Study

Interviews: Study#

This page covers the work during and after interview sessions: running interviews, recording, transcription, and analysis.

IRB Required: Do not start external pilot interviews, recruitment, or data collection before IRB approval.

For filing, see –> Submitting IRB.

Conducting Interviews#

Being a fairly interactive research approach, probably no other results’ quality is as dependent on researcher behaviour as interviews.

Best Practices#

Below you can find some hints that might help you conducting an effective interview. They are partially inspired / taken from the listed references.

  • No Priming: It is important that the interviewer does not convey anything to the interviewee about what they know or believe about the topic. This means that the interviewer must pay careful attention to the language each interviewee uses during the interview, and refer to the same concepts the interviewee talks about using the same kinds of words as the interviewee, avoiding to indicate vocabulary of their own. The more we guide interviewees’ responses, the more we will be collecting data about something they’re only thinking about because we asked them to think about it. We want to know what they think about this, not what they think about what WE think about this.
  • Wait for Answers: It is OK to wait for people to answer when you’ve asked them a question. People may need to think for a minute before answering some of these questions, and if there is a pause in conversation while they do that it may feel a bit awkward. This is OK. The best way to give a participant space to answer is to remind yourself to PAUSE and let them think, even if the silence makes you uncomfortable. If you move on, and ask another question, they won’t answer the first question! Count to 10 in your head if you have to.
  • Never interrupt the person you are interviewing! This may mean that it feels like the person may be rambling into something that is off topic for the interview protocol. But, that doesn’t mean the data won’t be useful, and if you cut them off you will never know what they were going to say. People think out loud sometimes, and the process of talking about something is important for the process of thinking about it. Also, interrupting someone conveys to them that you weren’t actually that interested in what they were saying, and which is absolutely the LAST thing we want interview participants to feel. We are VERY interested in what they have to say!
  • Focus: You should be trying to pay attention to everything the person is saying and thinking about how to follow up. This takes a lot of energy and focus. You shouldn’t be thinking about other stuff going on in your life during the interview – focus all of your attention on the participant, and ask good follow-up questions.
  • Get them to think! Sometimes people’s first response might be “I don’t know” or “I have no idea” or “I’ve never thought about that before”. This is because we’re showing them information they really may not have thought about much before! It is important to follow up when they say that, don’t just let it go! Some ways to follow up and get them talking about what they’re thinking are: “Tell me more about that.” or “Why do you think you haven’t thought about it?” or “What is it that makes it hard to answer this question?” or “We’re really interested in anything you can tell us about your thoughts about this.”

Interview Statements#

Some statements that can be used during interviews.

Acknowledge Meaningful Answers: Good ways to acknowledge that they have said something meaningful:

  • “That was very insightful”
  • “That is interesting to hear”
  • “thank you for sharing, that was very interesting” (etc)
  • “Thank you, this was very helpful”
  • “I learned something new, thanks” ← not appropriate everywhere!

Probe/Follow-Up:

  • “Tell me more about [X]”
  • “What do you mean by [X]”
  • “How do you think [X] happens”
  • “Where do you think [X] came from”
  • “Can you give me a specific example of [X]”
  • “What would [X] look like”
  • “Why do you think that is..”
  • “Can you explain this in more detail?”
  • “Can you elaborate on…”

Just a note that sometimes it can be helpful to move onto a different topic and then maybe come back, if they are reluctant to talk about the first topic.

Back to the Topic:

  • “Thank you, that answered my question. Could we move on to..”
  • “I would like to come back to [X]”
  • ”Focussing on [X]…”

Use brief pause or inhalation to ask a follow-up or on-topic question.

Lead New Section:

  • “Moving on to …”
  • “Next, we want to learn about …”
  • “About half way through, next …”
  • “As last section, …”

Protocol#

Below is an example protocol for an generic semi-structured (online video) interview.

1. Before#

Prepare Surroundings

  • Is the current noise level okay? Do you need to move to another office?
  • Is your headset charged? Do you have a wired alternative?
  • Dominik: Consider using a webcam, it is way easier to give positive reinforcement during an answer (by vigorously nodding etc.), instead of having to steer the interview only by voice.
    • Check your webcam, is your background neutral and not distracting?
    • Check your clothing, could it introduce bias (no hacker shirts, unless you interview hackers)?

Prepare Call

  • Give your shadow interviewers co-host privileges.
  • If not already done: do a quick mic / camera / recording check (don’t forget to check the actual recording for sound etc.)

2. Greeting#

When attendee enters:

Introduction. Greeting, introduce yourself and the group, thank them for coming e.g.: Good afternoon! Thank you for coming and participating in our interview study. I am _______ and I’m joined by my research colleagues _____________

Overview. Describe study, procedure, e.g.:

We’re going to be asking you some questions today about your experiences working in data science projects

Reassure them to give honest answers, we aren’t judging or testing:

We’re trying to gather your honest thoughts and views on this subject so we’d like to assure you that we aren’t trying to test your knowledge or judge your opinion. We may ask you questions on subjects you aren’t knowledgeable on, it’s perfectly alright to say you are unsure or you don’t know.

Consent

  • Reference the consent form, remind them of confidentiality and opt-out e.g.:

When taking our survey you signed a consent form, I just wanted to emphasize that what you say to us during the interview will be kept confidential, and you can stop participating at any time, just let us know. If you feel uncomfortable answering any question, we can skip them with no penalty.

  • Ask if they have any more questions or doubts before starting.

Recording

  • State that with their consent, you will now start recording.
  • State that you are now recording.

3. During#

Communicate to your interviewee that you are listening to their responses

  • maintain an appropriate level of eye contact (somewhat difficult to see on online call)
  • periodically nodding
  • making affirmative (but not disruptive) sounds
  • comments like “yes”, “okay” or “I see”

Good ways to probe/follow up for more information:

  • “Tell me more about […]”
  • “What do you mean by […]”
  • “How do you think […] happens”
  • “Where do you think […] came from”
  • “Can you give me a specific example of […]”
  • “What would […] look like”
  • Dominik: I prepare a set of increasingly longer / encouraging probes (“Okay”,“I see, thanks”,“Thank you so much for this exhaustive answer”), and “reward” exhaustive (fitting) answers with the longer probes, to encourage more detailed responses by the participant.

4. Ending#

  • Turn off video recording, state that you did so.
  • Ask the participant if they have any more remarks or questions.
  • Thank them for their time and participation and wish them a nice day.

5. After#

  • Leave comments on transcript.
  • Note any changes that need to be made
  • Talk about or write down what the most insightful or interesting parts of the interview were.
  • Summarize the key points
  • Key points helpful later for onboarding other people or choosing transcripts for more in-depth looks
  • Pay (and review) the participant according to recruitment.

Data Collection#

  • Make sure your setup is working, i.e. test your microphone and camera.
  • Make sure the recording works, either store recordings locally or in the cloud.
  • Set up a backup recording strategy, e.g. use the Open Broadcaster Software.
  • In Zoom: set up a waiting room for the interviewee. A waiting rooms gives you control over when the interviewee enters the interview, e.g. you should avoid that an interviewee barges in while you test your setup or brief your shadow interviewer.

Tools For Recording#

  • Zoom recording
  • FFmpeg (Recommended for audio only)
  • OBS-Studio (Audio + Video)

Tools For Transcription#

Older Content: The transcription content below is older. A self-hosted whisper instance is probably the best / cheapest / privacy-respecting way for transcription.

The group has trialed Amberscript (transcription service) and deemed it mostly appropriate for our needs. First, ask someone about the credentials for the shared account. Then, upload your file that was output by any of the methods above. Choose the spoken language (most likely English, all accents) and the number of speakers (two if there’s one interviewer and one interviewee). Select Transcription and manual, and lastly hit Order on the right. Check neither Verbatim nor Rush order.

The transcript should be completed within a few days. The transcription may not be perfect at times. Here, it might help to ALT-click text passages that were misunderstood, listen to the audio, and correct them manually. Inaudible passages are often marked with [inaudible], crosstalk with [crosstalk]. CTRL-F can help here.

For further use in, for example, MaxQDA, exporting the transcript as a TXT file with timestamps is a good option.

Transcription Tools (as of Feb. 2026)#

This section only considers offline/self-hosted transcription methods

AI-based transcription is developing quickly. There are multiple ways to transcribe audio.

The easiest approach is to use OpenAI’s Whisper via command-line or writing a short script. If you’re not working with a GPU, run times may be long. Working with a GPU (with CUDA cores) can offer much faster transcription times. Diarization capabilities (e.g, identifying/segmenting different speakers) via platforms like pyannote are separate. Working with Whisper offline requires downloading a few (more than 2 GB) of models.

Other alternatives:#

  • whisper.cpp ports OpenAI’s Whisper. This port may be advantageous for those on Apple Silicon.
  • whisper-standalone offers a standalone Windows .exe that is plug and play. Offers pre-processing/optimizations similar to whisper.cpp.

Data Analysis#

Planning Analysis#

For planning and documenting interview analysis decisions, see –> Data Analysis Plan.

Without Coding#

How to analyse qualitative interviews (without coding):

  1. Read transcripts
  2. Annotate transcripts
  3. Conceptualize data
  4. Segment the data
  5. Analyze segments
  6. Write results

With Coding#

Creating a codebook is often an essential step in coding qualitative data, see the Qualitative Coding page on how to create and code with a codebook.

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