characteristic of an interviewer (race, age, gender identity, etc.).
