I feel as though, from the start, if everything is well thought out, the whole process of the interview, before, during, and after will flow well and be a successful experience. Everything starts with the topic, as it sets the tone for the entire project, if it’s a boring topic, it’s going to be a boring process, pick something that interests you or you can use in your field! Next comes the participants, it’s important to pick participants that are going to elicit information, no information leads to no data, and we need data for our research. After we choose our participants, we need to decide which format of interview we will have, there are multiple types of formats and we need to pick the one that’s going to be best for our project. Again, data is the main goal of the interviews, we need to pick the format that is going to yield the most data. Since the format of the interview shows us which type of questions we will have, the next step is to write the questions. Keep those questions open-ended, no yes-or-no questions, answers need to bring information to the table to analyze! Good questions means we are going to get a lot of data, bad questions means no data, or no usable data. Then we need to have the actual interview itself. It’s important to make the interviewee feel comfortable in the atmosphere you have created. Comfort will yield results, discomfort will cause closure. So all in all, all of these steps, if done well, should get you the data you need!
Bibliography:
Cohen, D., & Crabtree, B. (2006). Qualitative research guidelines project. Retrieved October 6, 2015, from http://www.qualres.org/HomeInte-3595.html
Handling qualitative research data. (n.d.). Retrieved October 6, 2015 from http://libweb.surrey.ac.uk/library/skills/Introduction%20to%20Research%20and%20Managing%20Information%20Leicester/page_73.htm
Merriam, S., & Tisdell, E. (2016). Qualitative research: A guide to design and implementation (Fourth ed.). San Francisco, CA: John Wiley & Sons.
Sargeant, J. (2012). Qualitative research part II: Participants, analysis, and quality assurance. Journal of Graduate Medical Education, 4(1).