Questioning techniques: KS5

Introductory techniques

When to use an interview

It’s important that students can explain why they are using an interview over, for example, a questionnaire.

An interview might be the most appropriate technique if you want to explore a complex topic in depth, uncover the ‘why’ behind how people behave, or need flexibility in your research.

Interviews allow you to ask follow-up questions and clarify responses or uncover unexpected insights, which other questioning techniques might not enable. However, interviews can be very time-consuming to carry out properly and so it’s worth bearing this in mind.

Give students a range of different NEA titles and ask them whether a questionnaire or an interview would be the most appropriate technique for investigation. For example:

What are the shopping habits of residents in a newly developed suburban area?
Questionnaires would be most appropriate because the topic is relatively straightforward, a large sample size is needed to represent the population accurately and the data can be easily quantified and analysed statistically.
How do residents perceive changes in their neighbourhood’s cultural landscape?
Interviews would be better because the topic requires an in-depth exploration of personal experiences and emotions and non-verbal cues can provide additional context.
How do commuters perceive the efficiency of public transport in Manchester?
Questionnaires would be most appropriate because standardised questions can provide comparable data across different areas of the city and time efficiency is important when surveying busy commuters.

The ethics of interviewing

Conducting an ethical interview involves several key principles and practices:

Informed Consent: Obtain explicit consent from participants after clearly communicating the interview’s purpose, scope, and potential uses of the information.
Confidentiality: Protect participants’ personal information by anonymising data, securely storing recordings or transcripts, and limiting access.
Fairness and non-discrimination: Treat all interviewees with equal respect, avoiding any discriminatory practices based on protected characteristics such as race, gender, or age.
Respect for autonomy: Allow participants to make independent decisions about their involvement and ensure interviewees can skip questions or withdraw from the interview if they feel uncomfortable.
Ethical questioning: Use open-ended questions that allow participants to express their perspectives freely and avoid leading questions.
Handling sensitive topics: Approach sensitive subjects with empathy and understanding. Create a safe and supportive environment for participants to express themselves.
Recording practices: If recording the interview, ensure proper consent is obtained and inform participants about how recordings will be used and stored.
Debriefing: After the interview, provide participants with information about how their data will be used and offer them an opportunity to ask questions or provide feedback.

Students could practice ethical interviews in pairs to make sure they consider all of the aspects above and to pilot their questions and interview set-up. They should also think carefully about where they are going to conduct their interviews and when, so that the interviewee feels comfortable.

The interview

Students need to write an interview schedule which includes the questions that they plan to ask. These should be open questions where the interviewee is given the opportunity to talk at length.

Students should also write a list of prompts, for example, ‘can you tell me more about that?’ or ‘go on…’, to encourage interviewees to talk at length. However, they also should be prepared to leave silences at various points so that the interviewee can think about their answer.

It is also common for interviewees to add interesting information after the interview is technically over and the recording has been switched off! Interviews can vary in length, but a good length for A level students to aim for is between 20 and 30 minutes.

Much more than this and it will take time to transcribe, much less and it begs the question whether a questionnaire would have been more effective in the first place.

An example interview schedule

Introduction for each interview

Explain purpose and nature of interview.
Give assurance that the interviewee will remain anonymous and that responses will be treated in confidence.
Highlight that the respondent might find some questions difficult, but there are no right or wrong answers. I am only interested in opinions and personal experiences.
Make clear that the interviewee is free to interrupt, ask for clarification or criticise a line of questioning.
Ensure that the interviewee knows why I have interest in this area of research.
Ask permission to record the interview and explain this is for ease of transcription.

Interview 1: What are the participants’ experiences of living in X? (purpose of the interview)

How long have you lived in X? How would you describe your relationship with this place?
Do you enjoy living in X? Why do you think this is? Are there any critical experiences that have shaped your view? Have you always felt this way?
What advice would you give to someone who was thinking about moving to X? Would it depend on who that person was?
If you were able to move away from X, would you choose to do this? Can you explain why?

Examples of prompts:

Can you tell me more about that?
How does that make you feel?
Go on…

Data analysis – transcribing and coding

Transcription is a necessary step in the analysis of interview data and can help students begin to make sense of them. If the student has recorded their interview, then a basic transcript can be generated by technology. For example, by using the transcript function in Word, Teams or Zoom.

However, a check is needed to make sure that the transcription is accurate as errors can creep in. The alternative is to type out the transcript which is very time consuming. It does usually mean though that the student has a deeper connection and understanding of the data in this first stage.

Once the interview has been transcribed then it needs to be coded. If students have more than one interview, then a first step is to highlight similarities or differences between them using two different coloured highlighters.

Next, students should assign codes to parts of the interview which highlight key ideas. For example ‘economic change’ and ‘quality of life’ could be two key ideas that could be coded. An advantage of transcribing interviews means that often students have an idea of a few key ideas before they start.

Sub-codes could also be devised, since, for example, quality of life and economic change could have both positive and negative codes. The image below shows a planning document of the key codes.

Identifying and classifying interview codes

Once students have identified their codes, they should colour-code their interview transcript, using a different colour for each code, and annotate it, if necessary.