interview research construction

• Online Degree Explore Bachelor’s & Master’s degrees
• MasterTrack™ Earn credit towards a Master’s degree
• University Certificates Advance your career with graduate-level learning
• Top Courses
• Join for Free

10 Common Interview Questions and How to Answer Them

Have a job interview coming up? Interview preparation is key. Before going, review the most common interview questions, plan your responses, and research the company so you can walk into that room prepared.

When you land an interview, you’re probably excited and wondering about the most common interview questions. To prepare for your interview and make a great first impression, you can explore this list of 10 common interview questions and plan your responses to them. 

1. Tell me about yourself. 

This warm-up question is your chance to make an impactful first impression. Be prepared to describe yourself in a few sentences. You can mention: 

Your past experiences and how they relate to the current job

How your most recent job is tied to this new opportunity

Two of your strengths

One personal attribute, like a hobby or an interest

The majority of this response leans on your past work experience, with a small dash of your personal life added at the end of the response. Keep your answer to two to four minutes.

2. Why do you want to work for this company?

The answer to this interview question should include specifics about the company, so you’ll need to do some pre-interview research. If, for example, the company is known for its collaborative culture, you could point out successes you’ve had while collaborating with a team. 

Look for company-specific information on their website and social channels. Pay attention to the company’s mission statement, values, and the "About us" section. Explore employee-specific posts on social media to learn about the company’s culture or outreach programs. Combine this information with relatable skills to show your preparedness and enthusiasm for the company. 

3. Why are you leaving your current role?

When asked about leaving a previous job, be honest but positive. Even if you left a job under trying circumstances, keep your response short and upbeat. Here are some suggestions:

I’m looking for a company that better aligns with my values. 

I’m excited to find a company where I can grow my career. 

I’ve decided to go down a different career path.

My position was downsized, but I’m looking forward to a new opportunity. 

I’m excited to explore a culture in line with my personality. 

I’m ready to take on a new challenge with an innovative company. 

I’ve aspired to work for this company and seized the chance to apply.

4. What is your biggest weakness?

When it comes to identifying weaknesses, think about some conflicts you’ve had to overcome. Maybe it’s difficult for you to take criticism, collaborate, or make public presentations. Take these challenges and frame them with a solution. For instance, you learned to take feedback to better a project, collaborate to elevate a product’s offerings, or use presentations as a way to build your confidence. 

5. What do you consider your greatest achievement?

Your greatest achievement should be something specific, like bringing a new video game to a saturated market despite a lack of resources. Discuss a work-related triumph as a way to humbly mention your achievements rather than listing awards or accolades. This achievement should also align with the company’s mission, goals, or the position’s objectives.

6. Tell me about a difficult situation you’ve faced and how you handled it. 

This question is really asking about your character during moments of stress. Think of a time when you faced an impossible deadline, had to choose sides, or navigated interoffice turmoil. Explain the problem, how you stayed calm, and focus on the solution that produced a resolution. 

7. Give an example of how you’ve gone above and beyond your role requirements. 

While you might be tempted to mention the extra hours you put in or the additional tasks you take on, it’s best to showcase your skills with a story. Talk about the innovative methods you deployed to revive a stalled project or roles you filled when your team was downsized.   

8. What are your salary expectations?

Salary talks can be sensitive, but they’re necessary. Research a competitive salary before you go into your interview so you don’t aim too high or low. You can use tools like a Salary Calculator or Salary Data & Career Research Center (Canada) to get baseline compensation. Remember to mention years of experience or specific certifications that enhance your value.   

9. Where do you see yourself five years from now? 

Another common interview question looks at your five-year plan. You should promote your commitment to the company while looking toward growth opportunities.  

More specifically, you can craft a response that explores your:

Position-related goals

Potential experiences within the company over the next five years

Possible certifications, skills, or achievements you might obtain

Aspirations for growth within the role 

10. Do you have any questions for us? 

Typically, this is the last question of the interview, and it might be tempting to say, “No. I’m all set.” However, this question allows you to show your interest in the position. Some questions you could ask include:

What are the day-to-day tasks involved in this role?

How do you evaluate the progress of this role? 

What ongoing educational or training opportunities could I pursue in this role?

Where do you see the company in five years?

How would you describe the company culture?

How to prepare for an interview

Before your interview, you should do a few things in preparation. To make a great first impression, you should research the company, practice your responses to common interview questions, and run through a practice interview. For more specific tips, take a look at this pre-interview checklist:  

1. Research the company.

Start your research on the company website. Look over their mission statement, values, and history. Next, check Google News for any articles that include the company. Comb through the company’s social accounts, paying particular attention to the product- or employee-related posts. Also, read the LinkedIn profiles of the company’s key players and, if possible, the profile of your hiring manager. 

2. Understand company work culture.

Take some time to learn about the company culture by looking at employee photos on social media and checking out the company's news coverage. You might see team-building events on its Facebook Page or news coverage of a recent fundraiser, which can help you understand the culture. You can also check for employee testimonials on business rating platforms like Glassdoor.

3. Prepare your answers.

Take some time to review the most common interview questions and practice your answers. You don’t want to sound rehearsed, so write down a few bullet points for each question and talk through them a little differently each time. 

4. Practice the interview.

Ask a friend or family member to role-play with you. Go through the standard interview questions, and practice your greeting and exit. Wear the outfit and shoes you plan to wear during the practice to ensure you’re comfortable.

5. Ask for feedback. 

Ask your mock interviewer to give you feedback. Maybe you slouched in the chair, nervously bounced your knees, or got stuck on a particular interview question. The person helping you can give you some tips to improve your interview skills.  

Next steps 

In addition to role-playing, you might consider taking an online class or two to improve your interview skills. Prepare for a successful job search with the Interviewing and Resume Writing in English Specialization from the University of Maryland. Learn at your own pace and practice your interviewing skills with other job seekers from around the globe. 

Keep reading

Coursera staff.

Editorial Team

Coursera’s editorial team is comprised of highly experienced professional editors, writers, and fact...

This content has been made available for informational purposes only. Learners are advised to conduct additional research to ensure that courses and other credentials pursued meet their personal, professional, and financial goals.

Bridging the labor mismatch in US construction

The US construction sector seems set for a jobs boom. The US Bipartisan Infrastructure Law  projects $550 billion of new infrastructure investment over the next decade, which our modeling suggests could create 3.2 million new jobs across the nonresidential construction value chain. That’s approximately a 30 percent increase in the overall US nonresidential construction workforce, which would mean 300,000 to 600,000 new workers entering the sector—every year.

This is a big ask for an industry that is already struggling to find the people it needs. In October 2021, 402,000 construction positions 1 Included both nonresidential and residential construction openings. Further granularity is not available from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. remained unfilled at the end of the month, the second-highest level recorded since data collection began in December 2000.

In this environment, wages have already increased significantly since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, reflecting intense competition for employees, with employers offering higher pay or other nonwage benefits. Between December 2019 and 2021, construction wages grew by 7.9 percent. 2 Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, US Bureau of Labor Statistics. Competition from other sectors for the same pool of labor is heating up, too. For example, over the same period, transportation and warehousing wages grew by 12.6 percent. The prospect of higher pay and better working conditions is already tempting experienced workers away from construction and into these and other sectors.

No end in sight

Today’s mismatches are likely to persist because of structural shifts in the labor market. The relationship between job openings and unemployment has departed from historical trends. In January 2022—two years from the start of the pandemic—the US unemployment rate stood at 4.0 percent, close to its prepandemic level of 3.5 percent. Job openings remained exceptionally high, however, with 10.9 million unfilled positions as of the end of December 2021, compared with 5.9 million in December 2019.

This labor supply imbalance has multiple root causes, some shorter term and cyclical while others are more structural in nature. For example, the pandemic brought forward the retirements of many in the baby-boomer generation, with an estimated 3.2 million leaving the workforce in 2020—over a million more than in any year before 2016. According to the American Opportunity Survey , among those who are unemployed, concerns about physical health, mental health, and lack of childcare remain the dominant impediments preventing reentry into the workforce. Research on the “Great Attrition/Great Attraction”  also highlights the importance of nonwage components of the employee value proposition. Record job openings and quit rates highlight employees’ growing emphasis on feeling valued by their organization, supportive management, and flexibility and autonomy at work.

Additionally, the pipeline of new construction workers is not flowing as freely as it once did. Training programs have been slow to restart operations after pandemic-driven safety concerns led to their suspension the spring of 2020. The industry is finding it more difficult to attract the international workforce that has been an important source of talent for engineering, design, and contracting activities. Net migration has been falling since 2016, a trend accelerated by COVID-19 travel restrictions. 3 Population estimates, US Census Bureau. Between 2016 and 2021, net migration declined steadily from 1.06 million to 244,000.

Would you like to learn more about Capital Excellence ?

Impact on projects.

The interconnected nature of the construction value chain means that the labor mismatch generates knock-on effects across the project life cycle and supply chain. By late 2021, project owners were reporting that up to 25 percent of material deliveries to sites were either late or incomplete. In project execution, the combination of higher hourly rates, premiums and incentives, and overtime payments was resulting in overall labor costs as much as double prepandemic levels. Meanwhile, difficulty accessing skilled and experienced people was leading some owners to report project delays related to issues around the quality and productivity of on-site work.

In some US cities and their suburbs, wage growth has surpassed the level seen in core Gulf Coast counties at the height of the shale oil boom. Labor shortages in the shale sector drove wages up by 5 to 10 percent and were correlated with steep drops in productivity. The productivity of some tasks fell by 40 percent or more during shale construction peaks (exhibit), and overall productivity declined by about 40 percent per year when labor was in short supply. This forced owners to extend project timelines by 20 to 25 percent. The impact of a long-term, nationwide labor mismatch might be even more severe than the shale industry’s experience, given that oil companies were able to attract new workers from around the country.

Getting back into balance

The labor mismatch in the construction sector is bad today, and set to get worse. To avoid a decade or more of rising costs, falling productivity, and ever-increasing project delays, companies in the industry should consider thoughtful actions now.

Those actions could address three components of the challenge. First, companies could do everything possible to maximize productivity through measures aimed at improving efficiency across the value chain. Second, they could expand the pool of available labor by doubling down on accessing diverse talent and working harder to retain the employees already in their organization. Finally, they could consider making labor a strategic priority, with senior leadership attention within companies.

Improving construction productivity

Companies could access a range of levers to reduce the labor content required per job and drive to improve productivity in project development and delivery. Those levers involve changes to project designs and fresh thinking about when, where, and how work is done.

Improvements in productivity occur long before work starts on the ground. They include rigorous control of project scope, design simplification, and standardization. Increasing the use of off-site and modular construction , for example, could allow projects to capture multiple benefits, including accelerated design cycles; the greater productivity associated with industrialized, factory floor manufacturing techniques; automation; and less time spent on site.

Smarter execution management, enabled by digital technologies and analytics techniques could drive better, faster decision making during project delivery. Real-time data collection, for example, gives project managers earlier, more detailed insights about progress, allowing them to intervene more effectively to maintain productivity and keep projects on track. Intelligent simulation software allows teams to evaluate hundreds of thousands of possible critical paths, identifying approaches that could be more efficient or less risky than the conventional wisdom.

Lean construction is another proven way to drive significant and sustainable productivity improvements. Establishing a centralized, continuous improvement engine could enhance on-site execution through integrated planning, performance management, and waste elimination. Key stakeholders across the project work with a common, agreed set of key performance indicators. That allows them to address issues in real time and facilitates collaboration to reduce waste and variability work. Capability building across the planning and construction teams could help team members understand and adopt lean construction practices.

Here comes the 21st century’s first big investment wave. Is your capital strategy ready?

Reimagining talent.

To ensure access to the skills they need, construction sector companies can accelerate the onboarding of recruits, boost retention by revisiting what employees want beyond wages, and invest more in developing their pipelines of future workers.

In the near term, employers could prioritize review of job applications and reduce the number of steps in both the interview and onboarding process. In the medium term, both the public and private sectors could look to reduce hiring timelines and shift to a skills-based approach when hiring.

In the medium term, retaining current staff and attracting new talent will both turn on understanding of what employees value beyond wages. Competitive wages are now table stakes, so employees are thinking about a broader set of benefits and workplace characteristics when making decisions about where to work. Research on attrition in the postpandemic workplace  has shown that they are placing more emphasis on autonomy, flexibility, support, and upward mobility.

In the longer term, the construction industry can consider a new approach to talent attraction, development, and retention. Talent acquisition could begin early, through partnerships with educational institutions including universities, colleges, and high schools. These partnerships could boost awareness of the possibilities of a career in the sector and ensure future employees have appropriate skills prior to onboarding.

Companies could also look more widely for potential recruits, considering individuals who have taken alternative educational paths, such as technical degrees or hands-on experience. The Rework America Alliance , a Markle-led coalition in which McKinsey is a partner, illustrates the importance of skills-based, rather than credential-based, hiring. A skills-based perspective  is key to tapping into the talents of the 106 million workers who have built capabilities through experience but whose talents are often unrecognized because they don’t have a four-year college degree. A skills-based approach could be complemented by reimagining apprenticeships to bring younger students and vocational talent into the industry at an earlier stage in their careers.

Employers could consider working with a range of nontraditional sources of talent, including veteran-transition programs, formerly incarcerated individuals, and others. Homeboy Industries provides an example of the local impact, effectiveness, and potential of working with often overlooked population segments. Moreover, identifying and attracting talent from outside the traditional paths used by the construction industry could also help it to increase the diversity of its workforce. Today, 88 percent of the sector’s workforce is White and 89 percent is male. 4 Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey Database, US Bureau of Labor Statistics, accessed March 10, 2022.

Looking at labor through a strategic lens

Labor and skills shortages have the potential to slow growth and erode profitability across the construction value chain. For C-suites, there’s no other single issue that could protect against significant cost erosion. Companies could consider establishing a systematic talent acquisition and retention program, led by a C-level executive and a core part of the CEO agenda. That program could first be tasked with building a robust fact base on current and emerging labor needs and availability gaps. It could then identify a bold set of initiatives that address labor-related issues across the value chain. This exercise starts in the boardroom, but it doesn’t stop there. Leadership will likely need to be increasingly present in the field and on the job site too, celebrating and recognizing top talent throughout the organization.

The labor challenge extends well beyond corporate boundaries. Since the successful delivery of a project could be jeopardized by labor shortages in a single value-chain participant, project owners and contractors may want to adapt the structure of project relationships and contracts. Moving away from traditional contracting methods to collaborative contracts , for example, allows participants to share market risks and opportunities as a project evolves, rather than baking in worst-case estimates at the outset of negotiations.

The US construction sector is poised to revitalize, replace, and expand the country’s infrastructure. Done right, that will power inclusive growth and set up the economy for success in the 21st century. To do so, the sector will need to address its labor challenges. That calls for the application of a diverse set of tools and approaches to create better jobs, get the most out of its people, and optimize agility and collaboration across the value chain.

Garo Hovnanian is a partner in McKinsey’s Philadelphia office, Ryan Luby is a senior knowledge expert in the New York office, and Shannon Peloquin is a partner in the Bay Area office.

The authors wish to thank Tim Bacon, Luis Campos, Roberto Charron, Justin Dahl, Rebecca de Sa, Bonnie Dowling, Bryan Hancock, Rawad Hasrouni, Adi Kumar, Jonathan Law, Michael Neary, Nikhil Patel, Gaby Pierre, Jose Maria Quiros, Kurt Schoeffler, Shubham Singhal, Stephanie Stefanski, Jennifer Volz, and Jonathan Ward for their contributions to this article.

Explore a career with us

Related articles.

America 2022 in charts: An economic opportunity snapshot

‘Great Attrition’ or ‘Great Attraction’? The choice is yours

• Side Hustles
• Power Players
• Young Success
• Save and Invest
• Become Debt-Free
• Land the Job
• Closing the Gap
• Science of Success
• Pop Culture and Media
• Psychology and Relationships
• Health and Wellness
• Real Estate
• Most Popular

Related Stories

• Work Accounting jobs are in high demand—many pay   over $100K and can be done from home
• Earn The 16 highest-paying college   majors, 5 years after graduation
• Land the Job 10 in-demand remote jobs paying over   $100,000 that companies are hiring for now
• Work 5 in-demand freelance jobs you can do from   home—some pay over $200 an hour
• Earn The best- and worst-paying college   majors, 5 years after graduation

The highest-paying in-demand jobs that don't require a degree, according to new research

If you're looking for a career that pays well, doesn't require a college degree and offers strong job security, you might want to consider a trade job. 

The U.S. skilled labor market is facing "record-high pressure," according to new research from McKinsey & Co. , as more workers age out and fewer young people train to fill their jobs as construction workers, plumbers, welders and more. 

Labor shortages — amplified by disruptions to in-person work and material shortages during the Covid-19 pandemic — have created more competition for talent, and, as a result, wages for skilled trade jobs have risen by more than 20% since the first quarter of 2020, McKinsey & Co. reports.

Demand for skilled tradespeople is expected to increase over the next decade and remain high in the U.S. due to infrastructure needs, a surge in real estate redevelopment and investments in renewable energy.

The most in-demand jobs companies are hiring for right now — that don't require a degree — are in construction, manufacturing and plumbing, according to data from Payscale and ZipRecruiter exclusively shared with CNBC Make It : 

1. Construction superintendent

Median salary: $84,600

2. Manufacturing production manager

Median salary: $71,800

3. Journeyman plumber

Median salary: $61,500

It's important to note that there are different levels of certification for some trade jobs including plumbers and electricians. For plumbers, there are three levels : Apprentice, journeyman and master. 

If you want to work as a journeyman plumber, you'll need to work as an apprentice under a licensed master plumber for at least 2 years, depending on your state's requirements, according to Indeed.

To compile the list, Payscale analyzed 85,715 salary profiles from U.S. workers with no education higher than a high school diploma. The salary data was collected between April 2022 and April 2024. From that sample, Payscale identified a list of jobs and ranked them by median pay for workers without degrees.

Then, to determine which high-paying jobs are seeing the most demand, ZipRecruiter looked at hiring trends for these roles over the last six months to see which jobs saw the biggest increase in openings. 

All of these jobs saw at least a 16% increase in openings on ZipRecruiter between October 2023 and March 2024. Construction superintendents have seen the largest uptick in demand, with openings surging more than 128%.

Other high-paying trade jobs that have seen slightly less demand, but are still hiring at a good clip, include fleet managers, who oversee drivers and vehicles, like delivery trucks, owned or leased by their companies, and journeyman electricians. The median pay for fleet managers without degrees is $64,600 while journeyman electricians make $62,600 on average, according to Payscale. 

Careers in construction, manufacturing and home services, which have historically prioritized skills over degrees in hiring, still present some of the best opportunities for people to earn up to six figures without going to college, says Ruth Thomas, a pay equity strategist with Payscale. 

Although more companies are dropping degree requirements for jobs, skills-based hiring is still a newer trend that "hasn't become common practice" across all industries just yet, Thomas adds. 

Want to land your dream job in 2024?  Take  CNBC's new online course How to Ace Your Job Interview  to learn what hiring managers are really looking for, body language techniques, what to say and not to say, and the best way to talk about pay.

Plus, sign up for   CNBC Make It's newsletter  to get tips and tricks for success at work, with money and in life.

Building and construction workers are reporting mental health issues in high numbers, but some are trying to make a difference

Like many people in construction, James Knight is feeling the pressure his industry is under.

In recent times, his Canberra electrical business has been left unpaid for work due to other construction companies collapsing.

"It's affected my kids seeing my wife and I stressed about it," Mr Knight said.

"It's affected our employees with the uncertainty and just having to go by our word that that we'll pull through and we'll be okay."

Mental health challenges among tradies have been common for years, if not always talked about.

The charity MATES in Construction estimates someone from the industry is lost to suicide every two days.

High interest rates, increased costs and a shortage of labour and materials are now adding an extra mental burden.

Mr Knight lives with depression and anxiety, and said the issues the industry is facing have not helped.

"I notice I'm not running at optimum performance, mentally speaking," he said.

"The guys notice it and notice the self-esteem is not always there.

"I've actually been diagnosed with ADHD, which lends itself to [depression and anxiety]"

But his experiences have prompted Mr Knight to take action to prevent others going through the same thing.

He and his wife Nikki run their business a little differently.

They reimburse staff for health-related costs such as gym memberships and supplements to help them maintain positive mental health.

He said he also encouraged his staff to be open about their problems.

"Their general health is very important to us, both mental and physical," Mr Knight said.

"My wife Nikki and I have got an open-door policy. We've definitely had a range of different things brought to us and some surprising, some straight down what we were expecting.

"But I think holistically, everyone is in a lot better place for it."

Industry wide problems

Research conducted by Central Queensland University indicates people who work in the building and construction industry are at a significantly higher risk of mental health problems.

MATES in Construction chief executive Chris Lockwood said it was a combination of long hours and work that could be both dangerous and lonely.

"That's why we do see significantly higher rates of poor mental health and tragically, even suicide in the industry," Mr Lockwood said.

The cost-of-living crisis overlaid on the current problems in the industry has compounded those dangers.

"Those sorts of pressures in terms of the finances that already were an issue for people working construction," Mr Lockwood said.

"[With] the cost of living, the impacts on top of it, we've seen some very direct impacts.

"Some months our call volumes have almost more than doubled, [from] people that are actually calling in distress needing support."

Building in a fix

Like a lot of male-dominated industries, Mr Knight said in decades past there has been a culture of silence when it comes to mental health.

He said things had changed in the industry.

"[It used to be] just go to the pub and write yourself off," he said.

"I think it's a lot easier these days, there's a lot more education around the mental health space and it being okay to not be okay."

Across the industry, mental health charities are improving mental health culture one job site at a time.

Canberra's The Healthy Tradie Project speaks to workers on site about mental health, incorporating breath work and yoga into their outreach.

OzHelp has been helping people in blue collar "high risk and hard to reach" jobs for 20 years.

David Lockwood said the mental health outreach sessions that MATES in Construction have on-site can save lives.

"The blokes and the women are all comfortable to step forward and actually say 'we should look out for our mates and have those honest conversations'."

• X (formerly Twitter)

Related Stories

'bang there goes $120,000': subcontractors struggling to stay afloat after building companies collapse.

Construction workers are more likely to die by suicide than a work accident. Joel wants to change that statistic

Jeff was having suicidal thoughts. Then he met John

• Construction and Real Estate Industry
• Mental Health

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

• View all journals
• Explore content
• About the journal
• Publish with us
• Sign up for alerts
• Published: 15 September 2022

Interviews in the social sciences

• Eleanor Knott   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-9131-3939 1 ,
• Aliya Hamid Rao   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-0674-4206 1 ,
• Kate Summers   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-9964-0259 1 &
• Chana Teeger   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-5046-8280 1  

Nature Reviews Methods Primers volume  2 , Article number:  73 ( 2022 ) Cite this article

704k Accesses

46 Citations

42 Altmetric

Metrics details

• Interdisciplinary studies

In-depth interviews are a versatile form of qualitative data collection used by researchers across the social sciences. They allow individuals to explain, in their own words, how they understand and interpret the world around them. Interviews represent a deceptively familiar social encounter in which people interact by asking and answering questions. They are, however, a very particular type of conversation, guided by the researcher and used for specific ends. This dynamic introduces a range of methodological, analytical and ethical challenges, for novice researchers in particular. In this Primer, we focus on the stages and challenges of designing and conducting an interview project and analysing data from it, as well as strategies to overcome such challenges.

Similar content being viewed by others

The fundamental importance of method to theory

Rick Dale, Anne S. Warlaumont & Kerri L. Johnson

How ‘going online’ mediates the challenges of policy elite interviews

Karin Vaagland

Participatory action research

Flora Cornish, Nancy Breton, … Darrin Hodgetts

Introduction

In-depth interviews are a qualitative research method that follow a deceptively familiar logic of human interaction: they are conversations where people talk with each other, interact and pose and answer questions 1 . An interview is a specific type of interaction in which — usually and predominantly — a researcher asks questions about someone’s life experience, opinions, dreams, fears and hopes and the interview participant answers the questions 1 .

Interviews will often be used as a standalone method or combined with other qualitative methods, such as focus groups or ethnography, or quantitative methods, such as surveys or experiments. Although interviewing is a frequently used method, it should not be viewed as an easy default for qualitative researchers 2 . Interviews are also not suited to answering all qualitative research questions, but instead have specific strengths that should guide whether or not they are deployed in a research project. Whereas ethnography might be better suited to trying to observe what people do, interviews provide a space for extended conversations that allow the researcher insights into how people think and what they believe. Quantitative surveys also give these kinds of insights, but they use pre-determined questions and scales, privileging breadth over depth and often overlooking harder-to-reach participants.

In-depth interviews can take many different shapes and forms, often with more than one participant or researcher. For example, interviews might be highly structured (using an almost survey-like interview guide), entirely unstructured (taking a narrative and free-flowing approach) or semi-structured (using a topic guide ). Researchers might combine these approaches within a single project depending on the purpose of the interview and the characteristics of the participant. Whatever form the interview takes, researchers should be mindful of the dynamics between interviewer and participant and factor these in at all stages of the project.

In this Primer, we focus on the most common type of interview: one researcher taking a semi-structured approach to interviewing one participant using a topic guide. Focusing on how to plan research using interviews, we discuss the necessary stages of data collection. We also discuss the stages and thought-process behind analysing interview material to ensure that the richness and interpretability of interview material is maintained and communicated to readers. The Primer also tracks innovations in interview methods and discusses the developments we expect over the next 5–10 years.

We wrote this Primer as researchers from sociology, social policy and political science. We note our disciplinary background because we acknowledge that there are disciplinary differences in how interviews are approached and understood as a method.

Experimentation

Here we address research design considerations and data collection issues focusing on topic guide construction and other pragmatics of the interview. We also explore issues of ethics and reflexivity that are crucial throughout the research project.

Research design

Participant selection.

Participants can be selected and recruited in various ways for in-depth interview studies. The researcher must first decide what defines the people or social groups being studied. Often, this means moving from an abstract theoretical research question to a more precise empirical one. For example, the researcher might be interested in how people talk about race in contexts of diversity. Empirical settings in which this issue could be studied could include schools, workplaces or adoption agencies. The best research designs should clearly explain why the particular setting was chosen. Often there are both intrinsic and extrinsic reasons for choosing to study a particular group of people at a specific time and place 3 . Intrinsic motivations relate to the fact that the research is focused on an important specific social phenomenon that has been understudied. Extrinsic motivations speak to the broader theoretical research questions and explain why the case at hand is a good one through which to address them empirically.

Next, the researcher needs to decide which types of people they would like to interview. This decision amounts to delineating the inclusion and exclusion criteria for the study. The criteria might be based on demographic variables, like race or gender, but they may also be context-specific, for example, years of experience in an organization. These should be decided based on the research goals. Researchers should be clear about what characteristics would make an individual a candidate for inclusion in the study (and what would exclude them).

The next step is to identify and recruit the study’s sample . Usually, many more people fit the inclusion criteria than can be interviewed. In cases where lists of potential participants are available, the researcher might want to employ stratified sampling , dividing the list by characteristics of interest before sampling.

When there are no lists, researchers will often employ purposive sampling . Many researchers consider purposive sampling the most useful mode for interview-based research since the number of interviews to be conducted is too small to aim to be statistically representative 4 . Instead, the aim is not breadth, via representativeness, but depth via rich insights about a set of participants. In addition to purposive sampling, researchers often use snowball sampling . Both purposive and snowball sampling can be combined with quota sampling . All three types of sampling aim to ensure a variety of perspectives within the confines of a research project. A goal for in-depth interview studies can be to sample for range, being mindful of recruiting a diversity of participants fitting the inclusion criteria.

Study design

The total number of interviews depends on many factors, including the population studied, whether comparisons are to be made and the duration of interviews. Studies that rely on quota sampling where explicit comparisons are made between groups will require a larger number of interviews than studies focused on one group only. Studies where participants are interviewed over several hours, days or even repeatedly across years will tend to have fewer participants than those that entail a one-off engagement.

Researchers often stop interviewing when new interviews confirm findings from earlier interviews with no new or surprising insights (saturation) 4 , 5 , 6 . As a criterion for research design, saturation assumes that data collection and analysis are happening in tandem and that researchers will stop collecting new data once there is no new information emerging from the interviews. This is not always possible. Researchers rarely have time for systematic data analysis during data collection and they often need to specify their sample in funding proposals prior to data collection. As a result, researchers often draw on existing reports of saturation to estimate a sample size prior to data collection. These suggest between 12 and 20 interviews per category of participant (although researchers have reported saturation with samples that are both smaller and larger than this) 7 , 8 , 9 . The idea of saturation has been critiqued by many qualitative researchers because it assumes that meaning inheres in the data, waiting to be discovered — and confirmed — once saturation has been reached 7 . In-depth interview data are often multivalent and can give rise to different interpretations. The important consideration is, therefore, not merely how many participants are interviewed, but whether one’s research design allows for collecting rich and textured data that provide insight into participants’ understandings, accounts, perceptions and interpretations.

Sometimes, researchers will conduct interviews with more than one participant at a time. Researchers should consider the benefits and shortcomings of such an approach. Joint interviews may, for example, give researchers insight into how caregivers agree or debate childrearing decisions. At the same time, they may be less adaptive to exploring aspects of caregiving that participants may not wish to disclose to each other. In other cases, there may be more than one person interviewing each participant, such as when an interpreter is used, and so it is important to consider during the research design phase how this might shape the dynamics of the interview.

Data collection

Semi-structured interviews are typically organized around a topic guide comprised of an ordered set of broad topics (usually 3–5). Each topic includes a set of questions that form the basis of the discussion between the researcher and participant (Fig.  1 ). These topics are organized around key concepts that the researcher has identified (for example, through a close study of prior research, or perhaps through piloting a small, exploratory study) 5 .

a | Elaborated topics the researcher wants to cover in the interview and example questions. b | An example topic arc. Using such an arc, one can think flexibly about the order of topics. Considering the main question for each topic will help to determine the best order for the topics. After conducting some interviews, the researcher can move topics around if a different order seems to make sense.

Topic guide

One common way to structure a topic guide is to start with relatively easy, open-ended questions (Table  1 ). Opening questions should be related to the research topic but broad and easy to answer, so that they help to ease the participant into conversation.

After these broad, opening questions, the topic guide may move into topics that speak more directly to the overarching research question. The interview questions will be accompanied by probes designed to elicit concrete details and examples from the participant (see Table  1 ).

Abstract questions are often easier for participants to answer once they have been asked more concrete questions. In our experience, for example, questions about feelings can be difficult for some participants to answer, but when following probes concerning factual experiences these questions can become less challenging. After the main themes of the topic guide have been covered, the topic guide can move onto closing questions. At this stage, participants often repeat something they have said before, although they may sometimes introduce a new topic.

Interviews are especially well suited to gaining a deeper insight into people’s experiences. Getting these insights largely depends on the participants’ willingness to talk to the researcher. We recommend designing open-ended questions that are more likely to elicit an elaborated response and extended reflection from participants rather than questions that can be answered with yes or no.

Questions should avoid foreclosing the possibility that the participant might disagree with the premise of the question. Take for example the question: “Do you support the new family-friendly policies?” This question minimizes the possibility of the participant disagreeing with the premise of this question, which assumes that the policies are ‘family-friendly’ and asks for a yes or no answer. Instead, asking more broadly how a participant feels about the specific policy being described as ‘family-friendly’ (for example, a work-from-home policy) allows them to express agreement, disagreement or impartiality and, crucially, to explain their reasoning 10 .

For an uninterrupted interview that will last between 90 and 120 minutes, the topic guide should be one to two single-spaced pages with questions and probes. Ideally, the researcher will memorize the topic guide before embarking on the first interview. It is fine to carry a printed-out copy of the topic guide but memorizing the topic guide ahead of the interviews can often make the interviewer feel well prepared in guiding the participant through the interview process.

Although the topic guide helps the researcher stay on track with the broad areas they want to cover, there is no need for the researcher to feel tied down by the topic guide. For instance, if a participant brings up a theme that the researcher intended to discuss later or a point the researcher had not anticipated, the researcher may well decide to follow the lead of the participant. The researcher’s role extends beyond simply stating the questions; it entails listening and responding, making split-second decisions about what line of inquiry to pursue and allowing the interview to proceed in unexpected directions.

Optimizing the interview

The ideal place for an interview will depend on the study and what is feasible for participants. Generally, a place where the participant and researcher can both feel relaxed, where the interview can be uninterrupted and where noise or other distractions are limited is ideal. But this may not always be possible and so the researcher needs to be prepared to adapt their plans within what is feasible (and desirable for participants).

Another key tool for the interview is a recording device (assuming that permission for recording has been given). Recording can be important to capture what the participant says verbatim. Additionally, it can allow the researcher to focus on determining what probes and follow-up questions they want to pursue rather than focusing on taking notes. Sometimes, however, a participant may not allow the researcher to record, or the recording may fail. If the interview is not recorded we suggest that the researcher takes brief notes during the interview, if feasible, and then thoroughly make notes immediately after the interview and try to remember the participant’s facial expressions, gestures and tone of voice. Not having a recording of an interview need not limit the researcher from getting analytical value from it.

As soon as possible after each interview, we recommend that the researcher write a one-page interview memo comprising three key sections. The first section should identify two to three important moments from the interview. What constitutes important is up to the researcher’s discretion 9 . The researcher should note down what happened in these moments, including the participant’s facial expressions, gestures, tone of voice and maybe even the sensory details of their surroundings. This exercise is about capturing ethnographic detail from the interview. The second part of the interview memo is the analytical section with notes on how the interview fits in with previous interviews, for example, where the participant’s responses concur or diverge from other responses. The third part consists of a methodological section where the researcher notes their perception of their relationship with the participant. The interview memo allows the researcher to think critically about their positionality and practice reflexivity — key concepts for an ethical and transparent research practice in qualitative methodology 11 , 12 .

Ethics and reflexivity

All elements of an in-depth interview can raise ethical challenges and concerns. Good ethical practice in interview studies often means going beyond the ethical procedures mandated by institutions 13 . While discussions and requirements of ethics can differ across disciplines, here we focus on the most pertinent considerations for interviews across the research process for an interdisciplinary audience.

Ethical considerations prior to interview

Before conducting interviews, researchers should consider harm minimization, informed consent, anonymity and confidentiality, and reflexivity and positionality. It is important for the researcher to develop their own ethical sensitivities and sensibilities by gaining training in interview and qualitative methods, reading methodological and field-specific texts on interviews and ethics and discussing their research plans with colleagues.

Researchers should map the potential harm to consider how this can be minimized. Primarily, researchers should consider harm from the participants’ perspective (Box  1 ). But, it is also important to consider and plan for potential harm to the researcher, research assistants, gatekeepers, future researchers and members of the wider community 14 . Even the most banal of research topics can potentially pose some form of harm to the participant, researcher and others — and the level of harm is often highly context-dependent. For example, a research project on religion in society might have very different ethical considerations in a democratic versus authoritarian research context because of how openly or not such topics can be discussed and debated 15 .

The researcher should consider how they will obtain and record informed consent (for example, written or oral), based on what makes the most sense for their research project and context 16 . Some institutions might specify how informed consent should be gained. Regardless of how consent is obtained, the participant must be made aware of the form of consent, the intentions and procedures of the interview and potential forms of harm and benefit to the participant or community before the interview commences. Moreover, the participant must agree to be interviewed before the interview commences. If, in addition to interviews, the study contains an ethnographic component, it is worth reading around this topic (see, for example, Murphy and Dingwall 17 ). Informed consent must also be gained for how the interview will be recorded before the interview commences. These practices are important to ensure the participant is contributing on a voluntary basis. It is also important to remind participants that they can withdraw their consent at any time during the interview and for a specified period after the interview (to be decided with the participant). The researcher should indicate that participants can ask for anything shared to be off the record and/or not disseminated.

In terms of anonymity and confidentiality, it is standard practice when conducting interviews to agree not to use (or even collect) participants’ names and personal details that are not pertinent to the study. Anonymizing can often be the safer option for minimizing harm to participants as it is hard to foresee all the consequences of de-anonymizing, even if participants agree. Regardless of what a researcher decides, decisions around anonymity must be agreed with participants during the process of gaining informed consent and respected following the interview.

Although not all ethical challenges can be foreseen or planned for 18 , researchers should think carefully — before the interview — about power dynamics, participant vulnerability, emotional state and interactional dynamics between interviewer and participant, even when discussing low-risk topics. Researchers may then wish to plan for potential ethical issues, for example by preparing a list of relevant organizations to which participants can be signposted. A researcher interviewing a participant about debt, for instance, might prepare in advance a list of debt advice charities, organizations and helplines that could provide further support and advice. It is important to remember that the role of an interviewer is as a researcher rather than as a social worker or counsellor because researchers may not have relevant and requisite training in these other domains.

Box 1 Mapping potential forms of harm

Social: researchers should avoid causing any relational detriment to anyone in the course of interviews, for example, by sharing information with other participants or causing interview participants to be shunned or mistreated by their community as a result of participating.

Economic: researchers should avoid causing financial detriment to anyone, for example, by expecting them to pay for transport to be interviewed or to potentially lose their job as a result of participating.

Physical: researchers should minimize the risk of anyone being exposed to violence as a result of the research both from other individuals or from authorities, including police.

Psychological: researchers should minimize the risk of causing anyone trauma (or re-traumatization) or psychological anguish as a result of the research; this includes not only the participant but importantly the researcher themselves and anyone that might read or analyse the transcripts, should they contain triggering information.

Political: researchers should minimize the risk of anyone being exposed to political detriment as a result of the research, such as retribution.

Professional/reputational: researchers should minimize the potential for reputational damage to anyone connected to the research (this includes ensuring good research practices so that any researchers involved are not harmed reputationally by being involved with the research project).

The task here is not to map exhaustively the potential forms of harm that might pertain to a particular research project (that is the researcher’s job and they should have the expertise most suited to mapping such potential harms relative to the specific project) but to demonstrate the breadth of potential forms of harm.

Ethical considerations post-interview

Researchers should consider how interview data are stored, analysed and disseminated. If participants have been offered anonymity and confidentiality, data should be stored in a way that does not compromise this. For example, researchers should consider removing names and any other unnecessary personal details from interview transcripts, password-protecting and encrypting files and using pseudonyms to label and store all interview data. It is also important to address where interview data are taken (for example, across borders in particular where interview data might be of interest to local authorities) and how this might affect the storage of interview data.

Examining how the researcher will represent participants is a paramount ethical consideration both in the planning stages of the interview study and after it has been conducted. Dissemination strategies also need to consider questions of anonymity and representation. In small communities, even if participants are given pseudonyms, it might be obvious who is being described. Anonymizing not only the names of those participating but also the research context is therefore a standard practice 19 . With particularly sensitive data or insights about the participant, it is worth considering describing participants in a more abstract way rather than as specific individuals. These practices are important both for protecting participants’ anonymity but can also affect the ability of the researcher and others to return ethically to the research context and similar contexts 20 .

Reflexivity and positionality

Reflexivity and positionality mean considering the researcher’s role and assumptions in knowledge production 13 . A key part of reflexivity is considering the power relations between the researcher and participant within the interview setting, as well as how researchers might be perceived by participants. Further, researchers need to consider how their own identities shape the kind of knowledge and assumptions they bring to the interview, including how they approach and ask questions and their analysis of interviews (Box  2 ). Reflexivity is a necessary part of developing ethical sensibility as a researcher by adapting and reflecting on how one engages with participants. Participants should not feel judged, for example, when they share information that researchers might disagree with or find objectionable. How researchers deal with uncomfortable moments or information shared by participants is at their discretion, but they should consider how they will react both ahead of time and in the moment.

Researchers can develop their reflexivity by considering how they themselves would feel being asked these interview questions or represented in this way, and then adapting their practice accordingly. There might be situations where these questions are not appropriate in that they unduly centre the researchers’ experiences and worldview. Nevertheless, these prompts can provide a useful starting point for those beginning their reflexive journey and developing an ethical sensibility.

Reflexivity and ethical sensitivities require active reflection throughout the research process. For example, researchers should take care in interview memos and their notes to consider their assumptions, potential preconceptions, worldviews and own identities prior to and after interviews (Box  2 ). Checking in with assumptions can be a way of making sure that researchers are paying close attention to their own theoretical and analytical biases and revising them in accordance with what they learn through the interviews. Researchers should return to these notes (especially when analysing interview material), to try to unpack their own effects on the research process as well as how participants positioned and engaged with them.

Box 2 Aspects to reflect on reflexively

For reflexive engagement, and understanding the power relations being co-constructed and (re)produced in interviews, it is necessary to reflect, at a minimum, on the following.

Ethnicity, race and nationality, such as how does privilege stemming from race or nationality operate between the researcher, the participant and research context (for example, a researcher from a majority community may be interviewing a member of a minority community)

Gender and sexuality, see above on ethnicity, race and nationality

Social class, and in particular the issue of middle-class bias among researchers when formulating research and interview questions

Economic security/precarity, see above on social class and thinking about the researcher’s relative privilege and the source of biases that stem from this

Educational experiences and privileges, see above

Disciplinary biases, such as how the researcher’s discipline/subfield usually approaches these questions, possibly normalizing certain assumptions that might be contested by participants and in the research context

Political and social values

Lived experiences and other dimensions of ourselves that affect and construct our identity as researchers

In this section, we discuss the next stage of an interview study, namely, analysing the interview data. Data analysis may begin while more data are being collected. Doing so allows early findings to inform the focus of further data collection, as part of an iterative process across the research project. Here, the researcher is ultimately working towards achieving coherence between the data collected and the findings produced to answer successfully the research question(s) they have set.

The two most common methods used to analyse interview material across the social sciences are thematic analysis 21 and discourse analysis 22 . Thematic analysis is a particularly useful and accessible method for those starting out in analysis of qualitative data and interview material as a method of coding data to develop and interpret themes in the data 21 . Discourse analysis is more specialized and focuses on the role of discourse in society by paying close attention to the explicit, implicit and taken-for-granted dimensions of language and power 22 , 23 . Although thematic and discourse analysis are often discussed as separate techniques, in practice researchers might flexibly combine these approaches depending on the object of analysis. For example, those intending to use discourse analysis might first conduct thematic analysis as a way to organize and systematize the data. The object and intention of analysis might differ (for example, developing themes or interrogating language), but the questions facing the researcher (such as whether to take an inductive or deductive approach to analysis) are similar.

Preparing data

Data preparation is an important step in the data analysis process. The researcher should first determine what comprises the corpus of material and in what form it will it be analysed. The former refers to whether, for example, alongside the interviews themselves, analytic memos or observational notes that may have been taken during data collection will also be directly analysed. The latter refers to decisions about how the verbal/audio interview data will be transformed into a written form, making it suitable for processes of data analysis. Typically, interview audio recordings are transcribed to produce a written transcript. It is important to note that the process of transcription is one of transformation. The verbal interview data are transformed into a written transcript through a series of decisions that the researcher must make. The researcher should consider the effect of mishearing what has been said or how choosing to punctuate a sentence in a particular way will affect the final analysis.

Box  3 shows an example transcript excerpt from an interview with a teacher conducted by Teeger as part of her study of history education in post-apartheid South Africa 24 (Box  3 ). Seeing both the questions and the responses means that the reader can contextualize what the participant (Ms Mokoena) has said. Throughout the transcript the researcher has used square brackets, for example to indicate a pause in speech, when Ms Mokoena says “it’s [pause] it’s a difficult topic”. The transcription choice made here means that we see that Ms Mokoena has taken time to pause, perhaps to search for the right words, or perhaps because she has a slight apprehension. Square brackets are also included as an overt act of communication to the reader. When Ms Mokoena says “ja”, the English translation (“yes”) of the word in Afrikaans is placed in square brackets to ensure that the reader can follow the meaning of the speech.

Decisions about what to include when transcribing will be hugely important for the direction and possibilities of analysis. Researchers should decide what they want to capture in the transcript, based on their analytic focus. From a (post)positivist perspective 25 , the researcher may be interested in the manifest content of the interview (such as what is said, not how it is said). In that case, they may choose to transcribe intelligent verbatim . From a constructivist perspective 25 , researchers may choose to record more aspects of speech (including, for example, pauses, repetitions, false starts, talking over one another) so that these features can be analysed. Those working from this perspective argue that to recognize the interactional nature of the interview setting adequately and to avoid misinterpretations, features of interaction (pauses, overlaps between speakers and so on) should be preserved in transcription and therefore in the analysis 10 . Readers interested in learning more should consult Potter and Hepburn’s summary of how to present interaction through transcription of interview data 26 .

The process of analysing semi-structured interviews might be thought of as a generative rather than an extractive enterprise. Findings do not already exist within the interview data to be discovered. Rather, researchers create something new when analysing the data by applying their analytic lens or approach to the transcripts. At a high level, there are options as to what researchers might want to glean from their interview data. They might be interested in themes, whereby they identify patterns of meaning across the dataset 21 . Alternatively, they may focus on discourse(s), looking to identify how language is used to construct meanings and therefore how language reinforces or produces aspects of the social world 27 . Alternatively, they might look at the data to understand narrative or biographical elements 28 .

A further overarching decision to make is the extent to which researchers bring predetermined framings or understandings to bear on their data, or instead begin from the data themselves to generate an analysis. One way of articulating this is the extent to which researchers take a deductive approach or an inductive approach to analysis. One example of a truly inductive approach is grounded theory, whereby the aim of the analysis is to build new theory, beginning with one’s data 6 , 29 . In practice, researchers using thematic and discourse analysis often combine deductive and inductive logics and describe their process instead as iterative (referred to also as an abductive approach ) 30 , 31 . For example, researchers may decide that they will apply a given theoretical framing, or begin with an initial analytic framework, but then refine or develop these once they begin the process of analysis.

Box 3 Excerpt of interview transcript (from Teeger 24 )

Interviewer : Maybe you could just start by talking about what it’s like to teach apartheid history.

Ms Mokoena : It’s a bit challenging. You’ve got to accommodate all the kids in the class. You’ve got to be sensitive to all the racial differences. You want to emphasize the wrongs that were done in the past but you also want to, you know, not to make kids feel like it’s their fault. So you want to use the wrongs of the past to try and unite the kids …

Interviewer : So what kind of things do you do?

Ms Mokoena : Well I normally highlight the fact that people that were struggling were not just the blacks, it was all the races. And I give examples of the people … from all walks of life, all races, and highlight how they suffered as well as a result of apartheid, particularly the whites… . What I noticed, particularly my first year of teaching apartheid, I noticed that the black kids made the others feel responsible for what happened… . I had a lot of fights…. A lot of kids started hating each other because, you know, the others are white and the others were black. And they started saying, “My mother is a domestic worker because she was never allowed an opportunity to get good education.” …

Interviewer : I didn’t see any of that now when I was observing.

Ms Mokoena : … Like I was saying I think that because of the re-emphasis of the fact that, look, everybody did suffer one way or the other, they sort of got to see that it was everybody’s struggle … . They should now get to understand that that’s why we’re called a Rainbow Nation. Not everybody agreed with apartheid and not everybody suffered. Even all the blacks, not all blacks got to feel what the others felt . So ja [yes], it’s [pause] it’s a difficult topic, ja . But I think if you get the kids to understand why we’re teaching apartheid in the first place and you show the involvement of all races in all the different sides , then I think you have managed to teach it properly. So I think because of my inexperience then — that was my first year of teaching history — so I think I — maybe I over-emphasized the suffering of the blacks versus the whites [emphasis added].

Reprinted with permission from ref. 24 , Sage Publications.

From data to codes

Coding data is a key building block shared across many approaches to data analysis. Coding is a way of organizing and describing data, but is also ultimately a way of transforming data to produce analytic insights. The basic practice of coding involves highlighting a segment of text (this may be a sentence, a clause or a longer excerpt) and assigning a label to it. The aim of the label is to communicate some sort of summary of what is in the highlighted piece of text. Coding is an iterative process, whereby researchers read and reread their transcripts, applying and refining their codes, until they have a coding frame (a set of codes) that is applied coherently across the dataset and that captures and communicates the key features of what is contained in the data as it relates to the researchers’ analytic focus.

What one codes for is entirely contingent on the focus of the research project and the choices the researcher makes about the approach to analysis. At first, one might apply descriptive codes, summarizing what is contained in the interviews. It is rarely desirable to stop at this point, however, because coding is a tool to move from describing the data to interpreting the data. Suppose the researcher is pursuing some version of thematic analysis. In that case, it might be that the objects of coding are aspects of reported action, emotions, opinions, norms, relationships, routines, agreement/disagreement and change over time. A discourse analysis might instead code for different types of speech acts, tropes, linguistic or rhetorical devices. Multiple types of code might be generated within the same research project. What is important is that researchers are aware of the choices they are making in terms of what they are coding for. Moreover, through the process of refinement, the aim is to produce a set of discrete codes — in which codes are conceptually distinct, as opposed to overlapping. By using the same codes across the dataset, the researcher can capture commonalities across the interviews. This process of refinement involves relabelling codes and reorganizing how and where they are applied in the dataset.

From coding to analysis and writing

Data analysis is also an iterative process in which researchers move closer to and further away from the data. As they move away from the data, they synthesize their findings, thus honing and articulating their analytic insights. As they move closer to the data, they ground these insights in what is contained in the interviews. The link should not be broken between the data themselves and higher-order conceptual insights or claims being made. Researchers must be able to show evidence for their claims in the data. Figure  2 summarizes this iterative process and suggests the sorts of activities involved at each stage more concretely.

As well as going through steps 1 to 6 in order, the researcher will also go backwards and forwards between stages. Some stages will themselves be a forwards and backwards processing of coding and refining when working across different interview transcripts.

At the stage of synthesizing, there are some common quandaries. When dealing with a dataset consisting of multiple interviews, there will be salient and minority statements across different participants, or consensus or dissent on topics of interest to the researcher. A strength of qualitative interviews is that we can build in these nuances and variations across our data as opposed to aggregating them away. When exploring and reporting data, researchers should be asking how different findings are patterned and which interviews contain which codes, themes or tropes. Researchers should think about how these variations fit within the longer flow of individual interviews and what these variations tell them about the nature of their substantive research interests.

A further consideration is how to approach analysis within and across interview data. Researchers may look at one individual code, to examine the forms it takes across different participants and what they might be able to summarize about this code in the round. Alternatively, they might look at how a code or set of codes pattern across the account of one participant, to understand the code(s) in a more contextualized way. Further analysis might be done according to different sampling characteristics, where researchers group together interviews based on certain demographic characteristics and explore these together.

When it comes to writing up and presenting interview data, key considerations tend to rest on what is often termed transparency. When presenting the findings of an interview-based study, the reader should be able to understand and trace what the stated findings are based upon. This process typically involves describing the analytic process, how key decisions were made and presenting direct excerpts from the data. It is important to account for how the interview was set up and to consider the active part that the researcher has played in generating the data 32 . Quotes from interviews should not be thought of as merely embellishing or adding interest to a final research output. Rather, quotes serve the important function of connecting the reader directly to the underlying data. Quotes, therefore, should be chosen because they provide the reader with the most apt insight into what is being discussed. It is good practice to report not just on what participants said, but also on the questions that were asked to elicit the responses.

Researchers have increasingly used specialist qualitative data analysis software to organize and analyse their interview data, such as NVivo or ATLAS.ti. It is important to remember that such software is a tool for, rather than an approach or technique of, analysis. That said, software also creates a wide range of possibilities in terms of what can be done with the data. As researchers, we should reflect on how the range of possibilities of a given software package might be shaping our analytical choices and whether these are choices that we do indeed want to make.

Applications

This section reviews how and why in-depth interviews have been used by researchers studying gender, education and inequality, nationalism and ethnicity and the welfare state. Although interviews can be employed as a method of data collection in just about any social science topic, the applications below speak directly to the authors’ expertise and cutting-edge areas of research.

When it comes to the broad study of gender, in-depth interviews have been invaluable in shaping our understanding of how gender functions in everyday life. In a study of the US hedge fund industry (an industry dominated by white men), Tobias Neely was interested in understanding the factors that enable white men to prosper in the industry 33 . The study comprised interviews with 45 hedge fund workers and oversampled women of all races and men of colour to capture a range of experiences and beliefs. Tobias Neely found that practices of hiring, grooming and seeding are key to maintaining white men’s dominance in the industry. In terms of hiring, the interviews clarified that white men in charge typically preferred to hire people like themselves, usually from their extended networks. When women were hired, they were usually hired to less lucrative positions. In terms of grooming, Tobias Neely identifies how older and more senior men in the industry who have power and status will select one or several younger men as their protégés, to include in their own elite networks. Finally, in terms of her concept of seeding, Tobias Neely describes how older men who are hedge fund managers provide the seed money (often in the hundreds of millions of dollars) for a hedge fund to men, often their own sons (but not their daughters). These interviews provided an in-depth look into gendered and racialized mechanisms that allow white men to flourish in this industry.

Research by Rao draws on dozens of interviews with men and women who had lost their jobs, some of the participants’ spouses and follow-up interviews with about half the sample approximately 6 months after the initial interview 34 . Rao used interviews to understand the gendered experience and understanding of unemployment. Through these interviews, she found that the very process of losing their jobs meant different things for men and women. Women often saw job loss as being a personal indictment of their professional capabilities. The women interviewed often referenced how years of devaluation in the workplace coloured their interpretation of their job loss. Men, by contrast, were also saddened by their job loss, but they saw it as part and parcel of a weak economy rather than a personal failing. How these varied interpretations occurred was tied to men’s and women’s very different experiences in the workplace. Further, through her analysis of these interviews, Rao also showed how these gendered interpretations had implications for the kinds of jobs men and women sought to pursue after job loss. Whereas men remained tied to participating in full-time paid work, job loss appeared to be a catalyst pushing some of the women to re-evaluate their ties to the labour force.

In a study of workers in the tech industry, Hart used interviews to explain how individuals respond to unwanted and ambiguously sexual interactions 35 . Here, the researcher used interviews to allow participants to describe how these interactions made them feel and act and the logics of how they interpreted, classified and made sense of them 35 . Through her analysis of these interviews, Hart showed that participants engaged in a process she termed “trajectory guarding”, whereby they sought to monitor unwanted and ambiguously sexual interactions to avoid them from escalating. Yet, as Hart’s analysis proficiently demonstrates, these very strategies — which protect these workers sexually — also undermined their workplace advancement.

Drawing on interviews, these studies have helped us to understand better how gendered mechanisms, gendered interpretations and gendered interactions foster gender inequality when it comes to paid work. Methodologically, these studies illuminate the power of interviews to reveal important aspects of social life.

Nationalism and ethnicity

Traditionally, nationalism has been studied from a top-down perspective, through the lens of the state or using historical methods; in other words, in-depth interviews have not been a common way of collecting data to study nationalism. The methodological turn towards everyday nationalism has encouraged more scholars to go to the field and use interviews (and ethnography) to understand nationalism from the bottom up: how people talk about, give meaning, understand, navigate and contest their relation to nation, national identification and nationalism 36 , 37 , 38 , 39 . This turn has also addressed the gap left by those studying national and ethnic identification via quantitative methods, such as surveys.

Surveys can enumerate how individuals ascribe to categorical forms of identification 40 . However, interviews can question the usefulness of such categories and ask whether these categories are reflected, or resisted, by participants in terms of the meanings they give to identification 41 , 42 . Categories often pitch identification as a mutually exclusive choice; but identification might be more complex than such categories allow. For example, some might hybridize these categories or see themselves as moving between and across categories 43 . Hearing how people talk about themselves and their relation to nations, states and ethnicities, therefore, contributes substantially to the study of nationalism and national and ethnic forms of identification.

One particular approach to studying these topics, whether via everyday nationalism or alternatives, is that of using interviews to capture both articulations and narratives of identification, relations to nationalism and the boundaries people construct. For example, interviews can be used to gather self–other narratives by studying how individuals construct I–we–them boundaries 44 , including how participants talk about themselves, who participants include in their various ‘we’ groupings and which and how participants create ‘them’ groupings of others, inserting boundaries between ‘I/we’ and ‘them’. Overall, interviews hold great potential for listening to participants and understanding the nuances of identification and the construction of boundaries from their point of view.

Education and inequality

Scholars of social stratification have long noted that the school system often reproduces existing social inequalities. Carter explains that all schools have both material and sociocultural resources 45 . When children from different backgrounds attend schools with different material resources, their educational and occupational outcomes are likely to vary. Such material resources are relatively easy to measure. They are operationalized as teacher-to-student ratios, access to computers and textbooks and the physical infrastructure of classrooms and playgrounds.

Drawing on Bourdieusian theory 46 , Carter conceptualizes the sociocultural context as the norms, values and dispositions privileged within a social space 45 . Scholars have drawn on interviews with students and teachers (as well as ethnographic observations) to show how schools confer advantages on students from middle-class families, for example, by rewarding their help-seeking behaviours 47 . Focusing on race, researchers have revealed how schools can remain socioculturally white even as they enrol a racially diverse student population. In such contexts, for example, teachers often misrecognize the aesthetic choices made by students of colour, wrongly inferring that these students’ tastes in clothing and music reflect negative orientations to schooling 48 , 49 , 50 . These assessments can result in disparate forms of discipline and may ultimately shape educators’ assessments of students’ academic potential 51 .

Further, teachers and administrators tend to view the appropriate relationship between home and school in ways that resonate with white middle-class parents 52 . These parents are then able to advocate effectively for their children in ways that non-white parents are not 53 . In-depth interviews are particularly good at tapping into these understandings, revealing the mechanisms that confer privilege on certain groups of students and thereby reproduce inequality.

In addition, interviews can shed light on the unequal experiences that young people have within educational institutions, as the views of dominant groups are affirmed while those from disadvantaged backgrounds are delegitimized. For example, Teeger’s interviews with South African high schoolers showed how — because racially charged incidents are often framed as jokes in the broader school culture — Black students often feel compelled to ignore and keep silent about the racism they experience 54 . Interviews revealed that Black students who objected to these supposed jokes were coded by other students as serious or angry. In trying to avoid such labels, these students found themselves unable to challenge the racism they experienced. Interviews give us insight into these dynamics and help us see how young people understand and interpret the messages transmitted in schools — including those that speak to issues of inequality in their local school contexts as well as in society more broadly 24 , 55 .

The welfare state

In-depth interviews have also proved to be an important method for studying various aspects of the welfare state. By welfare state, we mean the social institutions relating to the economic and social wellbeing of a state’s citizens. Notably, using interviews has been useful to look at how policy design features are experienced and play out on the ground. Interviews have often been paired with large-scale surveys to produce mixed-methods study designs, therefore achieving both breadth and depth of insights.

In-depth interviews provide the opportunity to look behind policy assumptions or how policies are designed from the top down, to examine how these play out in the lives of those affected by the policies and whose experiences might otherwise be obscured or ignored. For example, the Welfare Conditionality project used interviews to critique the assumptions that conditionality (such as, the withdrawal of social security benefits if recipients did not perform or meet certain criteria) improved employment outcomes and instead showed that conditionality was harmful to mental health, living standards and had many other negative consequences 56 . Meanwhile, combining datasets from two small-scale interview studies with recipients allowed Summers and Young to critique assumptions around the simplicity that underpinned the design of Universal Credit in 2020, for example, showing that the apparently simple monthly payment design instead burdened recipients with additional money management decisions and responsibilities 57 .

Similarly, the Welfare at a (Social) Distance project used a mixed-methods approach in a large-scale study that combined national surveys with case studies and in-depth interviews to investigate the experience of claiming social security benefits during the COVID-19 pandemic. The interviews allowed researchers to understand in detail any issues experienced by recipients of benefits, such as delays in the process of claiming, managing on a very tight budget and navigating stigma and claiming 58 .

These applications demonstrate the multi-faceted topics and questions for which interviews can be a relevant method for data collection. These applications highlight not only the relevance of interviews, but also emphasize the key added value of interviews, which might be missed by other methods (surveys, in particular). Interviews can expose and question what is taken for granted and directly engage with communities and participants that might otherwise be ignored, obscured or marginalized.

Reproducibility and data deposition

There is a robust, ongoing debate about reproducibility in qualitative research, including interview studies. In some research paradigms, reproducibility can be a way of interrogating the rigour and robustness of research claims, by seeing whether these hold up when the research process is repeated. Some scholars have suggested that although reproducibility may be challenging, researchers can facilitate it by naming the place where the research was conducted, naming participants, sharing interview and fieldwork transcripts (anonymized and de-identified in cases where researchers are not naming people or places) and employing fact-checkers for accuracy 11 , 59 , 60 .

In addition to the ethical concerns of whether de-anonymization is ever feasible or desirable, it is also important to address whether the replicability of interview studies is meaningful. For example, the flexibility of interviews allows for the unexpected and the unforeseen to be incorporated into the scope of the research 61 . However, this flexibility means that we cannot expect reproducibility in the conventional sense, given that different researchers will elicit different types of data from participants. Sharing interview transcripts with other researchers, for instance, downplays the contextual nature of an interview.

Drawing on Bauer and Gaskell, we propose several measures to enhance rigour in qualitative research: transparency, grounding interpretations and aiming for theoretical transferability and significance 62 .

Researchers should be transparent when describing their methodological choices. Transparency means documenting who was interviewed, where and when (without requiring de-anonymization, for example, by documenting their characteristics), as well as the questions they were asked. It means carefully considering who was left out of the interviews and what that could mean for the researcher’s findings. It also means carefully considering who the researcher is and how their identity shaped the research process (integrating and articulating reflexivity into whatever is written up).

Second, researchers should ground their interpretations in the data. Grounding means presenting the evidence upon which the interpretation relies. Quotes and extracts should be extensive enough to allow the reader to evaluate whether the researcher’s interpretations are grounded in the data. At each step, researchers should carefully compare their own explanations and interpretations with alternative explanations. Doing so systematically and frequently allows researchers to become more confident in their claims. Here, researchers should justify the link between data and analysis by using quotes to justify and demonstrate the analytical point, while making sure the analytical point offers an interpretation of quotes (Box  4 ).

An important step in considering alternative explanations is to seek out disconfirming evidence 4 , 63 . This involves looking for instances where participants deviate from what the majority are saying and thus bring into question the theory (or explanation) that the researcher is developing. Careful analysis of such examples can often demonstrate the salience and meaning of what appears to be the norm (see Table  2 for examples) 54 . Considering alternative explanations and paying attention to disconfirming evidence allows the researcher to refine their own theories in respect of the data.

Finally, researchers should aim for theoretical transferability and significance in their discussions of findings. One way to think about this is to imagine someone who is not interested in the empirical study. Articulating theoretical transferability and significance usually takes the form of broadening out from the specific findings to consider explicitly how the research has refined or altered prior theoretical approaches. This process also means considering under what other conditions, aside from those of the study, the researcher thinks their theoretical revision would be supported by and why. Importantly, it also includes thinking about the limitations of one’s own approach and where the theoretical implications of the study might not hold.

Box 4 An example of grounding interpretations in data (from Rao 34 )

In an article explaining how unemployed men frame their job loss as a pervasive experience, Rao writes the following: “Unemployed men in this study understood unemployment to be an expected aspect of paid work in the contemporary United States. Robert, a white unemployed communications professional, compared the economic landscape after the Great Recession with the tragic events of September 11, 2001:

Part of your post-9/11 world was knowing people that died as a result of terrorism. The same thing is true with the [Great] Recession, right? … After the Recession you know somebody who was unemployed … People that really should be working.

The pervasiveness of unemployment rendered it normal, as Robert indicates.”

Here, the link between the quote presented and the analytical point Rao is making is clear: the analytical point is grounded in a quote and an interpretation of the quote is offered 34 .

Limitations and optimizations

When deciding which research method to use, the key question is whether the method provides a good fit for the research questions posed. In other words, researchers should consider whether interviews will allow them to successfully access the social phenomena necessary to answer their question(s) and whether the interviews will do so more effectively than other methods. Table  3 summarizes the major strengths and limitations of interviews. However, the accompanying text below is organized around some key issues, where relative strengths and weaknesses are presented alongside each other, the aim being that readers should think about how these can be balanced and optimized in relation to their own research.

Breadth versus depth of insight

Achieving an overall breadth of insight, in a statistically representative sense, is not something that is possible or indeed desirable when conducting in-depth interviews. Instead, the strength of conducting interviews lies in their ability to generate various sorts of depth of insight. The experiences or views of participants that can be accessed by conducting interviews help us to understand participants’ subjective realities. The challenge, therefore, is for researchers to be clear about why depth of insight is the focus and what we should aim to glean from these types of insight.

Naturalistic or artificial interviews

Interviews make use of a form of interaction with which people are familiar 64 . By replicating a naturalistic form of interaction as a tool to gather social science data, researchers can capitalize on people’s familiarity and expectations of what happens in a conversation. This familiarity can also be a challenge, as people come to the interview with preconceived ideas about what this conversation might be for or about. People may draw on experiences of other similar conversations when taking part in a research interview (for example, job interviews, therapy sessions, confessional conversations, chats with friends). Researchers should be aware of such potential overlaps and think through their implications both in how the aims and purposes of the research interview are communicated to participants and in how interview data are interpreted.

Further, some argue that a limitation of interviews is that they are an artificial form of data collection. By taking people out of their daily lives and asking them to stand back and pass comment, we are creating a distance that makes it difficult to use such data to say something meaningful about people’s actions, experiences and views. Other approaches, such as ethnography, might be more suitable for tapping into what people actually do, as opposed to what they say they do 65 .

Dynamism and replicability

Interviews following a semi-structured format offer flexibility both to the researcher and the participant. As the conversation develops, the interlocutors can explore the topics raised in much more detail, if desired, or pass over ones that are not relevant. This flexibility allows for the unexpected and the unforeseen to be incorporated into the scope of the research.

However, this flexibility has a related challenge of replicability. Interviews cannot be reproduced because they are contingent upon the interaction between the researcher and the participant in that given moment of interaction. In some research paradigms, replicability can be a way of interrogating the robustness of research claims, by seeing whether they hold when they are repeated. This is not a useful framework to bring to in-depth interviews and instead quality criteria (such as transparency) tend to be employed as criteria of rigour.

Accessing the private and personal

Interviews have been recognized for their strength in accessing private, personal issues, which participants may feel more comfortable talking about in a one-to-one conversation. Furthermore, interviews are likely to take a more personable form with their extended questions and answers, perhaps making a participant feel more at ease when discussing sensitive topics in such a context. There is a similar, but separate, argument made about accessing what are sometimes referred to as vulnerable groups, who may be difficult to make contact with using other research methods.

There is an associated challenge of anonymity. There can be types of in-depth interview that make it particularly challenging to protect the identities of participants, such as interviewing within a small community, or multiple members of the same household. The challenge to ensure anonymity in such contexts is even more important and difficult when the topic of research is of a sensitive nature or participants are vulnerable.

Increasingly, researchers are collaborating in large-scale interview-based studies and integrating interviews into broader mixed-methods designs. At the same time, interviews can be seen as an old-fashioned (and perhaps outdated) mode of data collection. We review these debates and discussions and point to innovations in interview-based studies. These include the shift from face-to-face interviews to the use of online platforms, as well as integrating and adapting interviews towards more inclusive methodologies.

Collaborating and mixing

Qualitative researchers have long worked alone 66 . Increasingly, however, researchers are collaborating with others for reasons such as efficiency, institutional incentives (for example, funding for collaborative research) and a desire to pool expertise (for example, studying similar phenomena in different contexts 67 or via different methods). Collaboration can occur across disciplines and methods, cases and contexts and between industry/business, practitioners and researchers. In many settings and contexts, collaboration has become an imperative 68 .

Cheek notes how collaboration provides both advantages and disadvantages 68 . For example, collaboration can be advantageous, saving time and building on the divergent knowledge, skills and resources of different researchers. Scholars with different theoretical or case-based knowledge (or contacts) can work together to build research that is comparative and/or more than the sum of its parts. But such endeavours also carry with them practical and political challenges in terms of how resources might actually be pooled, shared or accounted for. When undertaking such projects, as Morse notes, it is worth thinking about the nature of the collaboration and being explicit about such a choice, its advantages and its disadvantages 66 .

A further tension, but also a motivation for collaboration, stems from integrating interviews as a method in a mixed-methods project, whether with other qualitative researchers (to combine with, for example, focus groups, document analysis or ethnography) or with quantitative researchers (to combine with, for example, surveys, social media analysis or big data analysis). Cheek and Morse both note the pitfalls of collaboration with quantitative researchers: that quality of research may be sacrificed, qualitative interpretations watered down or not taken seriously, or tensions experienced over the pace and different assumptions that come with different methods and approaches of research 66 , 68 .

At the same time, there can be real benefits of such mixed-methods collaboration, such as reaching different and more diverse audiences or testing assumptions and theories between research components in the same project (for example, testing insights from prior quantitative research via interviews, or vice versa), as long as the skillsets of collaborators are seen as equally beneficial to the project. Cheek provides a set of questions that, as a starting point, can be useful for guiding collaboration, whether mixed methods or otherwise. First, Cheek advises asking all collaborators about their assumptions and understandings concerning collaboration. Second, Cheek recommends discussing what each perspective highlights and focuses on (and conversely ignores or sidelines) 68 .

A different way to engage with the idea of collaboration and mixed methods research is by fostering greater collaboration between researchers in the Global South and Global North, thus reversing trends of researchers from the Global North extracting knowledge from the Global South 69 . Such forms of collaboration also align with interview innovations, discussed below, that seek to transform traditional interview approaches into more participatory and inclusive (as part of participatory methodologies).

Digital innovations and challenges

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has centred the question of technology within interview-based fieldwork. Although conducting synchronous oral interviews online — for example, via Zoom, Skype or other such platforms — has been a method used by a small constituency of researchers for many years, it became (and remains) a necessity for many researchers wanting to continue or start interview-based projects while COVID-19 prevents face-to-face data collection.

In the past, online interviews were often framed as an inferior form of data collection for not providing the kinds of (often necessary) insights and forms of immersion face-to-face interviews allow 70 , 71 . Online interviews do tend to be more decontextualized than interviews conducted face-to-face 72 . For example, it is harder to recognize, engage with and respond to non-verbal cues 71 . At the same time, they broaden participation to those who might not have been able to access or travel to sites where interviews would have been conducted otherwise, for example people with disabilities. Online interviews also offer more flexibility in terms of scheduling and time requirements. For example, they provide more flexibility around precarious employment or caring responsibilities without having to travel and be away from home. In addition, online interviews might also reduce discomfort between researchers and participants, compared with face-to-face interviews, enabling more discussion of sensitive material 71 . They can also provide participants with more control, enabling them to turn on and off the microphone and video as they choose, for example, to provide more time to reflect and disconnect if they so wish 72 .

That said, online interviews can also introduce new biases based on access to technology 72 . For example, in the Global South, there are often urban/rural and gender gaps between who has access to mobile phones and who does not, meaning that some population groups might be overlooked unless researchers sample mindfully 71 . There are also important ethical considerations when deciding between online and face-to-face interviews. Online interviews might seem to imply lower ethical risks than face-to-face interviews (for example, they lower the chances of identification of participants or researchers), but they also offer more barriers to building trust between researchers and participants 72 . Interacting only online with participants might not provide the information needed to assess risk, for example, participants’ access to a private space to speak 71 . Just because online interviews might be more likely to be conducted in private spaces does not mean that private spaces are safe, for example, for victims of domestic violence. Finally, online interviews prompt further questions about decolonizing research and engaging with participants if research is conducted from afar 72 , such as how to include participants meaningfully and challenge dominant assumptions while doing so remotely.

A further digital innovation, modulating how researchers conduct interviews and the kinds of data collected and analysed, stems from the use and integration of (new) technology, such as WhatsApp text or voice notes to conduct synchronous or asynchronous oral or written interviews 73 . Such methods can provide more privacy, comfort and control to participants and make recruitment easier, allowing participants to share what they want when they want to, using technology that already forms a part of their daily lives, especially for young people 74 , 75 . Such technology is also emerging in other qualitative methods, such as focus groups, with similar arguments around greater inclusivity versus traditional offline modes. Here, the digital challenge might be higher for researchers than for participants if they are less used to such technology 75 . And while there might be concerns about the richness, depth and quality of written messages as a form of interview data, Gibson reports that the reams of transcripts that resulted from a study using written messaging were dense with meaning to be analysed 75 .

Like with online and face-to-face interviews, it is important also to consider the ethical questions and challenges of using such technology, from gaining consent to ensuring participant safety and attending to their distress, without cues, like crying, that might be more obvious in a face-to-face setting 75 , 76 . Attention to the platform used for such interviews is also important and researchers should be attuned to the local and national context. For example, in China, many platforms are neither legal nor available 76 . There, more popular platforms — like WeChat — can be highly monitored by the government, posing potential risks to participants depending on the topic of the interview. Ultimately, researchers should consider trade-offs between online and offline interview modalities, being attentive to the social context and power dynamics involved.

The next 5–10 years

Continuing to integrate (ethically) this technology will be among the major persisting developments in interview-based research, whether to offer more flexibility to researchers or participants, or to diversify who can participate and on what terms.

Pushing the idea of inclusion even further is the potential for integrating interview-based studies within participatory methods, which are also innovating via integrating technology. There is no hard and fast line between researchers using in-depth interviews and participatory methods; many who employ participatory methods will use interviews at the beginning, middle or end phases of a research project to capture insights, perspectives and reflections from participants 77 , 78 . Participatory methods emphasize the need to resist existing power and knowledge structures. They broaden who has the right and ability to contribute to academic knowledge by including and incorporating participants not only as subjects of data collection, but as crucial voices in research design and data analysis 77 . Participatory methods also seek to facilitate local change and to produce research materials, whether for academic or non-academic audiences, including films and documentaries, in collaboration with participants.

In responding to the challenges of COVID-19, capturing the fraught situation wrought by the pandemic and the momentum to integrate technology, participatory researchers have sought to continue data collection from afar. For example, Marzi has adapted an existing project to co-produce participatory videos, via participants’ smartphones in Medellin, Colombia, alongside regular check-in conversations/meetings/interviews with participants 79 . Integrating participatory methods into interview studies offers a route by which researchers can respond to the challenge of diversifying knowledge, challenging assumptions and power hierarchies and creating more inclusive and collaborative partnerships between participants and researchers in the Global North and South.

Brinkmann, S. & Kvale, S. Doing Interviews Vol. 2 (Sage, 2018). This book offers a good general introduction to the practice and design of interview-based studies.

Silverman, D. A Very Short, Fairly Interesting And Reasonably Cheap Book About Qualitative Research (Sage, 2017).

Yin, R. K. Case Study Research And Applications: Design And Methods (Sage, 2018).

Small, M. L. How many cases do I need?’ On science and the logic of case selection in field-based research. Ethnography 10 , 5–38 (2009). This article convincingly demonstrates how the logic of qualitative research differs from quantitative research and its goal of representativeness.

Google Scholar  

Gerson, K. & Damaske, S. The Science and Art of Interviewing (Oxford Univ. Press, 2020).

Glaser, B. G. & Strauss, A. L. The Discovery Of Grounded Theory: Strategies For Qualitative Research (Aldine, 1967).

Braun, V. & Clarke, V. To saturate or not to saturate? Questioning data saturation as a useful concept for thematic analysis and sample-size rationales. Qual. Res. Sport Exerc. Health 13 , 201–216 (2021).

Guest, G., Bunce, A. & Johnson, L. How many interviews are enough? An experiment with data saturation and variability. Field Methods 18 , 59–82 (2006).

Vasileiou, K., Barnett, J., Thorpe, S. & Young, T. Characterising and justifying sample size sufficiency in interview-based studies: systematic analysis of qualitative health research over a 15-year period. BMC Med. Res. Methodol. 18 , 148 (2018).

Silverman, D. How was it for you? The Interview Society and the irresistible rise of the (poorly analyzed) interview. Qual. Res. 17 , 144–158 (2017).

Jerolmack, C. & Murphy, A. The ethical dilemmas and social scientific tradeoffs of masking in ethnography. Sociol. Methods Res. 48 , 801–827 (2019).

MathSciNet   Google Scholar  

Reyes, V. Ethnographic toolkit: strategic positionality and researchers’ visible and invisible tools in field research. Ethnography 21 , 220–240 (2020).

Guillemin, M. & Gillam, L. Ethics, reflexivity and “ethically important moments” in research. Qual. Inq. 10 , 261–280 (2004).

Summers, K. For the greater good? Ethical reflections on interviewing the ‘rich’ and ‘poor’ in qualitative research. Int. J. Soc. Res. Methodol. 23 , 593–602 (2020). This article argues that, in qualitative interview research, a clearer distinction needs to be drawn between ethical commitments to individual research participants and the group(s) to which they belong, a distinction that is often elided in existing ethics guidelines.

Yusupova, G. Exploring sensitive topics in an authoritarian context: an insider perspective. Soc. Sci. Q. 100 , 1459–1478 (2019).

Hemming, J. in Surviving Field Research: Working In Violent And Difficult Situations 21–37 (Routledge, 2009).

Murphy, E. & Dingwall, R. Informed consent, anticipatory regulation and ethnographic practice. Soc. Sci. Med. 65 , 2223–2234 (2007).

Kostovicova, D. & Knott, E. Harm, change and unpredictability: the ethics of interviews in conflict research. Qual. Res. 22 , 56–73 (2022). This article highlights how interviews need to be considered as ethically unpredictable moments where engaging with change among participants can itself be ethical.

Andersson, R. Illegality, Inc.: Clandestine Migration And The Business Of Bordering Europe (Univ. California Press, 2014).

Ellis, R. What do we mean by a “hard-to-reach” population? Legitimacy versus precarity as barriers to access. Sociol. Methods Res. https://doi.org/10.1177/0049124121995536 (2021).

Article   Google Scholar  

Braun, V. & Clarke, V. Thematic Analysis: A Practical Guide (Sage, 2022).

Alejandro, A. & Knott, E. How to pay attention to the words we use: the reflexive review as a method for linguistic reflexivity. Int. Stud. Rev. https://doi.org/10.1093/isr/viac025 (2022).

Alejandro, A., Laurence, M. & Maertens, L. in International Organisations and Research Methods: An Introduction (eds Badache, F., Kimber, L. R. & Maertens, L.) (Michigan Univ. Press, in the press).

Teeger, C. “Both sides of the story” history education in post-apartheid South Africa. Am. Sociol. Rev. 80 , 1175–1200 (2015).

Crotty, M. The Foundations Of Social Research: Meaning And Perspective In The Research Process (Routledge, 2020).

Potter, J. & Hepburn, A. Qualitative interviews in psychology: problems and possibilities. Qual. Res. Psychol. 2 , 281–307 (2005).

Taylor, S. What is Discourse Analysis? (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2013).

Riessman, C. K. Narrative Analysis (Sage, 1993).

Corbin, J. M. & Strauss, A. Grounded theory research: Procedures, canons and evaluative criteria. Qual. Sociol. 13 , 3–21 (1990).

Timmermans, S. & Tavory, I. Theory construction in qualitative research: from grounded theory to abductive analysis. Sociol. Theory 30 , 167–186 (2012).

Fereday, J. & Muir-Cochrane, E. Demonstrating rigor using thematic analysis: a hybrid approach of inductive and deductive coding and theme development. Int. J. Qual. Meth. 5 , 80–92 (2006).

Potter, J. & Hepburn, A. Eight challenges for interview researchers. Handb. Interview Res. 2 , 541–570 (2012).

Tobias Neely, M. Fit to be king: how patrimonialism on Wall Street leads to inequality. Socioecon. Rev. 16 , 365–385 (2018).

Rao, A. H. Gendered interpretations of job loss and subsequent professional pathways. Gend. Soc. 35 , 884–909 (2021). This article used interview data from unemployed men and women to illuminate how job loss becomes a pivotal moment shaping men’s and women’s orientation to paid work, especially in terms of curtailing women’s participation in paid work.

Hart, C. G. Trajectory guarding: managing unwanted, ambiguously sexual interactions at work. Am. Sociol. Rev. 86 , 256–278 (2021).

Goode, J. P. & Stroup, D. R. Everyday nationalism: constructivism for the masses. Soc. Sci. Q. 96 , 717–739 (2015).

Antonsich, M. The ‘everyday’ of banal nationalism — ordinary people’s views on Italy and Italian. Polit. Geogr. 54 , 32–42 (2016).

Fox, J. E. & Miller-Idriss, C. Everyday nationhood. Ethnicities 8 , 536–563 (2008).

Yusupova, G. Cultural nationalism and everyday resistance in an illiberal nationalising state: ethnic minority nationalism in Russia. Nations National. 24 , 624–647 (2018).

Kiely, R., Bechhofer, F. & McCrone, D. Birth, blood and belonging: identity claims in post-devolution Scotland. Sociol. Rev. 53 , 150–171 (2005).

Brubaker, R. & Cooper, F. Beyond ‘identity’. Theory Soc. 29 , 1–47 (2000).

Brubaker, R. Ethnicity Without Groups (Harvard Univ. Press, 2004).

Knott, E. Kin Majorities: Identity And Citizenship In Crimea And Moldova From The Bottom-Up (McGill Univ. Press, 2022).

Bucher, B. & Jasper, U. Revisiting ‘identity’ in international relations: from identity as substance to identifications in action. Eur. J. Int. Relat. 23 , 391–415 (2016).

Carter, P. L. Stubborn Roots: Race, Culture And Inequality In US And South African Schools (Oxford Univ. Press, 2012).

Bourdieu, P. in Cultural Theory: An Anthology Vol. 1, 81–93 (eds Szeman, I. & Kaposy, T.) (Wiley-Blackwell, 2011).

Calarco, J. M. Negotiating Opportunities: How The Middle Class Secures Advantages In School (Oxford Univ. Press, 2018).

Carter, P. L. Keepin’ It Real: School Success Beyond Black And White (Oxford Univ. Press, 2005).

Carter, P. L. ‘Black’ cultural capital, status positioning and schooling conflicts for low-income African American youth. Soc. Probl. 50 , 136–155 (2003).

Warikoo, N. K. The Diversity Bargain Balancing Acts: Youth Culture in the Global City (Univ. California Press, 2011).

Morris, E. W. “Tuck in that shirt!” Race, class, gender and discipline in an urban school. Sociol. Perspect. 48 , 25–48 (2005).

Lareau, A. Social class differences in family–school relationships: the importance of cultural capital. Sociol. Educ. 60 , 73–85 (1987).

Warikoo, N. Addressing emotional health while protecting status: Asian American and white parents in suburban America. Am. J. Sociol. 126 , 545–576 (2020).

Teeger, C. Ruptures in the rainbow nation: how desegregated South African schools deal with interpersonal and structural racism. Sociol. Educ. 88 , 226–243 (2015). This article leverages ‘ deviant ’ cases in an interview study with South African high schoolers to understand why the majority of participants were reluctant to code racially charged incidents at school as racist.

Ispa-Landa, S. & Conwell, J. “Once you go to a white school, you kind of adapt” black adolescents and the racial classification of schools. Sociol. Educ. 88 , 1–19 (2015).

Dwyer, P. J. Punitive and ineffective: benefit sanctions within social security. J. Soc. Secur. Law 25 , 142–157 (2018).

Summers, K. & Young, D. Universal simplicity? The alleged simplicity of Universal Credit from administrative and claimant perspectives. J. Poverty Soc. Justice 28 , 169–186 (2020).

Summers, K. et al. Claimants’ Experiences Of The Social Security System During The First Wave Of COVID-19 . https://www.distantwelfare.co.uk/winter-report (2021).

Desmond, M. Evicted: Poverty And Profit In The American City (Crown Books, 2016).

Reyes, V. Three models of transparency in ethnographic research: naming places, naming people and sharing data. Ethnography 19 , 204–226 (2018).

Robson, C. & McCartan, K. Real World Research (Wiley, 2016).

Bauer, M. W. & Gaskell, G. Qualitative Researching With Text, Image And Sound: A Practical Handbook (SAGE, 2000).

Lareau, A. Listening To People: A Practical Guide To Interviewing, Participant Observation, Data Analysis And Writing It All Up (Univ. Chicago Press, 2021).

Lincoln, Y. S. & Guba, E. G. Naturalistic Inquiry (Sage, 1985).

Jerolmack, C. & Khan, S. Talk is cheap. Sociol. Methods Res. 43 , 178–209 (2014).

Morse, J. M. Styles of collaboration in qualitative inquiry. Qual. Health Res. 18 , 3–4 (2008).

ADS   Google Scholar  

Lamont, M. et al. Getting Respect: Responding To Stigma And Discrimination In The United States, Brazil And Israel (Princeton Univ. Press, 2016).

Cheek, J. Researching collaboratively: implications for qualitative research and researchers. Qual. Health Res. 18 , 1599–1603 (2008).

Botha, L. Mixing methods as a process towards indigenous methodologies. Int. J. Soc. Res. Methodol. 14 , 313–325 (2011).

Howlett, M. Looking at the ‘field’ through a zoom lens: methodological reflections on conducting online research during a global pandemic. Qual. Res. https://doi.org/10.1177/1468794120985691 (2021).

Reñosa, M. D. C. et al. Selfie consents, remote rapport and Zoom debriefings: collecting qualitative data amid a pandemic in four resource-constrained settings. BMJ Glob. Health 6 , e004193 (2021).

Mwambari, D., Purdeková, A. & Bisoka, A. N. Covid-19 and research in conflict-affected contexts: distanced methods and the digitalisation of suffering. Qual. Res. https://doi.org/10.1177/1468794121999014 (2021).

Colom, A. Using WhatsApp for focus group discussions: ecological validity, inclusion and deliberation. Qual. Res. https://doi.org/10.1177/1468794120986074 (2021).

Kaufmann, K. & Peil, C. The mobile instant messaging interview (MIMI): using WhatsApp to enhance self-reporting and explore media usage in situ. Mob. Media Commun. 8 , 229–246 (2020).

Gibson, K. Bridging the digital divide: reflections on using WhatsApp instant messenger interviews in youth research. Qual. Res. Psychol. 19 , 611–631 (2020).

Lawrence, L. Conducting cross-cultural qualitative interviews with mainland Chinese participants during COVID: lessons from the field. Qual. Res. https://doi.org/10.1177/1468794120974157 (2020).

Ponzoni, E. Windows of understanding: broadening access to knowledge production through participatory action research. Qual. Res. 16 , 557–574 (2016).

Kong, T. S. Gay and grey: participatory action research in Hong Kong. Qual. Res. 18 , 257–272 (2018).

Marzi, S. Participatory video from a distance: co-producing knowledge during the COVID-19 pandemic using smartphones. Qual. Res. https://doi.org/10.1177/14687941211038171 (2021).

Kvale, S. & Brinkmann, S. InterViews: Learning The Craft Of Qualitative Research Interviewing (Sage, 2008).

Rao, A. H. The ideal job-seeker norm: unemployment and marital privileges in the professional middle-class. J. Marriage Fam. 83 , 1038–1057 (2021).

Rivera, L. A. Ivies, extracurriculars and exclusion: elite employers’ use of educational credentials. Res. Soc. Stratif. Mobil. 29 , 71–90 (2011).

Download references

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the MY421 team and students for prompting how best to frame and communicate issues pertinent to in-depth interview studies.

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Department of Methodology, London School of Economics, London, UK

Eleanor Knott, Aliya Hamid Rao, Kate Summers & Chana Teeger

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Contributions

The authors contributed equally to all aspects of the article.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Eleanor Knott .

Ethics declarations

Competing interests.

The authors declare no competing interests.

Peer review

Peer review information.

Nature Reviews Methods Primers thanks Jonathan Potter and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

Additional information

Publisher’s note.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

A pre-written interview outline for a semi-structured interview that provides both a topic structure and the ability to adapt flexibly to the content and context of the interview and the interaction between the interviewer and participant. Others may refer to the topic guide as an interview protocol.

Here we refer to the participants that take part in the study as the sample. Other researchers may refer to the participants as a participant group or dataset.

This involves dividing a population into smaller groups based on particular characteristics, for example, age or gender, and then sampling randomly within each group.

A sampling method where the guiding logic when deciding who to recruit is to achieve the most relevant participants for the research topic, in terms of being rich in information or insights.

Researchers ask participants to introduce the researcher to others who meet the study’s inclusion criteria.

Similar to stratified sampling, but participants are not necessarily randomly selected. Instead, the researcher determines how many people from each category of participants should be recruited. Recruitment can happen via snowball or purposive sampling.

A method for developing, analysing and interpreting patterns across data by coding in order to develop themes.

An approach that interrogates the explicit, implicit and taken-for-granted dimensions of language as well as the contexts in which it is articulated to unpack its purposes and effects.

A form of transcription that simplifies what has been said by removing certain verbal and non-verbal details that add no further meaning, such as ‘ums and ahs’ and false starts.

The analytic framework, theoretical approach and often hypotheses, are developed prior to examining the data and then applied to the dataset.

The analytic framework and theoretical approach is developed from analysing the data.

An approach that combines deductive and inductive components to work recursively by going back and forth between data and existing theoretical frameworks (also described as an iterative approach). This approach is increasingly recognized not only as a more realistic but also more desirable third alternative to the more traditional inductive versus deductive binary choice.

A theoretical apparatus that emphasizes the role of cultural processes and capital in (intergenerational) social reproduction.

Rights and permissions

Springer Nature or its licensor holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article.

Knott, E., Rao, A.H., Summers, K. et al. Interviews in the social sciences. Nat Rev Methods Primers 2 , 73 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43586-022-00150-6

Download citation

Accepted : 14 July 2022

Published : 15 September 2022

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1038/s43586-022-00150-6

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

This article is cited by

Development of a digital intervention for psychedelic preparation (dipp).

• Rosalind G. McAlpine
• Matthew D. Sacchet
• Sunjeev K. Kamboj

Scientific Reports (2024)

Between the dog and the wolf: an interpretative phenomenological analysis of bicultural, sexual minority people’s lived experiences

• Emelie Louise Miller
• Ingrid Zakrisson

Discover Psychology (2024)

Acknowledging that Men are Moral and Harmed by Gender Stereotypes Increases Men’s Willingness to Engage in Collective Action on Behalf of Women

• Alexandra Vázquez
• Lucía López-Rodríguez
• Marco Brambilla

Sex Roles (2024)

Quick links

• Explore articles by subject
• Guide to authors
• Editorial policies

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World

Read our research on:

Full Topic List

Regions & Countries

• Publications
• Our Methods
• Short Reads
• Tools & Resources

Read Our Research On:

Changing Partisan Coalitions in a Politically Divided Nation

2. partisanship by race, ethnicity and education, table of contents.

• What this report tells us – and what it doesn’t
• Partisans and partisan leaners in the U.S. electorate
• Party identification and ideology
• Education and partisanship
• Education, race and partisanship
• Partisanship by race and gender
• Partisanship across educational and gender groups by race and ethnicity
• Gender and partisanship
• Parents are more Republican than voters without children
• Partisanship among men and women within age groups
• Race, age and partisanship
• The partisanship of generational cohorts
• Religion, race and ethnicity, and partisanship
• Party identification among atheists, agnostics and ‘nothing in particular’
• Partisanship and religious service attendance
• Partisanship by income groups
• The relationship between income and partisanship differs by education
• Union members remain more Democratic than Republican
• Homeowners are more Republican than renters
• Partisanship of military veterans
• Demographic differences in partisanship by community type
• Race and ethnicity
• Age and the U.S. electorate
• Education by race and ethnicity
• Religious affiliation
• Ideological composition of voters
• Acknowledgments
• Overview of survey methodologies
• The 2023 American Trends Panel profile survey methodology
• Measuring party identification across survey modes
• Adjusting telephone survey trends
• Appendix B: Religious category definitions
• Appendix C: Age cohort definitions

As has long been the case, White voters are much more likely than those in other racial and ethnic groups to associate with the Republican Party. Hispanic and Asian voters tilt more Democratic. Black voters remain overwhelmingly Democratic.

However, there have been some shifts toward the GOP in most groups in recent years.

The Republican Party now holds a 15 percentage point advantage among White voters: 56% of non-Hispanic White voters identify with or lean toward the Republican Party, while 41% align with the Democratic Party.

• This double-digit lead for the GOP among White voters has held for more than a decade. The last time White voters were about equally split between the two parties was in 2008.

About six-in-ten Hispanic voters (61%) are Democrats or lean to the Democratic Party, while 35% are Republicans or Republican leaners.

• The Democratic Party’s edge among Hispanic voters over the last two years is somewhat narrower than it was in years prior.

Black voters continue to overwhelmingly associate with the Democratic Party, although the extent of the Democratic advantage among this group has fallen off over the last few years.

• Currently, 83% of Black voters are Democrats or lean Democratic, while 12% align with the GOP.
• As recently as 2020, the share associating with the Democratic Party was 5 percentage points higher. That somewhat larger edge in party affiliation had been in place for much of the last two decades.

About six-in-ten Asian voters (63%) align with the Democratic Party, while 36% are oriented toward the GOP.

• The balance of partisan association among Asian voters has changed little over the last few years.

The relationship between education and partisanship has shifted significantly since the early years of the 21st century.

• The Republican Party now holds a 6 percentage point advantage over the Democratic Party (51% to 45%) among voters who do not have a bachelor’s degree. Voters who do not have a four-year degree make up a 60% majority of all registered voters.
• By comparison, the Democratic Party has a 13-point advantage (55% vs. 42%) among those with a bachelor’s degree or more formal education.

This pattern is relatively recent. In fact, until about two decades ago the Republican Party fared better among college graduates and worse among those without a college degree.

In the last years of George W. Bush’s presidency and the first year of Barack Obama’s, Democrats had a double-digit advantage in affiliation over Republicans among voters without a college degree. For example, in 2007, 56% of voters without a degree were Democrats or leaned Democratic, while 42% were Republicans or GOP leaners. This group was narrowly divided between the two parties for most of the next 15 years, but in the last few years it has tilted more Republican.

College graduates moved in the opposite direction, becoming more Democratic over this same period.

• Since 2017, the gap in partisanship between college graduates and those without a degree has been wider than at any previous point in Pew Research Center surveys dating back to the 1990s.

Voters with postgraduate degrees are even more Democratic than those with bachelor’s degrees. About six-in-ten registered voters who have a postgraduate degree (61%) identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party, while 37% associate with the Republican Party. Voters with a bachelor’s degree but no graduate degree are more closely divided: 51% Democratic, 46% Republican.

Voters with a high school degree or less education and those who have attended some college but do not have a bachelor’s degree both tilt Republican by similar margins.

White voters are far more polarized along educational lines than are Hispanic and Black voters.

White voters by education

By nearly two-to-one (63% vs. 33%), White voters without a bachelor’s degree associate with the Republican Party.

The GOP’s advantage among this group has remained relatively steady over the last several years but reflects a major shift since 2009. This group is now substantially more Republican-oriented than at any prior point in the last three decades.

Today, White voters with a bachelor’s degree are closely divided between associating with the Democratic Party (51%) and the Republican Party (47%). Prior to 2005, this group had a clear Republican orientation.

Hispanic voters by education

In contrast, there are no meaningful differences in the partisan leanings of Hispanic voters with and without bachelor’s degrees. Democrats hold a clear advantage in affiliation among both groups of Hispanic voters, although the share of Hispanics (both those with and without bachelor’s degrees) who align with the Democratic Party has edged lower in recent years.

Black voters by education

Black voters both with (79%) and without college degrees (85%) remain overwhelmingly Democratic in their partisan affinity.

Black college graduates are somewhat less closely aligned with the Democratic Party now than they were for most of the prior three decades (for most of this period, 85% or more of Black college graduate voters affiliated with the Democratic Party).

Asian voters by education

Two-thirds of Asian voters with a college degree align with the Democratic Party; 31% associate with the Republican Party. The partisan balance among Asian voters with a college degree has remained largely the same over our last two decades of surveys. (Asian American voters without a college degree are a smaller group, and sample sizes do not allow for reporting trends among this group.)

Visit the chapter on partisanship by gender, sexual orientation and marital and parental status for discussion of overall trends among men and women.

Six-in-ten White men who are registered voters identify as Republicans or lean Republican, as do 53% of White women voters.

The balance of partisanship among White women voters has tilted toward the GOP in recent years, but it was more divided in 2017 and 2018.

Among Hispanic voters, about six-in-ten men (61%) and women (60%) associate with the Democrats. Hispanic women voters have become somewhat less Democratic in recent years (down from 74% in 2016).

About eight-in-ten Black voters – both women (84%) and men (81%) – are Democrats or Democratic leaners.

About six-in-ten men (61%) and women (64%) among Asian voters identify as Democrats or lean toward the Democratic Party. (There is insufficient sample to show longer-term trends among Asian voters by gender.)

Among White voters, there are wide differences in partisanship by gender, by educational attainment – and by the combination of these.

• Among White voters without a college degree, 64% of men and 62% of women say they identify as or lean toward the Republican Party (about a third of each associate with the Democrats).
• White men with a college degree also tilt Republican among voters, though to a lesser extent (53% are Republicans or lean Republican, 45% are Democrats or lean Democratic).
• In contrast, White women with a college degree are more Democratic than Republican by 15 percentage points (42% Republican or Republican leaning, 57% Democrat or lean Democrat).

Among Black and Hispanic voters, there are only modest differences in partisanship across the combination of gender and education. In both groups, there are no significant differences between men with and without college degrees, or between their women counterparts. (Because Asian American voters without a college degree are a small group, sample sizes do not allow comparing college and non-college Asian men and women.)

This dynamic has changed over time, as college-educated White men and women have grown more Democratic and those with less formal education have grown more Republican.

As recently as 15 years ago, there were sizable gender gaps in partisanship among both college and non-college White voters. In both cases, men were substantially more likely than women to associate with the Republican Party.

But, at that time, there was not a substantial difference in the partisanship of college and non-college White voters – for either women or men.

Today, there is no gender gap in partisanship among non-college White voters, while there is a gender gap among college graduate White voters. The difference in partisanship between White women voters who have a college degree and those who do not, in particular, is quite large.

By contrast, there is little variation in the partisanship of Black and Hispanic voters by these characteristics, and the relationship has varied less over time.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter

Fresh data delivery Saturday mornings

Sign up for The Briefing

Weekly updates on the world of news & information

• Education & Politics
• Election 2024
• Gender & Politics
• Political Parties
• Race, Ethnicity & Politics
• Religion & Politics
• Rural, Urban and Suburban Communities
• Voter Demographics

What’s It Like To Be a Teacher in America Today?

Republican gains in 2022 midterms driven mostly by turnout advantage, more americans disapprove than approve of colleges considering race, ethnicity in admissions decisions, partisan divides over k-12 education in 8 charts, school district mission statements highlight a partisan divide over diversity, equity and inclusion in k-12 education, most popular, report materials.

• Party Identification Detailed Tables, 1994-2023

1615 L St. NW, Suite 800 Washington, DC 20036 USA (+1) 202-419-4300 | Main (+1) 202-857-8562 | Fax (+1) 202-419-4372 |  Media Inquiries

Research Topics

• Age & Generations
• Coronavirus (COVID-19)
• Economy & Work
• Family & Relationships
• Gender & LGBTQ
• Immigration & Migration
• International Affairs
• Internet & Technology
• Methodological Research
• News Habits & Media
• Non-U.S. Governments
• Other Topics
• Politics & Policy
• Race & Ethnicity
• Email Newsletters

ABOUT PEW RESEARCH CENTER  Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of  The Pew Charitable Trusts .

Copyright 2024 Pew Research Center

Terms & Conditions

Privacy Policy

Cookie Settings

Reprints, Permissions & Use Policy

• Data library

New Home Sales Surged 8.8% in March

March 2024 New Home Sales

What happened this month:.

New home sales surged in March, climbing 8.8% above the downwardly revised February rate to 693,000 annual home sales. The month’s rate was also 8.3% higher than one year prior as buyers continue to lean on new construction for home options. However, mortgage rates hovered around 6.8% through March, but have recently climbed back above 7% , taking some wind out of buyers’ sails. All four regions saw a monthly increase in new home sales in March, with the Northeast (27.8%) seeing the most impressive pick up, followed by the West (+8.6%), the South (+7.7%) and the Midwest (5.3%). On an annual basis, New home sales picked up in the Midwest (+23.4%), the West (18.8%), and the South (+4.5%), but fell in the Northeast (-13.2%).

New Homes Are a More Common Option for Home Shoppers:

New home inventory picked up 2.6% month-over-month and 10.2% year-over-year in March, offering buyers more new construction options as well. Almost one-third (29.5%) of homes available for sale today are newly built, a significant shift from pre-pandemic norms as builders offer home supply in an under-supplied market. 

But New Homes Are Less Likely to Be Move-in Ready :

Of the available new homes for sale at the end of March, 22.8% were not yet started, 57.8% were still under construction, and just 19.1% were completed. This means that though more new home inventory is available, buyers are not seeing fewer completed, move-in-ready homes than the data would initially suggest. Months supply dropped to 8.3 months, and median months for sale increased slightly to 2.8 months. 

Builders Heed Affordability Concerns and Benefit from Limited Existing Homes:

For-sale inventory continued to climb in the US in March , picking up 23.5% year-over-year, in part due to a 15.5% increase in new listings. Sellers are more active this year and, based on a recent survey , have more realistic market expectations. Last year, 27% of sellers expected a bidding war to take place, but this year, just 12% expect a bidding war. More for-sale inventory and more reasonable seller expectations are great news for buyers, many of whom have been discouraged by still-high home prices and limited inventory. 

The median sale price for a new home increased to $430,700 in March, 6.0% higher than in February but 1.9% lower than one year earlier as builders adjust to the market’s needs by building smaller, lower priced homes. Roughly 43% of homes were sold for less than $400,000 in March, one percentage point lower than a year prior.

New home sales continue to play a key role in providing buyers with options in an otherwise relatively inhospitable market. Existing home inventory has picked up in the last few months, but existing home sales fell in March as buyers adjusted to higher mortgage rates. New construction activity also softened in March as builders, like buyers and sellers, started to adjust expectations according to recent economic data, which has kept mortgage rates elevated. Buyers and sellers hoped for lower mortgage rates this spring and summer, but still-strong employment and inflation data has pushed interest rate cut expectations further into the back half of the year, meaning interest rates are likely to remain elevated in the short term.

Sign up for updates

Join our mailing list to receive the latest data and research.

• Klinisk neurovetenskap startsida
• ki.se startsida

Radio Interviews - ALS Clinical Research Group

Take some time to listen to these three new ALS related radio interviews, from April 23th 2024.

• Vill att ALS-forskning sprids mer: ”Kan hitta bättre behandling” - P4 Örebro | Sveriges Radio

Expanding ALS research in Sweden

Sofia Imrell she talks us through her recent research on the latest ALS numbers in Sweden. By bridging teams and creating collaborations, such as with Sofia who is conducting her PhD in the university of Örebro but under the supervision of Caroline Ingre, we believe bigger and better ALS projects will come to light.

Picture to use to illustrate: the picture of Sofia that is on the link, with the crediting for the picture to Tomas Hedman/Sveriges Radio

2. Teorierna: Därför drabbas allt fler svenskar av ALS 23 april 2024 - Dagens Eko | Sveriges Radio

ALS, a very Swedish story

The recent work from our team was discussed on the Radio as Tomas Hedman presented results showing an increase in the number of ALS cases everyhwere in the work but specifically in Sweden. You can listen to the story of Victoria Sandsjoe from Karlstad, who shares her journey since her ALS diagnosis at a young age.

3. Experter vill se ALS-forskning på fler platser i Sverige - Nyheter (Ekot) | Sveriges Radio

Paving the way in ALS research

Listen to Caroline elaborate on the importance of more ALS research in Sweden. " My intention with this is that not everyone should be linked to me at Karolinska, but that I should be able to help ALS research to become established in other places in Sweden " says Caroline.

Want to create or adapt books like this? Learn more about how Pressbooks supports open publishing practices.

Appendix: Qualitative Interview Design

Daniel W. Turner III and Nicole Hagstrom-Schmidt

Qualitative Interview Design: A Practical Guide for Novice Investigators

Qualitative research design can be complicated depending upon the level of experience a researcher may have with a particular type of methodology. As researchers, many aspire to grow and expand their knowledge and experiences with qualitative design in order to better utilize a variety of research paradigms. One of the more popular areas of interest in qualitative research design is that of the interview protocol. Interviews provide in-depth information pertaining to participants’ experiences and viewpoints of a particular topic. Oftentimes, interviews are coupled with other forms of data collection in order to provide the researcher with a well-rounded collection of information for analyses. This paper explores the effective ways to conduct in-depth, qualitative interviews for novice investigators by expanding upon the practical components of each interview design.

Categories of Qualitative Interview Design

As common with quantitative analyses, there are various forms of interview design that can be developed to obtain thick, rich data utilizing a qualitative investigational perspective. [1] For the purpose of this examination, there are three formats for interview design that will be explored which are summarized by Gall, Gall, and Borg:

• Informal conversational interview,
• General interview guide approach,
• Standardized open-ended interview. [2]

In addition, I will expand on some suggestions for conducting qualitative interviews which includes the construction of research questions as well as the analysis of interview data. These suggestions come from both my personal experiences with interviewing as well as the recommendations from the literature to assist novice interviewers.

Informal Conversational Interview

The informal conversational interview is outlined by Gall, Gall, and Borg for the purpose of relying “…entirely on the spontaneous generation of questions in a natural interaction, typically one that occurs as part of ongoing participant observation fieldwork.” [3] I am curious when it comes to other cultures or religions and I enjoy immersing myself in these environments as an active participant. I ask questions in order to learn more about these social settings without having a predetermined set of structured questions. Primarily the questions come from “in the moment experiences” as a means for further understanding or clarification of what I am witnessing or experiencing at a particular moment. With the informal conversational approach, the researcher does not ask any specific types of questions, but rather relies on the interaction with the participants to guide the interview process. [4] Think of this type of interview as an “off the top of your head” style of interview where you really construct questions as you move forward. Many consider this type of interview beneficial because of the lack of structure, which allows for flexibility in the nature of the interview. However, many researchers view this type of interview as unstable or unreliable because of the inconsistency in the interview questions, thus making it difficult to code data. [5] If you choose to conduct an informal conversational interview, it is critical to understand the need for flexibility and originality in the questioning as a key for success.

General Interview Guide Approach

The general interview guide approach is more structured than the informal conversational interview although there is still quite a bit of flexibility in its composition. [6] The ways that questions are potentially worded depend upon the researcher who is conducting the interview. Therefore, one of the obvious issues with this type of interview is the lack of consistency in the way research questions are posed because researchers can interchange the way he or she poses them. With that in mind, the respondents may not consistently answer the same question(s) based on how they were posed by the interviewer. [7] During research for my doctoral dissertation, I was able to interact with alumni participants in a relaxed and informal manner where I had the opportunity to learn more about the in-depth experiences of the participants through structured interviews. This informal environment allowed me the opportunity to develop rapport with the participants so that I was able to ask follow-up or probing questions based on their responses to pre-constructed questions. I found this quite useful in my interviews because I could ask questions or change questions based on participant responses to previous questions. The questions were structured, but adapting them allowed me to explore a more personal approach to each alumni interview.

According to McNamara, the strength of the general interview guide approach is the ability of the researcher “…to ensure that the same general areas of information are collected from each interviewee; this provides more focus than the conversational approach, but still allows a degree of freedom and adaptability in getting information from the interviewee.” [8] The researcher remains in the driver’s seat with this type of interview approach, but flexibility takes precedence based on perceived prompts from the participants.

You might ask, “What does this mean anyway?” The easiest way to answer that question is to think about your own personal experiences at a job interview. When you were invited to a job interview in the past, you might have prepared for all sorts of curve ball-style questions to come your way. You desired an answer for every potential question. If the interviewer were asking you questions using a general interview guide approach, he or she would ask questions using their own unique style, which might differ from the way the questions were originally created. You as the interviewee would then respond to those questions in the manner in which the interviewer asked which would dictate how the interview continued. Based on how the interviewer asked the question(s), you might have been able to answer more information or less information than that of other job candidates. Therefore, it is easy to see how this could positively or negatively influence a job candidate if the interviewer were using a general interview guide approach.

Standardized Open-Ended Interviews

The standardized open-ended interview is extremely structured in terms of the wording of the questions. Participants are always asked identical questions, but the questions are worded so that responses are open-ended. [9] This open-endedness allows the participants to contribute as much detailed information as they desire and it also allows the researcher to ask probing questions as a means of follow-up. Standardized open-ended interviews are likely the most popular form of interviewing utilized in research studies because of the nature of the open-ended questions, allowing the participants to fully express their viewpoints and experiences. If one were to identify weaknesses with open-ended interviewing, they would likely identify the difficulty with coding the data. [10] Since open-ended interviews in composition call for participants to fully express their responses in as much detail as desired, it can be quite difficult for researchers to extract similar themes or codes from the interview transcripts as they would with less open-ended responses. Although the data provided by participants are rich and thick with qualitative data, it can be a more cumbersome process for the researcher to sift through the narrative responses in order to fully and accurately reflect an overall perspective of all interview responses through the coding process. However, according to Gall, Gall, and Borg, this reduces researcher biases within the study, particularly when the interviewing process involves many participants. [11]

Suggestions for Conducting Qualitative Interviews

Now that we know a few of the more popular interview designs that are available to qualitative researchers, we can more closely examine various suggestions for conducting qualitative interviews based on the available research. These suggestions are designed to provide the researcher with the tools needed to conduct a well constructed, professional interview with their participants. Some of the most common information found within the literature relating to interviews, according to Creswell [12] :

• The preparation for the interview,
• The constructing effective research questions,
• The actual implementation of the interview(s). [13]

Preparation for the Interview

Probably the most helpful tip with the interview process is that of interview preparation. This process can help make or break the process and can either alleviate or exacerbate the problematic circumstances that could potentially occur once the research is implemented. McNamara suggests the importance of the preparation stage in order to maintain an unambiguous focus as to how the interviews will be erected in order to provide maximum benefit to the proposed research study. [14] Along these lines Chenail provides a number of pre-interview exercises researchers can use to improve their instrumentality and address potential biases. [15] McNamara applies eight principles to the preparation stage of interviewing which includes the following ingredients:

• Choose a setting with little distraction;
• Explain the purpose of the interview;
• Address terms of confidentiality;
• Explain the format of the interview;
• Indicate how long the interview usually takes;
• Tell them how to get in touch with you later if they want to;
• Ask them if they have any questions before you both get started with the interview;
• Don’t count on your memory to recall their answers. [16]

Selecting Participants

Creswell discusses the importance of selecting the appropriate candidates for interviews. He asserts that the researcher should utilize one of the various types of sampling strategies such as criterion based sampling or critical case sampling (among many others) in order to obtain qualified candidates that will provide the most credible information to the study. [17] Creswell also suggests the importance of acquiring participants who will be willing to openly and honestly share information or “their story.” [18] It might be easier to conduct the interviews with participants in a comfortable environment where the participants do not feel restricted or uncomfortable to share information.

Pilot Testing

Another important element to the interview preparation is the implementation of a pilot test. The pilot test will assist the research in determining if there are flaws, limitations, or other weaknesses within the interview design and will allow him or her to make necessary revisions prior to the implementation of the study. [19] A pilot test should be conducted with participants that have similar interests as those that will participate in the implemented study. The pilot test will also assist the researchers with the refinement of research questions, which will be discussed in the next section.

Constructing Effective Research Questions

Creating effective research questions for the interview process is one of the most crucial components to interview design. Researchers desiring to conduct such an investigation should be careful that each of the questions will allow the examiner to dig deep into the experiences and/or knowledge of the participants in order to gain maximum data from the interviews. McNamara suggests several recommendations for creating effective research questions for interviews which includes the following elements:

• Wording should be open-ended (respondents should be able to choose their own terms when answering questions);
• Questions should be as neutral as possible (avoid wording that might influence answers, e.g., evocative, judgmental wording);
• Questions should be asked one at a time;
• Questions should be worded clearly (this includes knowing any terms particular to the program or the respondents’ culture); and
• Be careful asking “why” questions. [20]

Examples of Useful and Not-So Useful Research Questions

To assist the novice interviewer with the preparation of research questions, I will propose a useful research question and a not so useful research question. Based on McNamara’s suggestion, it is important to ask an open-ended question. [21] So for the useful question, I will propose the following: “How have your experiences as a kindergarten teacher influenced or not influenced you in the decisions that you have made in raising your children”? As you can see, the question allows the respondent to discuss how his or her experiences as a kindergarten teacher have or have not affected their decision-making with their own children without making the assumption that the experience has influenced their decision-making. On the other hand, if you were to ask a similar question, but from a less than useful perspective, you might construct the same question in this manner: “How has your experiences as a kindergarten teacher affected you as a parent”? As you can see, the question is still open-ended, but it makes the assumption that the experiences have indeed affected them as a parent. We as the researcher cannot make this assumption in the wording of our questions.

Follow-Up Questions

Creswell also makes the suggestion of being flexible with research questions being constructed. [22] He makes the assertion that respondents in an interview will not necessarily answer the question being asked by the researcher and, in fact, may answer a question that is asked in another question later in the interview. Creswell believes that the researcher must construct questions in such a manner to keep participants on focus with their responses to the questions. In addition, the researcher must be prepared with follow-up questions or prompts in order to ensure that they obtain optimal responses from participants. When I was an Assistant Director for a large division at my University a couple of years ago, I was tasked with the responsibility of hiring student affairs coordinators at our off-campus educational centers. Throughout the interviewing process, I found that interviewees did indeed get off topic with certain questions because they either misunderstood the question(s) being asked or did not wish to answer the question(s) directly. I was able to utilize Creswell’s suggestion [23] by reconstructing questions so that they were clearly assembled in a manner to reduce misunderstanding and was able to erect effective follow-up prompts to further understanding. This alleviated many of the problems I had and assisted me in extracting the information I needed from the interview through my follow-up questioning.

Implementation of Interviews

As with other sections of interview design, McNamara makes some excellent recommendations for the implementation stage of the interview process. He includes the following tips for interview implementation:

• Occasionally verify the tape recorder (if used) is working;
• Ask one question at a time;
• Attempt to remain as neutral as possible (that is, don’t show strong emotional reactions to their responses;
• Encourage responses with occasional nods of the head, “uh huh”s, etc.;
• Be careful about the appearance when note taking (that is, if you jump to take a note, it may appear as if you’re surprised or very pleased about an answer, which may influence answers to future questions);
• Provide transition between major topics, e.g., “we’ve been talking about (some topic) and now I’d like to move on to (another topic);”
• Don’t lose control of the interview (this can occur when respondents stray to another topic, take so long to answer a question that times begins to run out, or even begin asking questions to the interviewer). [24]

Interpreting Data

The final constituent in the interview design process is that of interpreting the data that was gathered during the interview process. During this phase, the researcher must make “sense” out of what was just uncovered and compile the data into sections or groups of information, also known as themes or codes. [25] These themes or codes are consistent phrases, expressions, or ideas that were common among research participants. [26] How the researcher formulates themes or codes vary. Many researchers suggest the need to employ a third party consultant who can review codes or themes in order to determine the quality and effectiveness based on their evaluation of the interview transcripts. [27] This helps alleviate researcher biases or potentially eliminate where over-analyzing of data has occurred. Many researchers may choose to employ an iterative review process where a committee of nonparticipating researchers can provide constructive feedback and suggestions to the researcher(s) primarily involved with the study.

From choosing the appropriate type of interview design process through the interpretation of interview data, this guide for conducting qualitative research interviews proposes a practical way to perform an investigation based on the recommendations and experiences of qualified researchers in the field and through my own personal experiences. Although qualitative investigation provides a myriad of opportunities for conducting investigational research, interview design has remained one of the more popular forms of analyses. As the variety of qualitative research methods become more widely utilized across research institutions, we will continue to see more practical guides for protocol implementation outlined in peer reviewed journals across the world.

This text was derived from

Turner, Daniel W., III. “Qualitative Interview Design: A Practical Guide for Novice Investigators.” The Qualitative Report 15, no. 3 (2010): 754-760. https://doi.org/10.46743/2160-3715/2010.1178 . Licensed under a  Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License .

It is edited and reformatted by Nicole Hagstrom-Schmidt.

• John W. Creswell, Qualitative Inquiry and Research Design: Choosing Among Five Approaches , 2nd ed. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2007). ↵
• M.D. Gall, Walter R. Borg, and Joyce P. Gall, Educational Research: An Introduction , 7th ed. (Boston, MA: Pearson, 2003). ↵
• M.D. Gall, Walter R. Borg, and Joyce P. Gall, Educational Research: An Introduction , 7th ed (Boston, MA: Pearson, 2003), 239. ↵
• Carter McNamara, “General Guidelines for Conducting Interviews,” Free Management Library , accessed January 11, 2010, https://managementhelp.org/businessresearch/interviews.htm. ↵
• M.D. Gall, Walter R. Borg, and Joyce P. Gall, Educational Research: An Introduction , 7th ed (Boston, MA: Pearson, 2003). ↵
• Carter McNamara, “General Guidelines for Conducting Interviews,” Free Management Library , accessed January 11, 2010, https://managementhelp.org/businessresearch/interviews.htm . ↵
• Carter McNamara, “General Guidelines for Conducting Interviews,” Free Management Library , “Types of Interviews” section, para. 1, accessed January 11, 2010, https://managementhelp.org/businessresearch/interviews.htm . ↵
• John W. Creswell, Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches , 3rd ed. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2003); John W. Creswell, Qualitative Inquiry and Research Design: Choosing Among Five Approaches , 2nd ed. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2007). ↵
• Ronald J. Chenail, “Interviewing the Investigator: Strategies for Addressing Instrumentation and Researcher Bias Concerns in Qualitative Research,” The Qualitative Report 16, no. 1 (2011): 255–262, https://nsuworks.nova.edu/tqr/vol16/iss1/16/ . ↵
• Carter McNamara, “General Guidelines for Conducting Interviews,” Free Management Library , “Preparation for Interview section,” para. 1, accessed January 11, 2010, https://managementhelp.org/businessresearch/interviews.htm . ↵
• John W. Creswell, Qualitative Inquiry and Research Design: Choosing Among Five Approaches , 2nd ed. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2007), 133. ↵
• Steinar Kvale, Doing Interviews (London and Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2007) https://doi.org/10.4135/9781849208963 . ↵
• Carter McNamara, “General Guidelines for Conducting Interviews,” Free Management Library , “Wording of Questions” section, para. 1, accessed January 11, 2010, https://managementhelp.org/businessresearch/interviews.htm . ↵
• Carter McNamara, “General Guidelines for Conducting Interviews,” Free Management Library , “Conducting Interview” section, para 1, accessed January 11, 2010, https://managementhelp.org/businessresearch/interviews.htm . ↵
• Steinar Kvale, Doing Interviews (London and Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2007) https://doi.org/10.4135/9781849208963 ↵

Appendix: Qualitative Interview Design Copyright © 2022 by Daniel W. Turner III and Nicole Hagstrom-Schmidt is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Share This Book

The Ultimate Guide to Qualitative Research - Part 1: The Basics

• Introduction and overview
• What is qualitative research?
• What is qualitative data?
• Examples of qualitative data
• Qualitative vs. quantitative research
• Mixed methods
• Qualitative research preparation
• Theoretical perspective
• Theoretical framework
• Literature reviews
• Research question
• Conceptual framework
• Conceptual vs. theoretical framework
• Data collection
• Qualitative research methods
• Introduction

What is an interview and its purpose in qualitative research?

What are some examples of interviews in research, how to carry out great interviews in qualitative research, fundamental types of interviews, process of conducting an interview.

• Focus groups
• Observational research
• Case studies
• Ethnographical research

Ethical considerations

• Confidentiality and privacy
• Power dynamics
• Reflexivity

Interviews: Research methods and approaches

As a qualitative research method, interviewing is widely used to gather in-depth information from participants about their experiences, opinions, and perspectives on a specific topic. There are various qualitative research techniques for interviews available to researchers to achieve the greatest potential in data collection .

This section will provide an overview of the importance of interviews, the different types of interviews, tools for conducting interviews, analysis of interview data , and ethical considerations in this research method. Note that the focus group interview is a related concept but will be discussed in greater detail in the next section of this guide, as focus groups have slightly different dynamics to consider.

Interviews, as a qualitative research method , play a pivotal role in uncovering complexities in human behavior and decision-making. Researchers can observe behavior, on the one hand, or they can investigate the perspectives and values informing that behavior by interviewing research participants.

Purpose and importance

Interviews allow researchers to delve into the subjective experiences of individuals, providing insights that may not be accessible through other research methods. They illuminate people's perceptions, thoughts, feelings, and understandings about a particular phenomenon.

Unlike quantitative methods, which typically collect numerical data that can be statistically analyzed, interviews capture rich, detailed data in the form of words, ideas, and themes. They allow researchers to collect data on people's experiences in a manner that is sensitive to the context and the individual's perspective. Through interviews, researchers can explore the meanings people attribute to their experiences and gain a deeper understanding of the phenomena being studied.

Interviews also empower participants by giving them a voice. The interviewee has the opportunity to express their views, feelings, and experiences in their own words. This participatory aspect of interviews underscores the respect for individual experiences and perspectives, which is a central tenet of qualitative research.

Comparing interviews with other methods

While interviews share many similarities with other qualitative methods, they also have unique features that set them apart. Unlike interviews, methods like observations are more passive and rely more on the researcher's interpretation of events.

On the other hand, interviews actively involve participants in the data generation process. Compared to surveys , which may limit responses to predetermined choices or word limits, interviews allow for open-ended responses and the flexibility to explore topics in depth.

However, it's worth noting that interviews do not have to be a stand-alone method. They are often used with other methods, such as observation or document analysis , in a multi-method or mixed-methods research design . This combination of methods can enhance the richness and credibility of the data collected, providing a more holistic understanding of the research problem.

The qualitative research interview can be conducted in various formats, each with its own strengths and limitations. Choosing the appropriate type of interview to use largely depends on the research question, the nature of the topic, the characteristics of the participants, and the resources available to the researcher.

Face-to-face interviews

In-person interviews are often considered the traditional form of interviewing. They involve a direct conversation between the interviewer and the interviewee. This form allows for comprehensive communication as it includes verbal and non-verbal cues such as body language, facial expressions, and tone of voice.

This type of interview allows for immediate clarification of responses and can help foster rapport between the interviewer and interviewee, which may lead to richer, more nuanced data. However, these kinds of interviews can be time-consuming, expensive, and limited by geographic location.

Telephone interviews

Telephone interviews can be a practical alternative when face-to-face interviews are not feasible due to distance, time, or budget constraints. Phone interviews allow researchers to reach participants who may be geographically dispersed and offer a level of anonymity that may encourage candid responses, particularly on sensitive topics.

However, they might lack non-verbal cues that can provide additional context to a participant's responses. A phone interview may differ from a conversation in person in that you can't see someone's face, gestures, or other body language, which might be useful for contextualizing detailed information.

Online/internet-based interviews

Online or internet-based interviews conducted through platforms such as Zoom, Skype, or email have become increasingly popular in recent years. They can be synchronous (occurring in real-time, like video calls) or asynchronous (participants respond in their own time, such as email interviews).

These interviews can reach participants globally, are often cost-effective, and can be more convenient for both the researcher and the participant. However, they rely on technology and internet access, which may not be available to all potential participants.

Effective interview research with ATLAS.ti

Get key insights from insightful analysis with ATLAS.ti. Try a free trial today.

Qualitative interviews are more than just casual conversations. Some qualitative research interviews may not follow a strict structure and allow the researcher to explore any topics in the moment. In contrast, other interviews may be highly structured and aim to collect the same kind of information across participants. As a matter of empirical research, research interviews require careful planning, execution, and reflection to ensure they yield valuable and trustworthy data. Here are some key components to consider:

Developing appropriate interview questions

The foundation of any successful interview lies in its questions. Good interview questions are open-ended, clear, and directly related to the research objectives. They should allow participants to share their experiences, opinions, and feelings without leading them toward certain answers. In qualitative research, it's often useful to have a mix of more and less structured questions, allowing for both depth and breadth in responses.

Building rapport with participants

Establishing rapport with interviewees is crucial to encourage open and honest responses. In-depth interviews can be challenging if the interviewer doesn't know the interviewee in detail or hasn't established the necessary trust.

Researchers establish rapport with interviewees by displaying empathy, active listening, and respect. Clarifying the purpose of the interview, ensuring confidentiality, and asking for consent before beginning can also help in building trust.

Note-taking and recording

Accurate and comprehensive documentation of interview data is critical. While audio or video recording is highly recommended for completeness and accuracy, it's also beneficial to take notes during or immediately after the interview. These notes can capture non-verbal cues, the interviewer's impressions, and any issues or incidents that occur during the interview.

Ethical considerations are paramount in any research involving human participants. Researchers must obtain informed consent , respect participants' privacy and confidentiality , and ensure participants understand their right to withdraw from the study at any time without any negative consequences. It's also important to be aware of power dynamics and strive for a respectful and equitable researcher-participant relationship.

The effectiveness of a qualitative interview largely depends on the thoughtfulness and rigor with which these components are addressed. Interviews are not just a data collection tool; they are a way of acknowledging and respecting participants' lived experiences and perspectives. Therefore, each component should be handled with utmost care and consideration.

Organize your data all in one place.

Text files, PDFs, videos, and pictures. ATLAS.ti helps you analyze them all. See how with a free trial.

The structure of an interview can greatly influence the data collected. The level of structure varies along a continuum, with structured and unstructured interviews occupying opposite ends of that spectrum.

Unstructured interviews

Unstructured interviews are characterized by their flexibility. The researcher usually only has a list of topics or themes to be covered, known as an interview guide, but the conversation does not follow a predetermined set of questions. Instead, the interviewer allows the conversation to flow naturally, following leads provided by the interviewee. An unstructured interview is particularly useful when the researcher is exploring a new area of study and aims to gather as much information as possible without preconceived notions.

Semi-structured interviews

Semi-structured interviews strike a balance between flexibility and structure. The researcher has a list of predetermined questions to conduct interviews but is free to ask additional open-ended questions or to deviate from the list based on the interviewee's responses. The semi-structured interview is the most common form of interview in qualitative research, as it provides deep, rich data while still ensuring that all necessary topics are covered.

Structured interviews

Structured interviews , sometimes called standardized interviews, are the most rigid form of interview. The researcher asks the same set of predetermined questions in the same order to all participants, with little to no deviation.

While a structured interview may limit the depth of data collected, it allows for greater consistency across interviews. This can be helpful for keeping responses confined to the research topic and comparing responses between participants.

In determining the level of structure for an interview, researchers should consider their research objectives, the nature of the topic, and the characteristics of the participants. Different structures lend themselves to different research goals, and the most effective interviewers are those who can adapt their approach based on the needs of their study.

Conducting an interview in qualitative research involves a series of well-planned steps before, during, and after the interview. These steps ensure that the process is systematic, ethical, and capable of yielding high-quality data.

Pre-interview preparation and research

Before conducting the interview, the researcher needs to thoroughly understand the research topic, define the purpose of the interview, and identify potential interviewees. Preparing an interview guide with key themes or questions is essential, though the level of detail will depend on the interview structure. Logistics, such as scheduling the interview at a convenient time and place for the participant and ensuring necessary equipment is available and working, also need to be addressed.

Conducting the interview

The interview begins with an introduction in which the interviewer explains the purpose of the interview, assures confidentiality, and obtains consent from the participant. Throughout the interview, the researcher should aim to build rapport, listen attentively, and adapt their questioning based on the interviewee's responses. Non-verbal cues should also be observed and noted, as they can provide additional insights.

Post-interview activities

After the interview, it is important to thank the participant for their time and contribution. Researchers should then promptly transcribe the interview while the details are still fresh. Reflections and observations about the interview should also be noted, including the context, the behavior of the participant, and any unexpected occurrences. These notes can provide valuable context during data analysis.

Executing each of these stages effectively requires not only good planning and organization but also interpersonal skills, flexibility, and respect for the participant. The quality of the data collected during an interview is largely dependent on how well the interview process is managed.

Transcribing interviews

The transcription of interview data is a critical step in the qualitative research process. This involves converting the recorded audio or video interviews into written text, providing a detailed account of the dialogues that took place during the interviews.

Transcriptions allow for more detailed examination, analysis, and reporting of the data. However, making transcriptions can be arduous and time-consuming. Here are some key considerations in the transcription process:

Types of transcription

There are two main types of transcription: verbatim and clean. Verbatim transcription involves writing down every single word, pause, and utterance made during the interview. This is a very detailed and time-consuming process, but it can be useful when the researcher needs to analyze not just the content of the interview but also the way it was expressed. On the other hand, clean transcription omits irrelevant elements like stutters, repetitions, and filler words, focusing instead on the core content of the conversation.

Manual vs. automated transcription

Researchers may choose to transcribe interviews manually or use transcription software. Manual transcription, while time-consuming, allows researchers to become intimately familiar with the data and can be more accurate, especially for complex or nuanced dialogues.

Automated transcription software, however, can save time and effort, particularly for large volumes of data, although it may require manual checking and correction for errors. Some researchers choose a hybrid approach, using software for the initial transcription and then manually checking and correcting the output.

Formatting and anonymizing transcripts

To facilitate analysis, transcripts should be formatted consistently, with clear identifiers for different speakers and timestamps for reference. If there are multiple interviewers or participants, each individual's speech should be clearly marked. Additionally, to ensure confidentiality, any personally identifiable information should be removed or anonymized in the transcript. This is especially important to consider in qualitative data, because participants may talk about aspects of their lives through which they could be identified, for instance if they mention specific names, their neighborhood, or place of work.

Quality checks

Finally, it's important to check the quality of the transcript. This could involve a second person checking the transcription against the audio or the researcher re-listening to portions of the recording to confirm accuracy. Any unclear or inaudible sections should be marked in the transcript.

Get the most out of interviews with ATLAS.ti

Collect, transcribe, and analyze interviews with our intuitive interface. Try it out with a free trial.

Handbook of Research Methods in Health Social Sciences pp 391–410 Cite as

Qualitative Interviewing

• Sally Nathan 2 ,
• Christy Newman 3 &
• Kari Lancaster 3  
• Reference work entry
• First Online: 13 January 2019

4019 Accesses

20 Citations

8 Altmetric

Qualitative interviewing is a foundational method in qualitative research and is widely used in health research and the social sciences. Both qualitative semi-structured and in-depth unstructured interviews use verbal communication, mostly in face-to-face interactions, to collect data about the attitudes, beliefs, and experiences of participants. Interviews are an accessible, often affordable, and effective method to understand the socially situated world of research participants. The approach is typically informed by an interpretive framework where the data collected is not viewed as evidence of the truth or reality of a situation or experience but rather a context-bound subjective insight from the participants. The researcher needs to be open to new insights and to privilege the participant’s experience in data collection. The data from qualitative interviews is not generalizable, but its exploratory nature permits the collection of rich data which can answer questions about which little is already known. This chapter introduces the reader to qualitative interviewing, the range of traditions within which interviewing is utilized as a method, and highlights the advantages and some of the challenges and misconceptions in its application. The chapter also provides practical guidance on planning and conducting interview studies. Three case examples are presented to highlight the benefits and risks in the use of interviewing with different participants, providing situated insights as well as advice about how to go about learning to interview if you are a novice.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution .

Buying options

• Available as PDF
• Read on any device
• Instant download
• Own it forever
• Available as EPUB and PDF
• Durable hardcover edition
• Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
• Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Baez B. Confidentiality in qualitative research: reflections on secrets, power and agency. Qual Res. 2002;2(1):35–58. https://doi.org/10.1177/1468794102002001638 .

Article   Google Scholar  

Braun V, Clarke V. Successful qualitative research: a practical guide for beginners. London: Sage Publications; 2013.

Google Scholar  

Braun V, Clarke V, Gray D. Collecting qualitative data: a practical guide to textual, media and virtual techniques. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 2017.

Book   Google Scholar  

Bryman A. Social research methods. 5th ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 2016.

Crotty M. The foundations of social research: meaning and perspective in the research process. Australia: Allen & Unwin; 1998.

Davies MB. Doing a successful research project: using qualitative or quantitative methods. New York: Palgrave MacMillan; 2007.

Dickson-Swift V, James EL, Liamputtong P. Undertaking sensitive research in the health and social sciences. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 2008.

Foster M, Nathan S, Ferry M. The experience of drug-dependent adolescents in a therapeutic community. Drug Alcohol Rev. 2010;29(5):531–9.

Gillham B. The research interview. London: Continuum; 2000.

Glaser B, Strauss A. The discovery of grounded theory: strategies for qualitative research. Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company; 1967.

Hesse-Biber SN, Leavy P. In-depth interview. In: The practice of qualitative research. 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications; 2011. p. 119–47

Irvine A. Duration, dominance and depth in telephone and face-to-face interviews: a comparative exploration. Int J Qual Methods. 2011;10(3):202–20.

Johnson JM. In-depth interviewing. In: Gubrium JF, Holstein JA, editors. Handbook of interview research: context and method. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications; 2001.

Kvale S. Interviews: an introduction to qualitative research interviewing. Thousand Oaks: Sage; 1996.

Kvale S. Doing interviews. London: Sage Publications; 2007.

Lancaster K. Confidentiality, anonymity and power relations in elite interviewing: conducting qualitative policy research in a politicised domain. Int J Soc Res Methodol. 2017;20(1):93–103. https://doi.org/10.1080/13645579.2015.1123555 .

Leavy P. Method meets art: arts-based research practice. New York: Guilford Publications; 2015.

Liamputtong P. Researching the vulnerable: a guide to sensitive research methods. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications; 2007.

Liamputtong P. Qualitative research methods. 4th ed. South Melbourne: Oxford University Press; 2013.

Mays N, Pope C. Quality in qualitative health research. In: Pope C, Mays N, editors. Qualitative research in health care. London: BMJ Books; 2000. p. 89–102.

McLellan E, MacQueen KM, Neidig JL. Beyond the qualitative interview: data preparation and transcription. Field Methods. 2003;15(1):63–84. https://doi.org/10.1177/1525822x02239573 .

Minichiello V, Aroni R, Hays T. In-depth interviewing: principles, techniques, analysis. 3rd ed. Sydney: Pearson Education Australia; 2008.

Morris ZS. The truth about interviewing elites. Politics. 2009;29(3):209–17. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9256.2009.01357.x .

Nathan S, Foster M, Ferry M. Peer and sexual relationships in the experience of drug-dependent adolescents in a therapeutic community. Drug Alcohol Rev. 2011;30(4):419–27.

National Health and Medical Research Council. National statement on ethical conduct in human research. Canberra: Australian Government; 2007.

Neal S, McLaughlin E. Researching up? Interviews, emotionality and policy-making elites. J Soc Policy. 2009;38(04):689–707. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047279409990018 .

O’Reilly M, Parker N. ‘Unsatisfactory saturation’: a critical exploration of the notion of saturated sample sizes in qualitative research. Qual Res. 2013;13(2):190–7. https://doi.org/10.1177/1468794112446106 .

Ostrander S. “Surely you're not in this just to be helpful”: access, rapport and interviews in three studies of elites. In: Hertz R, Imber J, editors. Studying elites using qualitative methods. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications; 1995. p. 133–50.

Chapter   Google Scholar  

Patton M. Qualitative research & evaluation methods: integrating theory and practice. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications; 2015.

Punch KF. Introduction to social research: quantitative and qualitative approaches. London: Sage; 2005.

Rhodes T, Bernays S, Houmoller K. Parents who use drugs: accounting for damage and its limitation. Soc Sci Med. 2010;71(8):1489–97. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2010.07.028 .

Riessman CK. Narrative analysis. London: Sage; 1993.

Ritchie J. Not everything can be reduced to numbers. In: Berglund C, editor. Health research. Melbourne: Oxford University Press; 2001. p. 149–73.

Rubin H, Rubin I. Qualitative interviewing: the art of hearing data. 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications; 2012.

Serry T, Liamputtong P. The in-depth interviewing method in health. In: Liamputtong P, editor. Research methods in health: foundations for evidence-based practice. 3rd ed. South Melbourne: Oxford University Press; 2017. p. 67–83.

Silverman D. Doing qualitative research. 5th ed. London: Sage; 2017.

Tong A, Sainsbury P, Craig J. Consolidated criteria for reporting qualitative research (coreq): a 32-item checklist for interviews and focus groups. Int J Qual Health Care. 2007;19(6):349–57. https://doi.org/10.1093/intqhc/mzm042 .

Download references

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

School of Public Health and Community Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, UNSW, Sydney, NSW, Australia

Sally Nathan

Centre for Social Research in Health, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, UNSW, Sydney, NSW, Australia

Christy Newman & Kari Lancaster

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sally Nathan .

Editor information

Editors and affiliations.

School of Science and Health, Western Sydney University, Penrith, NSW, Australia

Pranee Liamputtong

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2019 Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

About this entry

Cite this entry.

Nathan, S., Newman, C., Lancaster, K. (2019). Qualitative Interviewing. In: Liamputtong, P. (eds) Handbook of Research Methods in Health Social Sciences. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-5251-4_77

Download citation

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-5251-4_77

Published : 13 January 2019

Publisher Name : Springer, Singapore

Print ISBN : 978-981-10-5250-7

Online ISBN : 978-981-10-5251-4

eBook Packages : Social Sciences Reference Module Humanities and Social Sciences Reference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences

Share this entry

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Publish with us

Policies and ethics

• Find a journal
• Track your research

Search the Research Collection

Early registration is now open for the 2024 convention in Minneapolis.

SABR Live Oral History Interview: Dave Righetti

Baseball fans, join us for a special virtual event at 8:00 p.m. Eastern on Thursday, May 9, 2024: a live SABR Oral History interview with former New York Yankees All-Star pitcher and longtime San Francisco Giants pitching coach Dave Righetti .

All fans are invited to attend this interview session on Zoom, which will be conducted by Oral History Committee chair John McMurray. The interview will be recorded and added to SABR’s Oral History Collection archive afterward.

Righetti pitched for 16 seasons from 1979 to 1995 with the Yankees, Giants, and three other teams. He earned American League Rookie of the Year honors in 1981, when he won three postseason games en route to the Yankees’ World Series championship. On July 4, 1983, he pitched a no-hitter at Yankee Stadium against the Boston Red Sox. He converted to a reliever the following season and saved 252 career games. He later spent 18 years as a pitching coach with the Giants under manager Bruce Bochy, capturing three more World Series rings from 2010 to 2014.

The SABR Oral History Collection includes more than 750 interviews conducted with ballplayers (Major Leagues, Minor Leagues, Negro Leagues, AAGBBL), executives, scouts, authors, writers, broadcasters, and other figures of historical baseball significance. Learn more at SABR.org/oralhistory .

Support SABR today!

Cronkite School at ASU 555 N. Central Ave. #406-C Phoenix, AZ 85004 Phone: 602-496-1460

Meet the Staff

Board of Directors

Annual Reports

Diversity Statement

Contact SABR

© SABR. All Rights Reserved

Home » Property News » UK

Construction activity sluggish

Construction is down so far in 2024, with project starts, new contracts and planning approvals all dropping, concerning research from intelligence firm Glenigan has found.

The firm blamed this poor performance on economic uncertainty in the April edition of its Construction Review.

Allan Wilen, economic director of Glenigan, said: “Sluggish performance in Q1 2024 is unsurprising as economic uncertainty continues to deter private sector investment.

“However, there are some small glimmers of hope to be found within some verticals, which experienced modest growth during the Review period. Particularly education, health and community & amenity.

“This indicates a small boost in the public sector pipeline however, with a General Election approaching, any short-term improvement needs to be considered with a degree of cautious optimism.”

Averaging £7,215 million per month, work commencing on-site fell 3% against the preceding three months, to finish 28% lower than the same time last year.

Major project-starts fell 26% against the preceding three months and declined by 41% compared with the previous year.

It was an equally gloomy outlook for underlying work, dropping 22% during Q1 to stand 21% down on the previous year.

Regional Performance

Northern Ireland was the strongest-performing region in the UK, with project-starts increasing 44% against the preceding quarter, to stand 28% up on this time last year.

In the country growth was accelerated by the £44 million development of the Hamilton Dock Hotel in Belfast.

The outlook for the East of England was also sunny. It was the only other region to experience growth against both periods, up 13% on the preceding three months, as well as 25% on the previous year. Growth in the region was supported by the commencement of a £74 million 246-unit residential development in Maldon, Essex.

London experienced a 23% decrease against the preceding three months and remained 18% down against the previous year.

The West Midlands experienced particularly poor performance, with the value of project-starts falling 56% against the preceding three months and by 45% compared with the same time last year. This was the steepest decline of any region.

Work starting on site in the East Midlands (-49%), Wales (-33%), and Scotland (-25%) all remained distinctly behind 2023 figures.

Every other region of the UK experienced a weakening in project-starts against both the previous quarter and the year before.

Sign up to our daily email

Popular posts.

• Apprenticeships

10 interview questions for a job in construction and how to answer them

• 1) Where do you see yourself in 5/10 years?
• 2) What is your main weakness?
• 3) Tell us about a time you handled stress successfully
• 4) What problems did you identify in your last construction engineering project and how did you combat these?
• 5) Tell us what you know about this company
• 6) Explain what you think you can bring to this construction role
• 7) What has been your biggest construction project to date?
• 8) Have you ever encountered an employee disagreement onsite and if so, how did you deal with this?
• 9) How much cement will you need for 1sqm of brickwork?
• 10) What personal characteristics do you think are important to be a successful engineer in the construction industry?

When applying for a job in  construction , you should expect a face-to-face interview which is mixed with both personal and technical questions. The aim of the interview is to talk through your CV, your prospects and recent projects, while the interviewer assesses if you’re a suitable candidate.

The first thing you need to do is research. All interviews require research into the company and job role as potential employers are always willing to test this. Keep in mind that if you’re working in design or onsite, the questions will vary. If you’re switching industries, from construction to utilities, for example, expect questions on why.

Personal interview questions are designed to offer insight into you as an individual, not just as an employee. While these are the most common, other interview questions for a job in construction cover topics such as teamwork, engineering projects and research.

How dedicated are you? Contractors can progress quickly in the industry and training is frequently available with the introduction of new equipment, practices and accreditations. Employers want to hire an individual who will grow with the company. Do you see yourself as a manager or specialising in a particular area?  Explain how you’ve progressed so far and what this has meant for your previous/current employer.

A favourite in any interview, weaknesses allow interviewers to grasp how you perceive yourself. The key to this question is to turn a weakness into a positive. Apply your answer to everyday construction tasks and finish with how you combat the problem. It’s about detail, analysis and a solution.

Engineering can be stressful; interviewers want to know if you can handle this successfully and whether it affects your work. Other questions may include: how do you destress in your spare time and what has been the most stressful project you’ve worked on? Remember to always finish on a positive.

Problem-solving is an area often broached in an interview. Identify an issue and explain the steps you took to resolve it, before highlighting the results.

Rather than turn to obvious facts – such as the founding date and areas of specialism – research into the company’s biggest or most recent engineering project; feel free to express your opinion – how would you have done things differently or what could you have added to the project? Browse social media platforms for the latest news and read up on the company’s policies and procedures.

Here you should study the job specification and highlight your areas of specialism that are relevant, before evaluating what positives you can add to the job. For example, can you bring better results or quicker procedures? Explain what you did in your last role and how this benefited the company.

Nothing speaks louder than your experience. Although interviewers can observe details on your CV, they may want you to explain what projects you’ve been involved with and what your role was. This is where you can expand on your technical knowledge, use industry terms while offering a professional analysis.

Particularly for managerial positions, interviewers want to see if you can resolve difficult situations, predominantly onsite, which is usually more stressful. In construction, sectors work together frequently and therefore teamwork is often a key influencer in an interview.

This is just one example of a technical question but be prepared for interviewers to test your knowledge of materials and procedures. But, don’t worry; these aren’t the be-all and end-all of an interview.

With this question, you should explain traits of a good candidate. Highlight personal characteristics and refer to your own engineering experience, for example, what personal trait has a previous manager had that made them a good role model or a successful engineer?

Ready to take the next step in your career? View the  latest roles  available in building, construction and infrastructure.

Share this page

Related articles, degree or not to degree is a degree essential for career success.

Is an MSP the answer to the construction industry's talent challenges?

How to Become a Joiner

How to become a Plant Operator

How to negotiate a pay rise in a construction job

Construction salary guide: Could you be earning more?

Circular economy: The future of highways

Q&A – high voltage electrical apprenticeship

What is it really like to be an apprentice? | Our apprentices tell all

How to be a... Quantity Surveyor

How to become a... Concrete Operative

How to become a... Plumbing, Heating and Ventilation Engineer

How to become an Electrician

"My career has been better than I could ever have anticipated." Meet Elise Coalter, Project Director at St. Modwen

Morson Training win best apprenticeship at the Transport for london (TfL) supplier awards

How to become a Concrete Finisher