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Types of Interviews in Research | Guide & Examples

Types of Interviews in Research | Guide & Examples

Published on March 10, 2022 by Tegan George . Revised on June 22, 2023.

An interview is a qualitative research method that relies on asking questions in order to collect data . Interviews involve two or more people, one of whom is the interviewer asking the questions.

There are several types of interviews, often differentiated by their level of structure.

Structured interviews have predetermined questions asked in a predetermined order.
Unstructured interviews are more free-flowing.
Semi-structured interviews fall in between.

Interviews are commonly used in market research, social science, and ethnographic research .

What is a structured interview, what is a semi-structured interview, what is an unstructured interview, what is a focus group, examples of interview questions, advantages and disadvantages of interviews, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about types of interviews.

Structured interviews have predetermined questions in a set order. They are often closed-ended, featuring dichotomous (yes/no) or multiple-choice questions. While open-ended structured interviews exist, they are much less common. The types of questions asked make structured interviews a predominantly quantitative tool.

Asking set questions in a set order can help you see patterns among responses, and it allows you to easily compare responses between participants while keeping other factors constant. This can mitigate research biases and lead to higher reliability and validity. However, structured interviews can be overly formal, as well as limited in scope and flexibility.

You feel very comfortable with your topic. This will help you formulate your questions most effectively.
You have limited time or resources. Structured interviews are a bit more straightforward to analyze because of their closed-ended nature, and can be a doable undertaking for an individual.
Your research question depends on holding environmental conditions between participants constant.

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Semi-structured interviews are a blend of structured and unstructured interviews. While the interviewer has a general plan for what they want to ask, the questions do not have to follow a particular phrasing or order.

Semi-structured interviews are often open-ended, allowing for flexibility, but follow a predetermined thematic framework, giving a sense of order. For this reason, they are often considered “the best of both worlds.”

However, if the questions differ substantially between participants, it can be challenging to look for patterns, lessening the generalizability and validity of your results.

You have prior interview experience. It’s easier than you think to accidentally ask a leading question when coming up with questions on the fly. Overall, spontaneous questions are much more difficult than they may seem.
Your research question is exploratory in nature. The answers you receive can help guide your future research.

An unstructured interview is the most flexible type of interview. The questions and the order in which they are asked are not set. Instead, the interview can proceed more spontaneously, based on the participant’s previous answers.

Unstructured interviews are by definition open-ended. This flexibility can help you gather detailed information on your topic, while still allowing you to observe patterns between participants.

However, so much flexibility means that they can be very challenging to conduct properly. You must be very careful not to ask leading questions, as biased responses can lead to lower reliability or even invalidate your research.

You have a solid background in your research topic and have conducted interviews before.
Your research question is exploratory in nature, and you are seeking descriptive data that will deepen and contextualize your initial hypotheses.
Your research necessitates forming a deeper connection with your participants, encouraging them to feel comfortable revealing their true opinions and emotions.

A focus group brings together a group of participants to answer questions on a topic of interest in a moderated setting. Focus groups are qualitative in nature and often study the group’s dynamic and body language in addition to their answers. Responses can guide future research on consumer products and services, human behavior, or controversial topics.

Focus groups can provide more nuanced and unfiltered feedback than individual interviews and are easier to organize than experiments or large surveys . However, their small size leads to low external validity and the temptation as a researcher to “cherry-pick” responses that fit your hypotheses.

Your research focuses on the dynamics of group discussion or real-time responses to your topic.
Your questions are complex and rooted in feelings, opinions, and perceptions that cannot be answered with a “yes” or “no.”
Your topic is exploratory in nature, and you are seeking information that will help you uncover new questions or future research ideas.

Depending on the type of interview you are conducting, your questions will differ in style, phrasing, and intention. Structured interview questions are set and precise, while the other types of interviews allow for more open-endedness and flexibility.

Here are some examples.

Semi-structured
Unstructured
Focus group
Do you like dogs? Yes/No
Do you associate dogs with feeling: happy; somewhat happy; neutral; somewhat unhappy; unhappy
If yes, name one attribute of dogs that you like.
If no, name one attribute of dogs that you don’t like.
What feelings do dogs bring out in you?
When you think more deeply about this, what experiences would you say your feelings are rooted in?

Interviews are a great research tool. They allow you to gather rich information and draw more detailed conclusions than other research methods, taking into consideration nonverbal cues, off-the-cuff reactions, and emotional responses.

However, they can also be time-consuming and deceptively challenging to conduct properly. Smaller sample sizes can cause their validity and reliability to suffer, and there is an inherent risk of interviewer effect arising from accidentally leading questions.

Here are some advantages and disadvantages of each type of interview that can help you decide if you’d like to utilize this research method.

Advantages and disadvantages of interviews
Type of interview	Advantages	Disadvantages
Structured interview
Semi-structured interview		, , , and
Unstructured interview		, , , and
Focus group		, , and , since there are multiple people present

If you want to know more about statistics , methodology , or research bias , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

Student’s t -distribution
Normal distribution
Null and Alternative Hypotheses
Chi square tests
Confidence interval
Quartiles & Quantiles
Cluster sampling
Stratified sampling
Data cleansing
Reproducibility vs Replicability
Peer review
Prospective cohort study

Research bias

Implicit bias
Cognitive bias
Placebo effect
Hawthorne effect
Hindsight bias
Affect heuristic
Social desirability bias

The four most common types of interviews are:

Structured interviews : The questions are predetermined in both topic and order.
Semi-structured interviews : A few questions are predetermined, but other questions aren’t planned.
Unstructured interviews : None of the questions are predetermined.
Focus group interviews : The questions are presented to a group instead of one individual.

The interviewer effect is a type of bias that emerges when a characteristic of an interviewer (race, age, gender identity, etc.) influences the responses given by the interviewee.

There is a risk of an interviewer effect in all types of interviews , but it can be mitigated by writing really high-quality interview questions.

Social desirability bias is the tendency for interview participants to give responses that will be viewed favorably by the interviewer or other participants. It occurs in all types of interviews and surveys , but is most common in semi-structured interviews , unstructured interviews , and focus groups .

Social desirability bias can be mitigated by ensuring participants feel at ease and comfortable sharing their views. Make sure to pay attention to your own body language and any physical or verbal cues, such as nodding or widening your eyes.

This type of bias can also occur in observations if the participants know they’re being observed. They might alter their behavior accordingly.

A focus group is a research method that brings together a small group of people to answer questions in a moderated setting. The group is chosen due to predefined demographic traits, and the questions are designed to shed light on a topic of interest. It is one of 4 types of interviews .

Quantitative research deals with numbers and statistics, while qualitative research deals with words and meanings.

Quantitative methods allow you to systematically measure variables and test hypotheses . Qualitative methods allow you to explore concepts and experiences in more detail.

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Chapter 11. Interviewing

Introduction.

Interviewing people is at the heart of qualitative research. It is not merely a way to collect data but an intrinsically rewarding activity—an interaction between two people that holds the potential for greater understanding and interpersonal development. Unlike many of our daily interactions with others that are fairly shallow and mundane, sitting down with a person for an hour or two and really listening to what they have to say is a profound and deep enterprise, one that can provide not only “data” for you, the interviewer, but also self-understanding and a feeling of being heard for the interviewee. I always approach interviewing with a deep appreciation for the opportunity it gives me to understand how other people experience the world. That said, there is not one kind of interview but many, and some of these are shallower than others. This chapter will provide you with an overview of interview techniques but with a special focus on the in-depth semistructured interview guide approach, which is the approach most widely used in social science research.

An interview can be variously defined as “a conversation with a purpose” ( Lune and Berg 2018 ) and an attempt to understand the world from the point of view of the person being interviewed: “to unfold the meaning of peoples’ experiences, to uncover their lived world prior to scientific explanations” ( Kvale 2007 ). It is a form of active listening in which the interviewer steers the conversation to subjects and topics of interest to their research but also manages to leave enough space for those interviewed to say surprising things. Achieving that balance is a tricky thing, which is why most practitioners believe interviewing is both an art and a science. In my experience as a teacher, there are some students who are “natural” interviewers (often they are introverts), but anyone can learn to conduct interviews, and everyone, even those of us who have been doing this for years, can improve their interviewing skills. This might be a good time to highlight the fact that the interview is a product between interviewer and interviewee and that this product is only as good as the rapport established between the two participants. Active listening is the key to establishing this necessary rapport.

Patton ( 2002 ) makes the argument that we use interviews because there are certain things that are not observable. In particular, “we cannot observe feelings, thoughts, and intentions. We cannot observe behaviors that took place at some previous point in time. We cannot observe situations that preclude the presence of an observer. We cannot observe how people have organized the world and the meanings they attach to what goes on in the world. We have to ask people questions about those things” ( 341 ).

Types of Interviews

There are several distinct types of interviews. Imagine a continuum (figure 11.1). On one side are unstructured conversations—the kind you have with your friends. No one is in control of those conversations, and what you talk about is often random—whatever pops into your head. There is no secret, underlying purpose to your talking—if anything, the purpose is to talk to and engage with each other, and the words you use and the things you talk about are a little beside the point. An unstructured interview is a little like this informal conversation, except that one of the parties to the conversation (you, the researcher) does have an underlying purpose, and that is to understand the other person. You are not friends speaking for no purpose, but it might feel just as unstructured to the “interviewee” in this scenario. That is one side of the continuum. On the other side are fully structured and standardized survey-type questions asked face-to-face. Here it is very clear who is asking the questions and who is answering them. This doesn’t feel like a conversation at all! A lot of people new to interviewing have this ( erroneously !) in mind when they think about interviews as data collection. Somewhere in the middle of these two extreme cases is the “ semistructured” interview , in which the researcher uses an “interview guide” to gently move the conversation to certain topics and issues. This is the primary form of interviewing for qualitative social scientists and will be what I refer to as interviewing for the rest of this chapter, unless otherwise specified.

Types of Interviewing Questions: Unstructured conversations, Semi-structured interview, Structured interview, Survey questions

Informal (unstructured conversations). This is the most “open-ended” approach to interviewing. It is particularly useful in conjunction with observational methods (see chapters 13 and 14). There are no predetermined questions. Each interview will be different. Imagine you are researching the Oregon Country Fair, an annual event in Veneta, Oregon, that includes live music, artisan craft booths, face painting, and a lot of people walking through forest paths. It’s unlikely that you will be able to get a person to sit down with you and talk intensely about a set of questions for an hour and a half. But you might be able to sidle up to several people and engage with them about their experiences at the fair. You might have a general interest in what attracts people to these events, so you could start a conversation by asking strangers why they are here or why they come back every year. That’s it. Then you have a conversation that may lead you anywhere. Maybe one person tells a long story about how their parents brought them here when they were a kid. A second person talks about how this is better than Burning Man. A third person shares their favorite traveling band. And yet another enthuses about the public library in the woods. During your conversations, you also talk about a lot of other things—the weather, the utilikilts for sale, the fact that a favorite food booth has disappeared. It’s all good. You may not be able to record these conversations. Instead, you might jot down notes on the spot and then, when you have the time, write down as much as you can remember about the conversations in long fieldnotes. Later, you will have to sit down with these fieldnotes and try to make sense of all the information (see chapters 18 and 19).

Interview guide ( semistructured interview ). This is the primary type employed by social science qualitative researchers. The researcher creates an “interview guide” in advance, which she uses in every interview. In theory, every person interviewed is asked the same questions. In practice, every person interviewed is asked mostly the same topics but not always the same questions, as the whole point of a “guide” is that it guides the direction of the conversation but does not command it. The guide is typically between five and ten questions or question areas, sometimes with suggested follow-ups or prompts . For example, one question might be “What was it like growing up in Eastern Oregon?” with prompts such as “Did you live in a rural area? What kind of high school did you attend?” to help the conversation develop. These interviews generally take place in a quiet place (not a busy walkway during a festival) and are recorded. The recordings are transcribed, and those transcriptions then become the “data” that is analyzed (see chapters 18 and 19). The conventional length of one of these types of interviews is between one hour and two hours, optimally ninety minutes. Less than one hour doesn’t allow for much development of questions and thoughts, and two hours (or more) is a lot of time to ask someone to sit still and answer questions. If you have a lot of ground to cover, and the person is willing, I highly recommend two separate interview sessions, with the second session being slightly shorter than the first (e.g., ninety minutes the first day, sixty minutes the second). There are lots of good reasons for this, but the most compelling one is that this allows you to listen to the first day’s recording and catch anything interesting you might have missed in the moment and so develop follow-up questions that can probe further. This also allows the person being interviewed to have some time to think about the issues raised in the interview and go a little deeper with their answers.

Standardized questionnaire with open responses ( structured interview ). This is the type of interview a lot of people have in mind when they hear “interview”: a researcher comes to your door with a clipboard and proceeds to ask you a series of questions. These questions are all the same whoever answers the door; they are “standardized.” Both the wording and the exact order are important, as people’s responses may vary depending on how and when a question is asked. These are qualitative only in that the questions allow for “open-ended responses”: people can say whatever they want rather than select from a predetermined menu of responses. For example, a survey I collaborated on included this open-ended response question: “How does class affect one’s career success in sociology?” Some of the answers were simply one word long (e.g., “debt”), and others were long statements with stories and personal anecdotes. It is possible to be surprised by the responses. Although it’s a stretch to call this kind of questioning a conversation, it does allow the person answering the question some degree of freedom in how they answer.

Survey questionnaire with closed responses (not an interview!). Standardized survey questions with specific answer options (e.g., closed responses) are not really interviews at all, and they do not generate qualitative data. For example, if we included five options for the question “How does class affect one’s career success in sociology?”—(1) debt, (2) social networks, (3) alienation, (4) family doesn’t understand, (5) type of grad program—we leave no room for surprises at all. Instead, we would most likely look at patterns around these responses, thinking quantitatively rather than qualitatively (e.g., using regression analysis techniques, we might find that working-class sociologists were twice as likely to bring up alienation). It can sometimes be confusing for new students because the very same survey can include both closed-ended and open-ended questions. The key is to think about how these will be analyzed and to what level surprises are possible. If your plan is to turn all responses into a number and make predictions about correlations and relationships, you are no longer conducting qualitative research. This is true even if you are conducting this survey face-to-face with a real live human. Closed-response questions are not conversations of any kind, purposeful or not.

In summary, the semistructured interview guide approach is the predominant form of interviewing for social science qualitative researchers because it allows a high degree of freedom of responses from those interviewed (thus allowing for novel discoveries) while still maintaining some connection to a research question area or topic of interest. The rest of the chapter assumes the employment of this form.

Creating an Interview Guide

Your interview guide is the instrument used to bridge your research question(s) and what the people you are interviewing want to tell you. Unlike a standardized questionnaire, the questions actually asked do not need to be exactly what you have written down in your guide. The guide is meant to create space for those you are interviewing to talk about the phenomenon of interest, but sometimes you are not even sure what that phenomenon is until you start asking questions. A priority in creating an interview guide is to ensure it offers space. One of the worst mistakes is to create questions that are so specific that the person answering them will not stray. Relatedly, questions that sound “academic” will shut down a lot of respondents. A good interview guide invites respondents to talk about what is important to them, not feel like they are performing or being evaluated by you.

Good interview questions should not sound like your “research question” at all. For example, let’s say your research question is “How do patriarchal assumptions influence men’s understanding of climate change and responses to climate change?” It would be worse than unhelpful to ask a respondent, “How do your assumptions about the role of men affect your understanding of climate change?” You need to unpack this into manageable nuggets that pull your respondent into the area of interest without leading him anywhere. You could start by asking him what he thinks about climate change in general. Or, even better, whether he has any concerns about heatwaves or increased tornadoes or polar icecaps melting. Once he starts talking about that, you can ask follow-up questions that bring in issues around gendered roles, perhaps asking if he is married (to a woman) and whether his wife shares his thoughts and, if not, how they negotiate that difference. The fact is, you won’t really know the right questions to ask until he starts talking.

There are several distinct types of questions that can be used in your interview guide, either as main questions or as follow-up probes. If you remember that the point is to leave space for the respondent, you will craft a much more effective interview guide! You will also want to think about the place of time in both the questions themselves (past, present, future orientations) and the sequencing of the questions.

Researcher Note

Suggestion : As you read the next three sections (types of questions, temporality, question sequence), have in mind a particular research question, and try to draft questions and sequence them in a way that opens space for a discussion that helps you answer your research question.

Type of Questions

Experience and behavior questions ask about what a respondent does regularly (their behavior) or has done (their experience). These are relatively easy questions for people to answer because they appear more “factual” and less subjective. This makes them good opening questions. For the study on climate change above, you might ask, “Have you ever experienced an unusual weather event? What happened?” Or “You said you work outside? What is a typical summer workday like for you? How do you protect yourself from the heat?”

Opinion and values questions , in contrast, ask questions that get inside the minds of those you are interviewing. “Do you think climate change is real? Who or what is responsible for it?” are two such questions. Note that you don’t have to literally ask, “What is your opinion of X?” but you can find a way to ask the specific question relevant to the conversation you are having. These questions are a bit trickier to ask because the answers you get may depend in part on how your respondent perceives you and whether they want to please you or not. We’ve talked a fair amount about being reflective. Here is another place where this comes into play. You need to be aware of the effect your presence might have on the answers you are receiving and adjust accordingly. If you are a woman who is perceived as liberal asking a man who identifies as conservative about climate change, there is a lot of subtext that can be going on in the interview. There is no one right way to resolve this, but you must at least be aware of it.

Feeling questions are questions that ask respondents to draw on their emotional responses. It’s pretty common for academic researchers to forget that we have bodies and emotions, but people’s understandings of the world often operate at this affective level, sometimes unconsciously or barely consciously. It is a good idea to include questions that leave space for respondents to remember, imagine, or relive emotional responses to particular phenomena. “What was it like when you heard your cousin’s house burned down in that wildfire?” doesn’t explicitly use any emotion words, but it allows your respondent to remember what was probably a pretty emotional day. And if they respond emotionally neutral, that is pretty interesting data too. Note that asking someone “How do you feel about X” is not always going to evoke an emotional response, as they might simply turn around and respond with “I think that…” It is better to craft a question that actually pushes the respondent into the affective category. This might be a specific follow-up to an experience and behavior question —for example, “You just told me about your daily routine during the summer heat. Do you worry it is going to get worse?” or “Have you ever been afraid it will be too hot to get your work accomplished?”

Knowledge questions ask respondents what they actually know about something factual. We have to be careful when we ask these types of questions so that respondents do not feel like we are evaluating them (which would shut them down), but, for example, it is helpful to know when you are having a conversation about climate change that your respondent does in fact know that unusual weather events have increased and that these have been attributed to climate change! Asking these questions can set the stage for deeper questions and can ensure that the conversation makes the same kind of sense to both participants. For example, a conversation about political polarization can be put back on track once you realize that the respondent doesn’t really have a clear understanding that there are two parties in the US. Instead of asking a series of questions about Republicans and Democrats, you might shift your questions to talk more generally about political disagreements (e.g., “people against abortion”). And sometimes what you do want to know is the level of knowledge about a particular program or event (e.g., “Are you aware you can discharge your student loans through the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program?”).

Sensory questions call on all senses of the respondent to capture deeper responses. These are particularly helpful in sparking memory. “Think back to your childhood in Eastern Oregon. Describe the smells, the sounds…” Or you could use these questions to help a person access the full experience of a setting they customarily inhabit: “When you walk through the doors to your office building, what do you see? Hear? Smell?” As with feeling questions , these questions often supplement experience and behavior questions . They are another way of allowing your respondent to report fully and deeply rather than remain on the surface.

Creative questions employ illustrative examples, suggested scenarios, or simulations to get respondents to think more deeply about an issue, topic, or experience. There are many options here. In The Trouble with Passion , Erin Cech ( 2021 ) provides a scenario in which “Joe” is trying to decide whether to stay at his decent but boring computer job or follow his passion by opening a restaurant. She asks respondents, “What should Joe do?” Their answers illuminate the attraction of “passion” in job selection. In my own work, I have used a news story about an upwardly mobile young man who no longer has time to see his mother and sisters to probe respondents’ feelings about the costs of social mobility. Jessi Streib and Betsy Leondar-Wright have used single-page cartoon “scenes” to elicit evaluations of potential racial discrimination, sexual harassment, and classism. Barbara Sutton ( 2010 ) has employed lists of words (“strong,” “mother,” “victim”) on notecards she fans out and asks her female respondents to select and discuss.

Background/Demographic Questions

You most definitely will want to know more about the person you are interviewing in terms of conventional demographic information, such as age, race, gender identity, occupation, and educational attainment. These are not questions that normally open up inquiry. [1] For this reason, my practice has been to include a separate “demographic questionnaire” sheet that I ask each respondent to fill out at the conclusion of the interview. Only include those aspects that are relevant to your study. For example, if you are not exploring religion or religious affiliation, do not include questions about a person’s religion on the demographic sheet. See the example provided at the end of this chapter.

Temporality

Any type of question can have a past, present, or future orientation. For example, if you are asking a behavior question about workplace routine, you might ask the respondent to talk about past work, present work, and ideal (future) work. Similarly, if you want to understand how people cope with natural disasters, you might ask your respondent how they felt then during the wildfire and now in retrospect and whether and to what extent they have concerns for future wildfire disasters. It’s a relatively simple suggestion—don’t forget to ask about past, present, and future—but it can have a big impact on the quality of the responses you receive.

Question Sequence

Having a list of good questions or good question areas is not enough to make a good interview guide. You will want to pay attention to the order in which you ask your questions. Even though any one respondent can derail this order (perhaps by jumping to answer a question you haven’t yet asked), a good advance plan is always helpful. When thinking about sequence, remember that your goal is to get your respondent to open up to you and to say things that might surprise you. To establish rapport, it is best to start with nonthreatening questions. Asking about the present is often the safest place to begin, followed by the past (they have to know you a little bit to get there), and lastly, the future (talking about hopes and fears requires the most rapport). To allow for surprises, it is best to move from very general questions to more particular questions only later in the interview. This ensures that respondents have the freedom to bring up the topics that are relevant to them rather than feel like they are constrained to answer you narrowly. For example, refrain from asking about particular emotions until these have come up previously—don’t lead with them. Often, your more particular questions will emerge only during the course of the interview, tailored to what is emerging in conversation.

Once you have a set of questions, read through them aloud and imagine you are being asked the same questions. Does the set of questions have a natural flow? Would you be willing to answer the very first question to a total stranger? Does your sequence establish facts and experiences before moving on to opinions and values? Did you include prefatory statements, where necessary; transitions; and other announcements? These can be as simple as “Hey, we talked a lot about your experiences as a barista while in college.… Now I am turning to something completely different: how you managed friendships in college.” That is an abrupt transition, but it has been softened by your acknowledgment of that.

Probes and Flexibility

Once you have the interview guide, you will also want to leave room for probes and follow-up questions. As in the sample probe included here, you can write out the obvious probes and follow-up questions in advance. You might not need them, as your respondent might anticipate them and include full responses to the original question. Or you might need to tailor them to how your respondent answered the question. Some common probes and follow-up questions include asking for more details (When did that happen? Who else was there?), asking for elaboration (Could you say more about that?), asking for clarification (Does that mean what I think it means or something else? I understand what you mean, but someone else reading the transcript might not), and asking for contrast or comparison (How did this experience compare with last year’s event?). “Probing is a skill that comes from knowing what to look for in the interview, listening carefully to what is being said and what is not said, and being sensitive to the feedback needs of the person being interviewed” ( Patton 2002:374 ). It takes work! And energy. I and many other interviewers I know report feeling emotionally and even physically drained after conducting an interview. You are tasked with active listening and rearranging your interview guide as needed on the fly. If you only ask the questions written down in your interview guide with no deviations, you are doing it wrong. [2]

The Final Question

Every interview guide should include a very open-ended final question that allows for the respondent to say whatever it is they have been dying to tell you but you’ve forgotten to ask. About half the time they are tired too and will tell you they have nothing else to say. But incredibly, some of the most honest and complete responses take place here, at the end of a long interview. You have to realize that the person being interviewed is often discovering things about themselves as they talk to you and that this process of discovery can lead to new insights for them. Making space at the end is therefore crucial. Be sure you convey that you actually do want them to tell you more, that the offer of “anything else?” is not read as an empty convention where the polite response is no. Here is where you can pull from that active listening and tailor the final question to the particular person. For example, “I’ve asked you a lot of questions about what it was like to live through that wildfire. I’m wondering if there is anything I’ve forgotten to ask, especially because I haven’t had that experience myself” is a much more inviting final question than “Great. Anything you want to add?” It’s also helpful to convey to the person that you have the time to listen to their full answer, even if the allotted time is at the end. After all, there are no more questions to ask, so the respondent knows exactly how much time is left. Do them the courtesy of listening to them!

Conducting the Interview

Once you have your interview guide, you are on your way to conducting your first interview. I always practice my interview guide with a friend or family member. I do this even when the questions don’t make perfect sense for them, as it still helps me realize which questions make no sense, are poorly worded (too academic), or don’t follow sequentially. I also practice the routine I will use for interviewing, which goes something like this:

Introduce myself and reintroduce the study
Provide consent form and ask them to sign and retain/return copy
Ask if they have any questions about the study before we begin
Ask if I can begin recording
Ask questions (from interview guide)
Turn off the recording device
Ask if they are willing to fill out my demographic questionnaire
Collect questionnaire and, without looking at the answers, place in same folder as signed consent form
Thank them and depart

A note on remote interviewing: Interviews have traditionally been conducted face-to-face in a private or quiet public setting. You don’t want a lot of background noise, as this will make transcriptions difficult. During the recent global pandemic, many interviewers, myself included, learned the benefits of interviewing remotely. Although face-to-face is still preferable for many reasons, Zoom interviewing is not a bad alternative, and it does allow more interviews across great distances. Zoom also includes automatic transcription, which significantly cuts down on the time it normally takes to convert our conversations into “data” to be analyzed. These automatic transcriptions are not perfect, however, and you will still need to listen to the recording and clarify and clean up the transcription. Nor do automatic transcriptions include notations of body language or change of tone, which you may want to include. When interviewing remotely, you will want to collect the consent form before you meet: ask them to read, sign, and return it as an email attachment. I think it is better to ask for the demographic questionnaire after the interview, but because some respondents may never return it then, it is probably best to ask for this at the same time as the consent form, in advance of the interview.

What should you bring to the interview? I would recommend bringing two copies of the consent form (one for you and one for the respondent), a demographic questionnaire, a manila folder in which to place the signed consent form and filled-out demographic questionnaire, a printed copy of your interview guide (I print with three-inch right margins so I can jot down notes on the page next to relevant questions), a pen, a recording device, and water.

After the interview, you will want to secure the signed consent form in a locked filing cabinet (if in print) or a password-protected folder on your computer. Using Excel or a similar program that allows tables/spreadsheets, create an identifying number for your interview that links to the consent form without using the name of your respondent. For example, let’s say that I conduct interviews with US politicians, and the first person I meet with is George W. Bush. I will assign the transcription the number “INT#001” and add it to the signed consent form. [3] The signed consent form goes into a locked filing cabinet, and I never use the name “George W. Bush” again. I take the information from the demographic sheet, open my Excel spreadsheet, and add the relevant information in separate columns for the row INT#001: White, male, Republican. When I interview Bill Clinton as my second interview, I include a second row: INT#002: White, male, Democrat. And so on. The only link to the actual name of the respondent and this information is the fact that the consent form (unavailable to anyone but me) has stamped on it the interview number.

Many students get very nervous before their first interview. Actually, many of us are always nervous before the interview! But do not worry—this is normal, and it does pass. Chances are, you will be pleasantly surprised at how comfortable it begins to feel. These “purposeful conversations” are often a delight for both participants. This is not to say that sometimes things go wrong. I often have my students practice several “bad scenarios” (e.g., a respondent that you cannot get to open up; a respondent who is too talkative and dominates the conversation, steering it away from the topics you are interested in; emotions that completely take over; or shocking disclosures you are ill-prepared to handle), but most of the time, things go quite well. Be prepared for the unexpected, but know that the reason interviews are so popular as a technique of data collection is that they are usually richly rewarding for both participants.

One thing that I stress to my methods students and remind myself about is that interviews are still conversations between people. If there’s something you might feel uncomfortable asking someone about in a “normal” conversation, you will likely also feel a bit of discomfort asking it in an interview. Maybe more importantly, your respondent may feel uncomfortable. Social research—especially about inequality—can be uncomfortable. And it’s easy to slip into an abstract, intellectualized, or removed perspective as an interviewer. This is one reason trying out interview questions is important. Another is that sometimes the question sounds good in your head but doesn’t work as well out loud in practice. I learned this the hard way when a respondent asked me how I would answer the question I had just posed, and I realized that not only did I not really know how I would answer it, but I also wasn’t quite as sure I knew what I was asking as I had thought.

—Elizabeth M. Lee, Associate Professor of Sociology at Saint Joseph’s University, author of Class and Campus Life , and co-author of Geographies of Campus Inequality

How Many Interviews?

Your research design has included a targeted number of interviews and a recruitment plan (see chapter 5). Follow your plan, but remember that “ saturation ” is your goal. You interview as many people as you can until you reach a point at which you are no longer surprised by what they tell you. This means not that no one after your first twenty interviews will have surprising, interesting stories to tell you but rather that the picture you are forming about the phenomenon of interest to you from a research perspective has come into focus, and none of the interviews are substantially refocusing that picture. That is when you should stop collecting interviews. Note that to know when you have reached this, you will need to read your transcripts as you go. More about this in chapters 18 and 19.

Your Final Product: The Ideal Interview Transcript

A good interview transcript will demonstrate a subtly controlled conversation by the skillful interviewer. In general, you want to see replies that are about one paragraph long, not short sentences and not running on for several pages. Although it is sometimes necessary to follow respondents down tangents, it is also often necessary to pull them back to the questions that form the basis of your research study. This is not really a free conversation, although it may feel like that to the person you are interviewing.

Final Tips from an Interview Master

Annette Lareau is arguably one of the masters of the trade. In Listening to People , she provides several guidelines for good interviews and then offers a detailed example of an interview gone wrong and how it could be addressed (please see the “Further Readings” at the end of this chapter). Here is an abbreviated version of her set of guidelines: (1) interview respondents who are experts on the subjects of most interest to you (as a corollary, don’t ask people about things they don’t know); (2) listen carefully and talk as little as possible; (3) keep in mind what you want to know and why you want to know it; (4) be a proactive interviewer (subtly guide the conversation); (5) assure respondents that there aren’t any right or wrong answers; (6) use the respondent’s own words to probe further (this both allows you to accurately identify what you heard and pushes the respondent to explain further); (7) reuse effective probes (don’t reinvent the wheel as you go—if repeating the words back works, do it again and again); (8) focus on learning the subjective meanings that events or experiences have for a respondent; (9) don’t be afraid to ask a question that draws on your own knowledge (unlike trial lawyers who are trained never to ask a question for which they don’t already know the answer, sometimes it’s worth it to ask risky questions based on your hypotheses or just plain hunches); (10) keep thinking while you are listening (so difficult…and important); (11) return to a theme raised by a respondent if you want further information; (12) be mindful of power inequalities (and never ever coerce a respondent to continue the interview if they want out); (13) take control with overly talkative respondents; (14) expect overly succinct responses, and develop strategies for probing further; (15) balance digging deep and moving on; (16) develop a plan to deflect questions (e.g., let them know you are happy to answer any questions at the end of the interview, but you don’t want to take time away from them now); and at the end, (17) check to see whether you have asked all your questions. You don’t always have to ask everyone the same set of questions, but if there is a big area you have forgotten to cover, now is the time to recover ( Lareau 2021:93–103 ).

Sample: Demographic Questionnaire

ASA Taskforce on First-Generation and Working-Class Persons in Sociology – Class Effects on Career Success

Supplementary Demographic Questionnaire

Thank you for your participation in this interview project. We would like to collect a few pieces of key demographic information from you to supplement our analyses. Your answers to these questions will be kept confidential and stored by ID number. All of your responses here are entirely voluntary!

What best captures your race/ethnicity? (please check any/all that apply)

White (Non Hispanic/Latina/o/x)
Black or African American
Hispanic, Latino/a/x of Spanish
Asian or Asian American
American Indian or Alaska Native
Middle Eastern or North African
Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander
Other : (Please write in: ________________)

What is your current position?

Grad Student
Full Professor

Please check any and all of the following that apply to you:

I identify as a working-class academic
I was the first in my family to graduate from college
I grew up poor

What best reflects your gender?

Transgender female/Transgender woman
Transgender male/Transgender man
Gender queer/ Gender nonconforming

Anything else you would like us to know about you?

Example: Interview Guide

In this example, follow-up prompts are italicized. Note the sequence of questions. That second question often elicits an entire life history , answering several later questions in advance.

Introduction Script/Question

Thank you for participating in our survey of ASA members who identify as first-generation or working-class. As you may have heard, ASA has sponsored a taskforce on first-generation and working-class persons in sociology and we are interested in hearing from those who so identify. Your participation in this interview will help advance our knowledge in this area.

The first thing we would like to as you is why you have volunteered to be part of this study? What does it mean to you be first-gen or working class? Why were you willing to be interviewed?
How did you decide to become a sociologist?
Can you tell me a little bit about where you grew up? ( prompts: what did your parent(s) do for a living? What kind of high school did you attend?)
Has this identity been salient to your experience? (how? How much?)
How welcoming was your grad program? Your first academic employer?
Why did you decide to pursue sociology at the graduate level?
Did you experience culture shock in college? In graduate school?
Has your FGWC status shaped how you’ve thought about where you went to school? debt? etc?
Were you mentored? How did this work (not work)? How might it?
What did you consider when deciding where to go to grad school? Where to apply for your first position?
What, to you, is a mark of career success? Have you achieved that success? What has helped or hindered your pursuit of success?
Do you think sociology, as a field, cares about prestige?
Let’s talk a little bit about intersectionality. How does being first-gen/working class work alongside other identities that are important to you?
What do your friends and family think about your career? Have you had any difficulty relating to family members or past friends since becoming highly educated?
Do you have any debt from college/grad school? Are you concerned about this? Could you explain more about how you paid for college/grad school? (here, include assistance from family, fellowships, scholarships, etc.)
(You’ve mentioned issues or obstacles you had because of your background.) What could have helped? Or, who or what did? Can you think of fortuitous moments in your career?
Do you have any regrets about the path you took?
Is there anything else you would like to add? Anything that the Taskforce should take note of, that we did not ask you about here?

Get Citation

Lee Ann Fujii explores the answers to these inquiries in Interviewing in Social Science Research , the latest entry in the Routledge Series on Interpretive Methods . This short, highly readable book explores an interpretive approach to interviewing for purposes of social science research. Using an interpretive methodology, the book examines interviewing as a relational enterprise. As a relational undertaking, interviewing is more akin to a two-way dialogue than a one-way interrogation. Fujii examines the methodological foundations for a relational approach to interviewing, while at the same time covering many of the practical nuts and bolts of relational interviewing. Examples come from the author’s experiences conducting interviews in Bosnia, Rwanda, and the United States, and from relevant literatures across a variety of social scientific disciplines. Appendices to the book contain specific tips and suggestions for relational interviewing in addition to interview excerpts that give readers a sense of how relational interviews unfold.

This book will be of great value to graduate students and researchers from across the social sciences who are considering or planning to use interviews in their research, and can be easily used by academics for teaching courses or workshops in social science methods.

Chapter 1 | 11 pages, what is relational interviewing, chapter 2 | 23 pages, building working relationships, chapter 2 | 18 pages, selecting, finding, and approaching interviewees, chapter 4 | 20 pages, strategies for conducting interviews, chapter 5 | 17 pages, i have my data—now what, chapter 6 | 3 pages, the ethos of relational interviewing.

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Interviews in Social Research: Advantages and Disadvantages

Table of Contents

Last Updated on September 11, 2023 by Karl Thompson

An interview involves an interviewer asking questions verbally to a respondent. Interviews involve a more direct interaction between the researcher and the respondent than questionnaires. Interviews can either be conducted face to face, via phone, video link or social media.

This post has primarily been written for students studying the Research Methods aspect of A-level sociology, but it should also be useful for students studying methods for psychology, business studies and maybe other subjects too!

Types of interview

Structured or formal interviews are those in which the interviewer asks the interviewee the same questions in the same way to different respondents. This will typically involve reading out questions from a pre-written and pre-coded structured questionnaire, which forms the interview schedule. The most familiar form of this is with market research, where you may have been stopped on the street with a researcher ticking boxes based on your responses.

Unstructured or Informal interviews (also called discovery interviews) are more like a guided conversation. Here the interviewer has a list of topics they want the respondent to talk about, but the interviewer has complete freedom to vary the specific questions from respondent to respondent, so they can follow whatever lines of enquiry they think are most appropriated, depending on the responses given by each respondent.

Semi-Structured interviews are those in which respondents have a list of questions, but they are free to ask further, differentiated questions based on the responses given. This allows more flexibility that the structured interview yet more structure than the informal interview.

Group interviews – Interviews can be conducted either one to one (individual interviews) or in a a group, in which the interviewer interviews two or more respondents at a time. Group discussions among respondents may lead to deeper insight than just interviewing people along, as respondents ‘encourage’ each other.

Focus groups are a type of group interview in which respondents are asked to discuss certain topics.

Interviews: key terms

The Interview Schedule – A list of questions or topic areas the interviewer wishes to ask or cover in the course of the interview. The more structured the interview, the more rigid the interiew schedule will be. Before conducting an interview it is usual for the reseracher to know something about the topic area and the respondents themselves, and so they will have at least some idea of the questions they are likely to ask: even if they are doing ‘unstructred interviews’ an interviewer will have some kind of interview schedule, even if it is just a list of broad topic areas to discuss, or an opening question.

The Strengths and Limitations of Unstructured Interviews

The strengths of unstructured interviews

The key strength of unstructured interviews is good validity , but for this to happen questioning should be as open ended as possible to gain genuine, spontaneous information rather than ‘rehearsed responses’ and questioning needs to be sufficient enough to elicit in-depth answers rather than glib, easy answers.

Rapport and empathy – unstructured interviews encourage a good rapport between interviewee and interviewer. Because of their informal nature, like guided conversations, unstructured interviews are more likely to make respondents feel at ease than with the more formal setting of a structured questionnaire or experiment. This should encourage openness, trust and empathy.

Checking understanding – unstructured interviews also allow the interviewer to check understanding. If an interviewee doesn’t understand a question, the interviewer is free to rephrase it, or to ask follow up questions to clarify aspects of answers that were not clear in the first instance.

They are good for finding out why respondents do not do certain things . For example postal surveys asking why people do not claim benefits have very low response rates, but informal interviews are perfect for researching people who may have low literacy skills.

The Limitations of unstructured interviews

The main theoretical disadvantage is the lack of reliability – unstructured Interviews lack reliability because each interview is unique – a variety of different questions are asked and phrased in a variety of different ways to different respondents.

We also need to keep in mind that interviews can only tap into what people SAY about their values, beliefs and actions, we don’t actually get to see these in action, like we would do with observational studies such as Participant Observation. This has been a particular problem with self-report studies of criminal behaviour. These have been tested using polygraphs, and follow up studies of school and criminal records and responses found to be lacking in validity, so much so that victim-surveys have become the standard method for measuring crime rather than self-report studies.

Sudman and Bradburn (1974) conducted a review of literature and found that responses varied depending on the relative demographics of the interviewer and respondent. For example white interviewers received more socially acceptable responses from black respondents than they did from white respondents. Similar findings have been found with different ethnicities, age, social class and religion.

Practical disadvantages – unstructured Interviews may take a relatively long time to conduct. Some interviews can take hours. They also need to be taped and transcribed, and in the analysis phase there may be a lot of information that is not directly relevant to one’s research topic that needs to be sifted through.

There are few ethical problems , assuming that informed consent is gained and confidentially ensured. Although having said this, the fact that the researcher is getting more in-depth data, more of an insight into who the person really is, does offer the potential for the information to do more harm to the respondent if it got into the wrong hands (but this in turn depends on the topics discussed and the exact content of the interviews.

Sociological perspectives on interviews

Fo r Interactionists , interviews are based on mutual participant observation. The context of the interview is intrinsic to understanding responses and no distinction between research interviews and other social interaction is recognised. Data are valid when mutual understanding between interviewer and respondent is agreed.

For more posts on research methods please see my research methods page.

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Chapter 10: Qualitative Data Collection & Analysis Methods

10.1 Interview Research

Interviewing is a qualitative research technique and a valuable skill. Interviews are used by market researchers to learn how to sell their products; journalists use interviews to get information from a whole host of people, from VIPs to random people on the street. From the social scientific perspective, interviews are a method of data collection that involves two or more people exchanging information through a series of questions and answers. The questions are designed by a researcher to elicit information from interview participant(s) on a specific topic or set of topics. Typically interviews involve an in-person meeting between two people, an interviewer and an interviewee. But as you will discover in this chapter, interviews need not be limited to two people, nor must they occur in person.

Research Methods for the Social Sciences: An Introduction Copyright © 2020 by Valerie Sheppard is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Interviewing in Social Science Research A Relational Approach

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What is interviewing and when is this method useful? What does it mean to select rather than sample interviewees? Once the researcher has found people to interview, how does she build a working relationship with her interviewees? What should the dynamics of talking and listening in interviews be? How do researchers begin to analyze the narrative data generated through interviews? Lee Ann Fujii explores the answers to these inquiries in Interviewing in Social Science Research , the latest entry in the Routledge Series on Interpretive Methods . This short, highly readable book explores an interpretive approach to interviewing for purposes of social science research. Using an interpretive methodology, the book examines interviewing as a relational enterprise. As a relational undertaking, interviewing is more akin to a two-way dialogue than a one-way interrogation. Fujii examines the methodological foundations for a relational approach to interviewing, while at the same time covering many of the practical nuts and bolts of relational interviewing. Examples come from the author’s experiences conducting interviews in Bosnia, Rwanda, and the United States, and from relevant literatures across a variety of social scientific disciplines. Appendices to the book contain specific tips and suggestions for relational interviewing in addition to interview excerpts that give readers a sense of how relational interviews unfold. This book will be of great value to graduate students and researchers from across the social sciences who are considering or planning to use interviews in their research, and can be easily used by academics for teaching courses or workshops in social science methods.

Lee Ann Fujii is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto, Canada.

Critics' Reviews

HONORABLE MENTION: 2019 CHARLES TAYLOR BOOK AWARD Excerpt from the Award 'In Interviewing in Social Science Research , Fujii successfully takes the well-established genre of methodological manual and makes it provocative and counter-intuitive. Rather than presenting an idealized version of interviewing, and then accounting for the limitations imposed by practical constraints, this book turns things around. Fujii debunks common myths about interviews and makes us see constraints, limitations, mistakes and the resistance of subjects as "gifts" that can enhance one’s research, instead of liabilities that one must accommodate or patch over. It is a masterful and accessible guide that is rich with examples and vignettes and which, in addition to being an indispensable resource for teaching and research, is an excellent reflection on the work of interpretation as essential for understanding the empirical world. That it draws substantively on Lee Ann’s own experiences of interviewing, which are shared with great honesty and humility, is testament to her outstanding ability to show us that interviewing is a fundamentally human encounter, as well a poignant reminder of her untimely passing that continues to be mourned.' ' In this important text, Lee Ann Fujii shows how qualitative researchers gather high-quality data through field research. In this inherently social and relational process, she shows how the researcher and subject together produce narratives and other kinds of data, and argues for why analysis should focus on the data’s underlying logic rather than merely the reconstruction of facts. These themes are rarely given such clarity and emphasis—Fujii’s is a very wise text.' — Elisabeth Jean Wood, Yale University, USA 'This is a little gem of a book about the process of interviewing. Lee Ann Fujii skillfully weaves together a critically reflexive relational philosophy with helpful examples and good practical advice.' —Rosalind Edwards, University of Southampton, UK 'In Interviewing in Social Science Research , Lee Ann Fujii promotes a logic and rationale for relational interviewing, explicitly accounting for the duality in power dynamics and discourse between interviewer and subject. In the course of an interview, each party continuously attempts to make sense of the other and to feel secure in their midst. Consequently, Fujii argues that an interviewer’s ability to properly analyze the "data" rests in their reflections on the mutual agentic acts unfolding during the conversation: moments of silence, reverse questioning, abrupt refusals to talk about issues that are then talked about, and other such behaviors. This important book gets to the heart of the messiness and the revelation of the research-interviewing endeavor, to uncover how people make meaning in the social world.' — Alford A. Young, Jr., University of Michigan, USA 'A fascinating and thought-provoking read, Lee Ann Fujii's new book has particular value in making reflexive ethics integral to the relational approach. Fujii offers a practical guide to interviewing, combining accounts of real-life (but rarely shared) challenges from a range of studies from across the world, with advice about how to manage complex issues, including selecting participants and addressing positionality. A great resource for students and more experienced researchers. '— Janet Boddy, University of Sussex, UK

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Interview Research

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Types of Interviews
Recruiting & Engaging Participants
Interview Questions
Conducting Interviews
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Managing Interview Data
Finding Extant Interviews
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Interviews as a Method for Qualitative Research (video) This short video summarizes why interviews can serve as useful data in qualitative research.
InterViews by Steinar Kvale Interviewing is an essential tool in qualitative research and this introduction to interviewing outlines both the theoretical underpinnings and the practical aspects of the process. After examining the role of the interview in the research process, Steinar Kvale considers some of the key philosophical issues relating to interviewing: the interview as conversation, hermeneutics, phenomenology, concerns about ethics as well as validity, and postmodernism. Having established this framework, the author then analyzes the seven stages of the interview process - from designing a study to writing it up.
Practical Evaluation by Michael Quinn Patton Surveys different interviewing strategies, from, a) informal/conversational, to b) interview guide approach, to c) standardized and open-ended, to d) closed/quantitative. Also discusses strategies for wording questions that are open-ended, clear, sensitive, and neutral, while supporting the speaker. Provides suggestions for probing and maintaining control of the interview process, as well as suggestions for recording and transcription.
The SAGE Handbook of Interview Research by Amir B. Marvasti (Editor); James A. Holstein (Editor); Jaber F. Gubrium (Editor); Karyn D. McKinney (Editor) The new edition of this landmark volume emphasizes the dynamic, interactional, and reflexive dimensions of the research interview. Contributors highlight the myriad dimensions of complexity that are emerging as researchers increasingly frame the interview as a communicative opportunity as much as a data-gathering format. The book begins with the history and conceptual transformations of the interview, which is followed by chapters that discuss the main components of interview practice. Taken together, the contributions to The SAGE Handbook of Interview Research: The Complexity of the Craft encourage readers simultaneously to learn the frameworks and technologies of interviewing and to reflect on the epistemological foundations of the interview craft.
International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry They host an annual confrerence at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, which aims to facilitate the development of qualitative research methods across a wide variety of academic disciplines, among other initiatives.
METHODSPACE An online home of the research methods community, where practicing researchers share how to make research easier.
Social Research Association, UK The SRA is the membership organisation for social researchers in the UK and beyond. It supports researchers via training, guidance, publications, research ethics, events, branches, and careers.
Social Science Research Council The SSRC administers fellowships and research grants that support the innovation and evaluation of new policy solutions. They convene researchers and stakeholders to share evidence-based policy solutions and incubate new research agendas, produce online knowledge platforms and technical reports that catalog research-based policy solutions, and support mentoring programs that broaden problem-solving research opportunities.
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DOI: 10.1038/s43586-022-00150-6
Corpus ID: 252377501

Interviews in the social sciences

Eleanor Knott , Aliya Hamid Rao , +1 author Chana Teeger
Published in Nature Reviews Methods… 15 September 2022

98 Citations

Preparing for data collection: the mock interview as a researcher’s training tool, aligning interviewing with process tracing, contribution of social media in shaping self-perceptions: a case of black women, the qualitative, between the dog and the wolf: an interpretative phenomenological analysis of bicultural, sexual minority people’s lived experiences, the paradoxes of digital tools in hospitals: qualitative interview study, who is accountable for the negative eﬀects of inﬂuencer marketing voices of the inﬂuencer ecosystem, challenges and creativities in encouraging students to read in english language lessons: in-depth interview with junior high school teachers, a content analysis of graduate dissertation using the flipped learning method, “the ability to go out into the world is the most important thing”—a qualitative study of important exercise outcomes for people with lung cancer, 103 references, the science and art of interviewing, how was it for you the interview society and the irresistible rise of the (poorly analyzed) interview, qualitative interviews in psychology: problems and possibilities, conducting cross-cultural qualitative interviews with mainland chinese participants during covid: lessons from the field, interviews: learning the craft of qualitative research interviewing, bridging the digital divide: reflections on using whatsapp instant messenger interviews in youth research, eight challenges for interview researchers, ethnographic toolkit: strategic positionality and researchers’ visible and invisible tools in field research, for the greater good ethical reflections on interviewing the ‘rich’ and ‘poor’ in qualitative research, looking at the ‘field’ through a zoom lens: methodological reflections on conducting online research during a global pandemic, related papers.

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In This Article Expand or collapse the "in this article" section Interview Methodology

Introduction, general overviews.

Interview Styles
Focused Interviews and Focus Groups
Sensitive Topics
Recording the Data
Transcribing Interviews
Coding and Analysis of Interview Data
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Interview Methodology by Heather Hamill LAST REVIEWED: 27 March 2014 LAST MODIFIED: 27 March 2014 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199756384-0105

Interview methodology is perhaps the oldest of all the social science methodologies. Asking interview participants a series of informal questions to obtain knowledge has been a common practice among anthropologists and sociologists since the inception of their disciplines. Within sociology, the early-20th-century urban ethnographers of the Chicago School did much to prompt interest in the method. In essence, interviewing is a method of eliciting information. It is a “conversation between people in which one person has the role of the researcher” ( Arksey and Knight 1999 , cited under General Overviews ; p. 2). Interviews can be carried out face to face, over the telephone and Internet, or in a group setting. The interview can vary from a spontaneous conversation to a highly structured, closed interview style associated with social survey research. Semistructured or open-ended interviews are commonly used in qualitative research. They are often aided by an interview guide, schedule, or aide memoire that contains topics, themes, or issues to be covered during the course of the interview rather than a sequence of standardized questions. The intention is that the interviewer remains flexible and responsive throughout the interview so that the sequence of questions can change, their content can evolve, and the interviewer can probe more deeply into initial responses to gain a more detailed or “in-depth” answer to the question. Interviews may also vary considerably in length. Thus the elicitation skills of the interviewer have a strong effect on the quality and richness of the interview data. Interview data is often recorded and then transcribed to produce text that can be analyzed using qualitative and quantitative methods of data analysis. In general, the overall sample size of an interview study is relatively small because of the amount of data that is generated in great depth and detail from interviewing. Thus, when thinking about who to interview and how many interviews to carry out, a non-probabilistic sampling strategy is generally most appropriate, and while empirical generalizations cannot be made, theory can be generated from this kind of data. Interview methodology is particularly useful for researchers who take a phenomenological approach. That is, they are concerned with the way in which individuals interpret and assign meaning to their social world. It is also commonly used in more open-ended inductive research whereby the researcher observes specific patterns within the interview data, formulates hypotheses to be explored with additional data, and finally develops theory.

Although sociologists had been carrying out interviewed-based research for some time, it was the work of Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss (see Glaser and Strauss 1967 ) that pioneered the integration of qualitative interviews into their field studies and subsequently developed the grounded theory approach to qualitative data analysis. There are a large number of very high quality ethnographic monographs that contain detailed accounts of how researchers negotiated access to research groups and individuals, the relationship between researcher and respondent, ethical concerns, what questions were asked and how they were framed, and the general highs and lows of interviewing. First published in 1943, Whyte 1993 is supremely well written and remains a classic ethnography, and the appendix contains rich and relevant details as to how the author elicited information from his respondents. Spradley 1979 was among the first to systematically outline interviewing as a distinct methodology, and this was followed by a plethora of methodology textbooks, such as Arksey and Knight 1999 , Patton 2002 , Hammersley and Atkinson 2007 (cited under Interview Styles ), and Kvale and Brinkmann 2009 , that all provide very detailed guidance on how to design an interview-based piece of research and how to best elicit information by interviewing respondents. Fielding’s edited four-volume Interviewing II ( Fielding 2009 ) and Gubrium, et al. 2012 both provide comprehensive overviews of the method.

Arksey, Hilary, and Peter Knight. 1999. Interviewing for social scientists: An introductory resource with examples . London: SAGE.

This practical guide to interviewing covers a wide range of issues such as theories of interviewing, research design, and application and interpretation of interview data. Aimed at undergraduate and graduate students, it mainly focuses on interviewing within the context of small-scale studies with tight time and resource constraints.

Fielding, Nigel G., ed. 2009. Interviewing II . London: SAGE.

A four-volume collection of essays of which the wide-ranging contributions comprehensively cover all the theoretical and practical aspects of interviewing methodology.

Glaser, Barney G., and Anselm L. Strauss. 1967. The discovery of grounded theory: Strategies for qualitative research . Chicago: Aldine.

The principles of grounded theory were first articulated in this book. The authors contrast grounded theories derived directly from the data with theories derived from a deductive approach.

Gubrium, Jaber F., James A. Holstein, Amir B. Marvasti, and Karyn D. McKinney, eds. 2012. The SAGE handbook of interview research: The complexity of the craft . 2d ed. Thousand Oaks, CA, and London: SAGE.

A comprehensive guide to interviewing, this second edition emphasizes the dynamic, interactional, and reflexive aspects of the research interview.

Kvale, Steinar, and Svend Brinkmann. 2009. InterViews: Learning the craft of qualitative research interviewing . 2d ed. Los Angeles and London: SAGE.

An easy-to-read guide to interviewing. The authors propose that interviewing is a craft rather than just a method. The book emphasizes learning from “best practice,” and there are numerous examples and learning exercises to help facilitate that goal.

Patton, Michael Q. 2002. Qualitative research and evaluation methods . 3d ed. Thousand Oaks, CA, and London: SAGE.

In chapter 7, Patton provides a comprehensive guide to qualitative interviewing. This chapter highlights the variations in qualitative interviews and the interview guides or schedules that can be used. It provides a very useful guide as to how to formulate and ask questions and offers practical tips about recording and transcribing interviews. The chapter also covers focus groups, group interviews, ethics, and the relationship between researcher and interview participants.

Spradley, James P. 1979. The ethnographic interview . New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

A guide to ethnography informed by symbolic interactionism. Chapters 1 to 5 remain a very relevant and useful guide to interviewing.

Whyte, William Foote. 1993. Street corner society: The social structure of an Italian slum . 4th ed. Chicago and London: Univ. of Chicago Press.

DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226922669.001.0001

The appendix describes in great detail how Whyte carried out his ethnographic research. He writes about how he had to learn not only when it was appropriate to ask questions, but also how to ask those questions—and that, once he was established in the neighborhood, much of his data was gathered during casual conversations.

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9.2 Qualitative interviews

Learning objectives.

Define interviews from the social scientific perspective
Identify when it is appropriate to employ interviews as a data-collection strategy
Identify the primary aim of in-depth interviews
Describe what makes qualitative interview techniques unique
Define the term interview guide and describe how to construct an interview guide
Outline the guidelines for constructing good qualitative interview questions
Describe how writing field notes and journaling function in qualitative research
Identify the strengths and weaknesses of interviews

Knowing how to create and conduct a good interview is an essential skill. Interviews are used by market researchers to learn how to sell their products, and journalists use interviews to get information from a whole host of people from VIPs to random people on the street. Police use interviews to investigate crimes.

In social science, interviews are a method of data collection that involves two or more people exchanging information through a series of questions and answers. The questions are designed by the researcher to elicit information from interview participants on a specific topic or set of topics. These topics are informed by the research questions. Typically, interviews involve an in-person meeting between two people—an interviewer and an interviewee — but interviews need not be limited to two people, nor must they occur in-person.

The question of when to conduct an interview might be on your mind. Interviews are an excellent way to gather detailed information. They also have an advantage over surveys—they can change as you learn more information. In a survey, you cannot change what questions you ask if a participant’s response sparks some follow-up question in your mind. All participants must get the same questions. The questions you decided to put on your survey during the design stage determine what data you get. In an interview, however, you can follow up on new and unexpected topics that emerge during the conversation. Trusting in emergence and learning from participants are hallmarks of qualitative research. In this way, interviews are a useful method to use when you want to know the story behind the responses you might receive in a written survey.

Interviews are also useful when the topic you are studying is rather complex, requires lengthy explanation, or needs a dialogue between two people to thoroughly investigate. Also, if people will describe the process by which a phenomenon occurs, like how a person makes a decision, then interviews may be the best method for you. For example, you could use interviews to gather data about how people reach the decision not to have children and how others in their lives have responded to that decision. To understand these “how’s” you would need to have some back-and-forth dialogue with respondents. When they begin to tell you their story, inevitably new questions that hadn’t occurred to you from prior interviews would come up because each person’s story is unique. Also, because the process of choosing not to have children is complex for many people, describing that process by responding to closed-ended questions on a survey wouldn’t work particularly well.

Interview research is especially useful when:

You wish to gather very detailed information
You anticipate wanting to ask respondents follow-up questions based on their responses
You plan to ask questions that require lengthy explanation
You are studying a complex or potentially confusing topic to respondents
You are studying processes, such as how people make decisions

Qualitative interviews are sometimes called intensive or in-depth interviews. These interviews are semi-structured ; the researcher has a particular topic about which she would like to hear from the respondent, but questions are open-ended and may not be asked in exactly the same way or in exactly the same order to each and every respondent. For in-depth interviews , the primary aim is to hear from respondents about what they think is important about the topic at hand and to hear it in their own words. In this section, we’ll take a look at how to conduct qualitative interviews, analyze interview data, and identify some of the strengths and weaknesses of this method.

Constructing an interview guide

Qualitative interviews might feel more like a conversation than an interview to respondents, but the researcher is in fact usually guiding the conversation with the goal in mind of gathering specific information from a respondent. Qualitative interviews use open-ended questions, which are questions that a researcher poses but does not provide answer options for. Open-ended questions are more demanding of participants than closed-ended questions because they require participants to come up with their own words, phrases, or sentences to respond.

In a qualitative interview, the researcher usually develops an interview guide in advance to refer to during the interview (or memorizes in advance of the interview). An interview guide is a list of questions or topics that the interviewer hopes to cover during the course of an interview. It is called a guide because it is simply that—it is used to guide the interviewer, but it is not set in stone. Think of an interview guide like an agenda for the day or a to-do list—both probably contain all the items you hope to check off or accomplish, though it probably won’t be the end of the world if you don’t accomplish everything on the list or if you don’t accomplish it in the exact order that you have it written down. Perhaps new events will come up that cause you to rearrange your schedule just a bit, or perhaps you simply won’t get to everything on the list.

Interview guides should outline issues that a researcher feels are likely to be important. Because participants are asked to provide answers in their own words and to raise points they believe are important, each interview is likely to flow a little differently. While the opening question in an in-depth interview may be the same across all interviews, from that point on, what the participant says will shape how the interview proceeds. Sometimes participants answer a question on the interview guide before it is asked. When the interviewer comes to that question later on in the interview, it’s a good idea to acknowledge that they already addressed part of this question and ask them if they have anything to add to their response. All of this uncertainty can make in-depth interviewing exciting and rather challenging. It takes a skilled interviewer to be able to ask questions; listen to respondents; and pick up on cues about when to follow up, when to move on, and when to simply let the participant speak without guidance or interruption.

As we’ve discussed, interview guides can list topics or questions. The specific format of an interview guide might depend on your style, experience, and comfort level as an interviewer or with your topic. Figure 9.1 provides an example of an interview guide for a study of how young people experience workplace sexual harassment. The guide is topic-based, rather than a list of specific questions. The ordering of the topics is important, though how each comes up during the interview may vary.

interview guide using topics, not questions

For interview guides that use questions, there can also be specific words or phrases for follow-up in case the participant does not mention those topics in their responses. These probes , as well as the questions are written out in the interview guide, but may not always be used. Figure 9.2 provides an example of an interview guide that uses questions rather than topics.

interview guide using questions rather than topic

As you might have guessed, interview guides do not appear out of thin air. They are the result of thoughtful and careful work on the part of a researcher. As you can see in both of the preceding guides, the topics and questions have been organized thematically and in the order in which they are likely to proceed (though keep in mind that the flow of a qualitative interview is in part determined by what a respondent has to say). Sometimes qualitative interviewers may create two versions of the interview guide: one version contains a very brief outline of the interview, perhaps with just topic headings, and another version contains detailed questions underneath each topic heading. In this case, the researcher might use the very detailed guide to prepare and practice in advance of actually conducting interviews and then just bring the brief outline to the interview. Bringing an outline, as opposed to a very long list of detailed questions, to an interview encourages the researcher to actually listen to what a participant is saying. An overly detailed interview guide can be difficult to navigate during an interview and could give respondents the mis-impression the interviewer is more interested in the questions than in the participant’s answers.

Constructing an interview guide often begins with brainstorming. There are no rules at the brainstorming stage—simply list all the topics and questions that come to mind when you think about your research question. Once you’ve got a pretty good list, you can begin to pare it down by cutting questions and topics that seem redundant and group similar questions and topics together. If you haven’t done so yet, you may also want to come up with question and topic headings for your grouped categories. You should also consult the scholarly literature to find out what kinds of questions other interviewers have asked in studies of similar topics and what theory indicates might be important. As with quantitative survey research, it is best not to place very sensitive or potentially controversial questions at the very beginning of your qualitative interview guide. You need to give participants the opportunity to warm up to the interview and to feel comfortable talking with you. Finally, get some feedback on your interview guide. Ask your friends, other researchers, and your professors for some guidance and suggestions once you’ve come up with what you think is a strong guide. Chances are they’ll catch a few things you hadn’t noticed. Once you begin your interviews, your participants may also suggest revisions or improvements.

In terms of the specific questions you include in your guide, there are a few guidelines worth noting. First, avoid questions that can be answered with a simple yes or no. Try to rephrase your questions in a way that invites longer responses from your interviewees. If you choose to include yes or no questions, be sure to include follow-up questions. Remember, one of the benefits of qualitative interviews is that you can ask participants for more information—be sure to do so. While it is a good idea to ask follow-up questions, try to avoid asking “why” as your follow-up question, as this particular question can come off as confrontational, even if that is not your intent. Often people won’t know how to respond to “why,” perhaps because they don’t even know why themselves. Instead of asking “why,” you say something like, “Could you tell me a little more about that?” This allows participants to explain themselves further without feeling that they’re being doubted or questioned in a hostile way.

Also, try to avoid phrasing your questions in a leading way. For example, rather than asking, “Don’t you think most people who don’t want to have children are selfish?” you could ask, “What comes to mind for you when you hear someone doesn’t want to have children?” Finally, remember to keep most, if not all, of your questions open-ended. The key to a successful qualitative interview is giving participants the opportunity to share information in their own words and in their own way. Documenting the decisions made along the way regarding which questions are used, thrown out, or revised can help a researcher remember the thought process behind the interview guide when she is analyzing the data. Additionally, it promotes the rigor of the qualitative project as a whole, ensuring the researcher is proceeding in a reflective and deliberate manner that can be checked by others reviewing her study.

Recording qualitative data

Even after the interview guide is constructed, the interviewer is not yet ready to begin conducting interviews. The researcher has to decide how to collect and maintain the information that is provided by participants. Researchers keep field notes or written recordings produced by the researcher during the data collection process. Field notes can be taken before, during, or after interviews. Field notes help researchers document what they observe, and in so doing, they form the first step of data analysis. Field notes may contain many things—observations of body language or environment, reflections on whether interview questions are working well, and connections between ideas that participants share.

Unfortunately, even the most diligent researcher cannot write down everything that is seen or heard during an interview. In particular, it is difficult for a researcher to be truly present and observant if she is also writing down everything the participant is saying. For this reason, it is quite common for interviewers to create audio recordings of the interviews they conduct. Recording interviews allows the researcher to focus on the interaction with the interview participant.

Of course, not all participants will feel comfortable being recorded and sometimes even the interviewer may feel that the subject is so sensitive that recording would be inappropriate. If this is the case, it is up to the researcher to balance excellent note-taking with exceptional question-asking and even better listening.

Whether you will be recording your interviews or not (and especially if not), practicing the interview in advance is crucial. Ideally, you’ll find a friend or two willing to participate in a couple of trial runs with you. Even better, find a friend or two who are similar in at least some ways to your sample. They can give you the best feedback on your questions and your interview demeanor.

Another issue interviewers face is documenting the decisions made during the data collection process. Qualitative research is open to new ideas that emerge through the data collection process. For example, a participant might suggest a new concept you hadn’t thought of before or define a concept in a new way. This may lead you to create new questions or ask questions in a different way to future participants. These processes should be documented in a process called journaling or memoing. Journal entries are notes to yourself about reflections or methodological decisions that emerge during the data collection process. Documenting these are important, as you’d be surprised how quickly you can forget what happened. Journaling makes sure that when it comes time to analyze your data, you remember how, when, and why certain changes were made. The discipline of journaling in qualitative research helps to ensure the rigor of the research process—that is its trustworthiness and authenticity which we will discuss later in this chapter.

Strengths and weaknesses of qualitative interviews

As we’ve mentioned in this section, qualitative interviews are an excellent way to gather detailed information. Any topic can be explored in much more depth with interviews than with almost any other method. Not only are participants given the opportunity to elaborate in a way that is not possible with other methods such as survey research, but they also are able share information with researchers in their own words and from their own perspectives. Whereas, quantitative research asks participants to fit their perspectives into the limited response options provided by the researcher. And because qualitative interviews are designed to elicit detailed information, they are especially useful when a researcher’s aim is to study social processes or the “how” of various phenomena. Yet another, and sometimes overlooked, benefit of in-person qualitative interviews is that researchers can make observations beyond those that a respondent is orally reporting. A respondent’s body language, and even their choice of time and location for the interview, might provide a researcher with useful data.

Of course, all these benefits come with some drawbacks. As with quantitative survey research, qualitative interviews rely on respondents’ ability to accurately and honestly recall specific details about their lives, circumstances, thoughts, opinions, or behaviors. Further, as you may have already guessed, qualitative interviewing is time-intensive and can be quite expensive. Creating an interview guide, identifying a sample, and conducting interviews are just the beginning. Writing out what was said in interviews and analyzing the qualitative interview data are time consuming processes. Keep in mind you are also asking for more of participants’ time than if you’d simply mailed them a questionnaire containing closed-ended questions. Conducting qualitative interviews is not only labor-intensive but can also be emotionally taxing. Seeing and hearing the impact that social problems have on respondents is difficult. Researchers embarking on a qualitative interview project should keep in mind their own abilities to receive stories that may be difficult to hear.

Key Takeaways

Understanding how to design and conduct interview research is a useful skill to have.
In a social scientific interview, two or more people exchange information through a series of questions and answers.
Interview research is often used when detailed information is required and when a researcher wishes to examine processes.
In-depth interviews are semi-structured interviews where the researcher has topics and questions in mind to ask, but questions are open-ended and flow according to how the participant responds to each.
Interview guides can vary in format but should contain some outline of the topics you hope to cover during the course of an interview.
Qualitative interviews allow respondents to share information in their own words and are useful for gathering detailed information and understanding social processes.
Field notes and journaling are ways to document thoughts and decisions about the research process
Drawbacks of qualitative interviews include reliance on respondents’ accuracy and their intensity in terms of time, expense, and possible emotional strain.
Field notes- written notes produced by the researcher during the data collection process
In-depth interviews- interviews in which researchers hear from respondents about what they think is important about the topic at hand in the respondent’s own words
Interviews- a method of data collection that involves two or more people exchanging information through a series of questions and answers
Interview guide- a list of questions or topics that the interviewer hopes to cover during the course of an interview
Journaling- making notes of emerging issues and changes during the research process
Semi-structured interviews- questions are open ended and may not be asked in exactly the same way or in exactly the same order to each and every respondent

Image attributions

interview restaurant a pair by alda2 CC-0

questions by geralt CC-0

Figure 9.1 is copied from Blackstone, A. (2012) Principles of sociological inquiry: Qualitative and quantitative methods. Saylor Foundation. Retrieved from: https://saylordotorg.github.io/text_principles-of-sociological-inquiry-qualitative-and-quantitative-methods/ Shared under CC-BY-NC-SA 3.0 License

writing by StockSnap CC-0

Foundations of Social Work Research Copyright © 2020 by Rebecca L. Mauldin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Sample Size for Interview in Qualitative Research in Social Sciences: A Guide to Novice Researchers

Wasihun Bezabih Bekele + −
Fikire Yohanes Ago + −

How to Cite

Download citation.

This review aimed to answer the question of how many interviews are enough for one qualitative research? The question ‘how many interviews are enough for one qualitative research is persistently controversial among qualitative researchers in social science. For this frequently occurring question especially among novice practitioners, the majority of scholars are opted to say no universally guiding rule to decide on a required number of sample for qualitative research rather ‘it depends’. But, this also raises another insight among researchers urging them to look for different things, i.e., on what circumstance would be making a decision about the required number of respondents depend? Though we lack one guideline dictating researchers how to decide on the number of sample size, the majority of researchers agree on one reasonable answer this is ‘it depends’. Indeed, in our work, we endeavor to identify, on what it depends? We also attempted to figure out or indicate the commonly referred range of sample size in qualitative research. Generally when we sum up our review work, the decision on “How many” is depended on several factors among which the following are some; the focus of the research, the type of research question, available resource and time, institutional committee requirements, the judgments of epistemic community in which a researcher is located, the nature of the selected group, the domain of inquiry, the experience of the researcher with qualitative research, and so on. Specific to number 20-60 is the most frequently observed range of sample size in qualitative research which of course is determined by the aforementioned factors.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License .

R news and tutorials contributed by hundreds of R bloggers

R4socialscience: empowering social science research with r in india.

Posted on August 27, 2024 by R Consortium in R bloggers | 0 Comments

Dr. Mohit Garg , organizer of the R4SocialScience group in Delhi, India recently talked to the R Consortium about his experience of starting an R user group. The R4SocialScience group aims to bridge the gap between social science research and data analysis, offering support and training to academics, researchers, and industry professionals. Dr. Garg shares his experiences, the growth of the R community in India, and his plans for expanding R’s reach.

Please share about your background and involvement with the RUGS group.

I’m currently working as an assistant librarian at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi , one of the premier institutions in India. My academic background includes a BTech in Information Technology from Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University followed by an MS in Librarian Information Science from the Indian Statistical Institute , an institution dedicated to statistics in India started by the late Professor P.C. Mahanobis. After that, I completed my PhD in Library and Information Science from IGNOU, New Delhi.

My interest in R began in 2013 when I started my MS at the Indian Statistical Institute. Since then, I have taken various courses as part of my MS program and some online courses. I became interested in R due to its open source nature and the free availability of packages for all kinds of analysis. Then, I started promoting R in the academic community. However, in 2013, there was little interest in R because the prevalent approach in India was more focused on using commercial software for data analysis. However, in the past few years, there has been an increasing interest in R, with many workshops and government-funded events dedicated to it.

I have been providing R training to professors, teachers, and research scholars, and I have also worked on web-based development using Shiny packages. Furthermore, we have developed a web dashboard to visualize real-time research productivity data obtained from sources like Scopus through API. Recently, we completed a 12-week MOOC course on NPTEL SWAYAM platform with a focus solely on R. The course was quite popular, with 2584 learners from India joining, and 515 learners registering for the final examination. Although the course was free, participants had the option to pay for certification.

Can you share what the R community is like in India?

I have been involved in the academic profession since 2016 and have been giving lectures and providing resource points at various institutions. I believe that there is a need to build a community focused on social sciences, especially for those who may have a limited understanding of mathematics, and statistics. The idea is to create a specific community related to social science, not just in India, but also in collaboration with other institutions. The community will cater to three main groups: those who are proficient in coding and development of R packages, those who are familiar with basic R but need further guidance, and those who are completely new to R.

The community aims to provide support for those interested in social science and to make R more accessible by offering packages related to social science, basic R tutorials. One specific package gaining popularity in academia is “ biblo shiny bibliometrics ,” which facilitates scientific productivity mapping using R.

We want to emphasize that R is not just a programming language, but a software for data analysis, to encourage more people to explore its potential. While both R and Python are interpreted languages, we aim to dispel the fear of programming and demonstrate how these languages can be used effectively. Although Python appears to be more widely used in the industry, there is still a growing interest in R.

What are your plans for the group going forward?

I have been teaching R for more than 10 years, and I found that researchers are interested in using R. I have identified three potential co-organizers from different regions in India to make a team of four people. We have already received a grant, and we plan to conduct training sessions in different locations across India.

I am focusing on a “train the trainer” model, where I aim to train individuals who can then carry out training sessions in their respective regions. India has over 50,000 colleges and around 1,200 universities, all involved in significant research and analysis activities. We also aim to have dedicated R trainers in all districts in India by 2026.

Our approach involves dividing the country into five zones, followed by state-wise and district-wise planning. We are not heavily reliant on industry support, as our activities are primarily related to academia and research.

We plan to charge a nominal registration fee, which would cover expenses such as food and refreshment. We are hoping to minimize travel expenses, as they can be quite costly. But we will explore some way to fund the travel and accommodation expenses. We have hosted a one day workshop on “ Doing Research using R ” at Galgotias University.

I am currently focusing on building a community and providing training sessions. I have noticed that online sessions may not be as effective as I had hoped, as participants seem to encounter many problems. Therefore, I am considering conducting more in-person workshops, which I believe will help popularize the training sessions. Additionally, I aim to develop specialized packages for social science and build a dedicated team. I am optimistic about these plans. During a recent workshop, I noticed that many participants preferred simple tools for data analysis. I intend to introduce such tools to make the training more accessible and user-friendly for participants. This is my vision for the community.

Please share about a project you are currently working on or have worked on in the past using the R language. Goal/reason, result, anything interesting, especially related to the industry you work in?

We have developed a platform utilizing the shiny and other text mining packages. This platform is still in the testing phase. The platform allows real-time data fetching from the Scopus API.

For example, if I search for a faculty member, it will display the publication data such as the number of publications, H-index, citations, types of publications, sources of publication, and annual publication distribution. We can also download this data.

We have also developed a word cloud based on the titles of the publications for each faculty member, processed using the TM package. This helps to infer the expertise of the professors. Furthermore, we have included a feature for identifying the H-classic, which is related to the H-index. This platform is quite useful and efficient, especially for academic institutions. We now have the capability to download data from a specific date range as an Excel file. The data includes publication dates and the number of citations.

We’re in the process of creating a full dashboard for universities or institutions. We’ve also conducted a pilot study for other institutions. We are also considering publishing this work as a research paper to increase its visibility.

How do I Join?

R Consortium’s R User Group and Small Conference Support Program (RUGS) provides grants to help R groups organize, share information, and support each other worldwide. We have given grants over the past four years, encompassing over 68,000 members in 33 countries. We would like to include you! Cash grants and meetup.com accounts are awarded based on the intended use of the funds and the amount of money available to distribute.

The post R4SocialScience: Empowering Social Science Research with R in India appeared first on R Consortium .

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Published: 29 August 2024

StreetTalk: exploring energy insecurity in New York City using a novel street intercept interview and social media dissemination method

Nadav L. Sprague ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-9698-9962 1 ,
Isabel B. Fan 2 ,
Michelle Dandeneau 3 ,
Jorge Fabian Hernandez Perez 2 ,
Jordyn Birmingham 4 ,
Daritza De Los Santos 5 ,
Milan I. Riddick 3 ,
Gabriella Y. Meltzer 3 ,
Eva L. Siegel 3 &
Diana Hernández 3

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications volume 11 , Article number: 1109 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

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Cultural and media studies
Environmental studies
Health humanities
Science, technology and society

This study introduces StreetTalk, an original qualitative research methodology inspired by social media influencers, to investigate perceptions and experiences of energy insecurity among New York City (NYC) residents. Briefly, energy insecurity is defined as difficulty meeting household energy needs due to affordability, housing quality, outages and coping strategies. This present study employs dynamic short-form interviews with 34 participants from all five NYC boroughs of diverse economic, and racial/ethnic backgrounds. Thematic analysis of video-recorded interviews revealed six major energy insecurity-related categories: (1) conservation and trade-offs, (2) physical inefficiencies, (3) thermal agency, (4) response to the bill, (5) disappointment and distrust in energy-related authorities, and (6) desire for and barriers to clean energy adoption. These themes provide insight into NYC residents’ experiences with energy insecurity and are consistent with prior research. Beyond new scholarly insights, this study introduces StreetTalk, an innovative qualitative research methodology emphasizing rapid data collection and dissemination through social media platforms, including TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube (@hotandcold_nyc). Taking advantage of modern technology and modes of communication, the research team was able to effectively break down barriers to academic research consumption as the videos achieved substantial engagement, with almost 200,000 views and impressions within the first year of launching this novel street-based data collection and social media dissemination campaign.

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Introduction.

Social media has revolutionized all aspects of society. Social media has altered social dynamics, communication patterns, and human relationships, allowing for connection and cultural exchange across geopolitical boundaries (Turkle, 2011 ). Additionally, social media has created a platform for individuals to express their opinions, experiences, and thoughts in a way that has never been seen before (Marwick and Boyd, 2014 ). However, social media has also been linked to negative changes in human behavior, such as reduced in-person interactions, increased feelings of loneliness, reduced physical activity, and reduced attention span (Aboujaoude, 2010 ; Goodyear et al. 2019 ; Kross et al. 2013 ). Unfortunately, social media platforms are also outlets for the spread of both misinformation and propaganda (Guess and Lyons, 2020 ). That said, social media has also reshaped the landscape of scientific research. For example, social media has facilitated unprecedented opportunities for collaboration, knowledge dissemination, and public engagement with research. Social media platforms, such as X (previously named Twitter) and LinkedIn, have become virtual meeting places for researchers across fields, allowing for both interdisciplinary and international collaborations and discussions that would not have occurred otherwise (Zimba and Gasparyan, 2021 ). These platforms also allow for increased visibility and accessibility of scientific findings to a wider audience (Haustein et al. 2016 ).

Social media has also been utilized as a valuable tool within the research process. Studies have utilized social media to recruit cost-effectively study participants (Russomanno et al. 2019 ) and for data analysis purposes (Dong and Lian, 2021 ; Ekenga et al. 2018 ). Despite social media changing the way individuals interact, the speed at which individuals can attain information, and demonstrating its utility in the research process, academic research has yet to embrace the full potential of a social media-based approach to advance and modernize qualitative research methods.

StreetTalk: an innovative qualitative method designed for social media

To date, qualitative research methods still focus primarily on long form, in-depth interviews with a small sample size of research participants (Morse, 2015 ; Silverman, 2020 ). Classic long-form in-depth interviews are vital for providing depth of understanding, exploration of various themes, understanding of interrelated themes, and to develop localized understanding for implementation science (Nevedal et al. 2021 ). However, these traditional qualitative methods also have numerous shortcomings, including time burden to participants, condensing participants’ stories to themes, and long lag time of dissemination (Nevedal et al. 2021 ; Queirós et al. 2017 ). As such, we developed the StreetTalk qualitative method, a short-form social media-style interview method, to address some of the mentioned shortcomings in traditional qualitative methods.

The StreetTalk method is heavily inspired by social media influencers who have garnered millions of views by engaging people on the street and immediately asking them questions on a specific topic, such as how a participant met their partner or how much a participant earns or pays in rent. The person provides a spontaneous and dynamic response. Then, the video content is edited and posted to social media platforms, allowing for widespread dissemination of the recorded interactions.

The StreetTalk method addresses the current state of large lag times between research inception to its public dissemination. Delays occur due to the complexity of the research process, lengthy (albeit essential) peer-review process, and journal production and formatting (Bornmann, 2011 ; Siler et al. 2015 ). Further, once published, journal articles are often not easily accessible to the public due to academic jargon and journal paywalls (Van Noorden, 2013 ). Moreover, due to human subjects research protections regarding confidentiality and since interview interactions are mostly captured in audio form, participants’ accounts are often reduced to anonymized quotes. This leaves little opportunity for anyone other than the interviewers to visualize the participants and the context in which the data was collected. We therefore developed the SteetTalk qualitative research method to collect data on a timely topics in a public format, share participant accounts using their likeness (with permission), and disseminate insights quickly via platforms with greater reach. This approach aims to advance modalities of generating relevant, people-based, in-field information while cultivating new audiences for the consumption of research findings and scientific concepts.

Using StreetTalk to explore energy insecurity in New York City

Energy insecurity has been described as a hidden hardship, although this phenomenon impacts almost a third of households in the United States (Hernández, 2023 ). As living expenses, climate change, housing concerns are commonly discussed topics, the focus of the StreetTalk method centered on questions surrounding energy and energy insecurity. Briefly, energy insecurity is a multidimensional concept encompassing the challenges related to energy access, affordability, and quality, which result in the inability to meet basic household energy needs (Hernández, 2016 ; Hernández and Siegel, 2019 ). While research on household-level energy insecurity (and related topics such as energy poverty and fuel poverty) has been ongoing for decades internationally (Boateng et al. 2020 ; Bouzarovski, 2014 ; Healy and Clinch, 2002 ; Reddy and Nathan, 2013 ; Sovacool, 2013 ), there is a dearth of studies and public discourse related to energy insecurity in the United States (Yoon and Hernandez, 2021 ). This has resulted in a significant gap in understanding the unique challenges and dynamics of energy access and affordability and how this permeates everyday life (Siksnelyte-Butkiene et al. 2021 ; Yoon and Hernández, 2021 ).

A handful of scholars have begun to address the issue of energy insecurity within the United States, shedding light on its complexities and implications for American society (Hernández, 2016 ; Bednar and Reames, 2020 ; Chen et al. 2022 ; Cong et al. 2022 ; Friedman, 2022 ; Siegel et al. 2024 ; Wang et al. 2021 ). A recent study concluded that the amount of academic literature on energy and energy insecurity-related issues in the United States is limited when compared to the amount of coverage by media outlets and journalists (Yoon and Hernández, 2021 ). By choosing this subject matter, we not only aimed to align qualitative research methods with the current media landscape, but also to contribute to the growing evidence base on energy insecurity in the United States.

Energy is a basic need and a prerequisite for good health (Rehfuess, 2006 ). Nevertheless, the cost of residential energy (used for heating, cooling, lighting, refrigeration, and cooking) has consistently increased and therefore accounts for a larger and growing percentage of household expenses (Hernández, 2023 ; Power, 2012 ). Moreover, increasing temperature extremes and the integration of technology has resulted in greater dependencies on energy to carry out daily functions. As such, the burden of increasing energy costs and demands has increased susceptibility among individuals and households to become energy insecure.

Energy insecurity is pervasive globally; however, focusing on the experience of energy insecurity in New York City (NYC) offered the opportunity to gain valuable insights into the localized experience and the particularities of place and population dynamics. NYC’s dense population, large multiunit buildings, and distinct housing dynamics present unique challenges in terms of energy access, affordability, and control (Siegel et al. 2024 ). In NYC, there is a range of control over heating and cooling of residential units, with many residents lacking the ability to manage indoor temperatures, as they are regulated by building management. Additionally, many NYC apartments lack central cooling systems, forcing residents to purchase window air conditioning units, which increases energy expenses. The aged housing stock and vast social inequalities uniquely contribute to the risk of energy insecurity among NYC residents.

A recent study on energy insecurity in NYC revealed a citywide prevalence of 28 percent (Siegel et al. 2024 ), with similar prevalence’s to the national and hyperlocal levels reported in other studies (Cook et al. 2008 ; Debs et al. 2021 ; Hernández and Siegel, 2019 ; 2024 ). Siegel et al. also found that energy insecurity was associated with health vulnerabilities, including mental health conditions, respiratory issues, cardiovascular diseases and use of electronic medical device use, particularly among disadvantaged populations (Siegel et al. 2024 ). Black and Latine residents, low-income households, renters, households with children, long-term neighborhood residents, households with poor building conditions, and foreign-born individuals have also been identified as communities with heightened vulnerabilities to energy insecurity (Hernández and Laird, 2022 ; Hernández and Siegel, 2019 ; Siegel et al. 2024 ). While qualitative research has examined energy insecurity among low-income households in targeted locations including in the Bronx, New York (Hernández and Phillips, 2015 ), New Haven, Connecticut (Mashke et al. 2022 ), the southeast region (Kelley and Bryan, 2023 ) and in various parts of the country (Hernández and Laird, Forthcoming ), no prior study has investigated the issue of energy insecurity in the public domain across a spectrum of demographic characteristics and shared the insights in public-facing, non-academic outlets in video format. Therefore, we developed StreetTalk to address a methodological gap in conducting qualitative research, to fill substantive gaps in the energy insecurity literature and demonstrate new potentials in research dissemination.

In this article, we introduce StreetTalk, a novel ground-truthing street intercept interview method and social media dissemination strategy. Inspired by the approach of numerous social media influencers, we have developed a formalized research methodology for probing passersby in public places on a specific topic. These short-form interviews allow researchers to get a pulse on the public opinion surrounding a given topic. Further, the StreetTalk interview video recordings can easily be edited to be published on social media platforms, thus providing easily digestible and accessible information to the public. In this paper, through the novel StreetTalk research method, we examine public perceptions among NYC residents on issues related to energy insecurity. Below we describe our methodological procedures and the results of our thematic analysis.

The motivation behind the present project was to humanize and publicize the issue of energy insecurity and develop new methods by which to collect and disseminate interview-based data that highlight the lived experiences of this highly prevalent phenomenon.

Research team

This research was conducted by a racially, ethnically, and socioeconomically diverse team of students and trainees from multiple disciplines spanning epidemiology, environmental science, anthropology, sociology, statistics, global/public health, Africana studies, economics, health policy, and medicine. The principal investigator, (Hernández, 2024 ), a Latina sociologist and public health researcher who is also a NYC-native from the South Bronx, has conducted foundational research related to energy insecurity in the United States for over a decade using both qualitative and quantitative methods (Hernández, 2024 ). All authors have lived in NYC and experienced some form of energy insecurity in their lives. Each team member was interviewed by a peer using the interview protocol for both training purposes and to further relate to participants and the issue at hand. Data collection and analyses were completed by all authors of the study. The principal investigator designed the study, supervised the project, and provided guidance and constructive feedback throughout every stage of the research process.

Human subjects

This study was approved by the Institutional Review Board at the Columbia University’s Irving Medical Center [IRB AAAU3071]. The study team supplemented the standard informed consent process with a media release form, employing university-approved language and modifying existing forms to fit this study. Participants were given a $10 gift certificate as compensation for their participation in the study.

StreetTalk data collection

The team identified locations within the five boroughs of NYC that were both representative of the city’s diverse populations and locations that would be recognizable when the videos are posted to social media (such as Yankee Stadium, 125th street, Prospect Park, and the Staten Island Ferry). The selected neighborhoods included Washington Heights, Harlem, Upper East Side, and Hamilton Heights in the borough of Manhattan; Fordham Heights and Morrisania in the Bronx; Prospect Heights and Red Hook in Brooklyn; St. George in Staten Island; and Jackson Heights and Flushing in Queens.

During April 2023, team members went into the field in groups of two to three to recruit and interview individuals to participate in this study. Team members approached potential participants on sidewalks, bus stops, parks, and other public outdoor locations to ask if they would be interested in participating in the study. Upon an individual’s demonstration of interest in the study, potential participants were screened into the study if they currently lived in one of the five NYC boroughs and have experienced at least one of several indicators of energy insecurity (Siegel et al. 2024 ). Team members then reviewed and explained the consent and media release forms with the potential participant, while also highlighting the social media nature of the project. Individuals who agreed to participate then signed both the consent and media release forms. Participants were allowed to opt out of the study at any timepoint or redact statements made during the interview. After receiving signed consent and media releases, participants were audio and/or video recorded according to their preference. Interviews were conducted in English and Spanish by fluent speakers from the research team based on participant preference. Interviews ranged from 10–15 min on average. The questions and associated probes used in the StreetTalk interviews are presented in Table 1 .

StreetTalk thematic analysis

After all recordings were transcribed, we used the interpretivism paradigm (Goldkuhl, 2012 ) to conducted a qualitative thematic analysis that aimed to understand and characterize individuals’ experiences with energy insecurity through the codebook approach (Braun and Clarke, 2023 ). We followed Braun and Clarke’s six phases to thematic analysis. Briefly, the six phases consist of the research team (1) becoming familiar with the data, (2) generating initial codes, (3) searching for themes, (4) reviewing potential themes, (5) defining and naming themes, and (6) producing a report (Clarke et al. 2015 ).

Six trained team members conducted the initial thematic analysis. The review team conducted the first three phases of thematic analysis on eight randomly selected interview recordings. Then, the group of reviewers met to discuss and calibrate their coding methodology. After the initial meeting, phases 1 to 3 were conducted on every interview recording by a minimum of two reviewers for consistency and validity. Once phases 1 through 3 were complete, reviewers of the same interviews met individually to review their codes and potential themes and reach a consensus. Then, all six reviewers met to discuss, evaluate, select, and name themes (phases 4 and 5) across the data set. These themes were presented to the entire research team and then finalized.

StreetTalk social media dissemination

A team led by co-author I.B.F met twice a week to oversee the social media dissemination aspect of this project. The social media dissemination team oversaw the production and all dissemination efforts utilizing the @hotandcold_nyc handle on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube. The team produced video shorts from the StreetTalk interviews that highlighted the themes discovered in the analysis. Team members drafted captions to accompany the video shorts on the social media platforms. Based on a social media calendar developed by the team, video shorts were posted across the various platforms. The team tracked post engagement and analytics, adapting the video production style and content to maximize engagement.

From April 10th to 28th 2023, a total of 31 ground-truthing StreetTalk interviews were recorded, with 34 participants interviewed (some videos had multiple participants). An additional 3 interviews were conducted, but not recorded and therefore excluded from the analysis. Of the 31 StreetTalk interviews, 5 were recorded in Brooklyn, 15 in Manhattan, 4 in the Bronx, 5 in Queens, and 2 in Staten Island. Five of the 31 interviews were conducted in Spanish, with the others being conducted in English. While information on age, race, ethnicity, gender and income were not collected, the video recordings feature a diverse group of individuals across various sociodemographic domains.

Participants shared a wide range of experiences related to energy insecurity based on the interview questions. Subsequent data analysis helped us identify the emergence of a clear set of themes. Table 2 presents the finalized list of themes and subthemes from the qualitative analysis. The six thematic categories were: (1) conservation and trade-offs, (2) housing deficiencies and inefficiencies, (3) thermal agency, (4) response to the bill, (5) disappointment and distrust in energy-related authorities, and (6) desire for and barriers to clean energy adoption.

Conservation and trade-offs

Participants employed different strategies to balance thermal comfort and financial security. For instance, some chose to limit their energy usage to save money. As one Staten Island participant warned, “ Don’t mess with the AC unless you really feel hot .” Another participant in Brooklyn stated that “ you have to limit yourself ” when referring to using air conditioning units to avoid excessive expenses. In fact, one Manhattan participant refrained from using air conditioning with one exception, “ not unless I have company .”

Other participants found alternative ways to reduce energy bills and remain thermally comfortable by “ spend[ing] a lot of time out of our apartment .” For other individuals, thermal comfort took precedence over financial security. When a Manhattan resident’s landlord refused to turn on the heat in their apartment building, an additional financial burden fell on the participants to furnish their own heat. The participant shared that they purchased “ space heaters when cold in house as the landlord is unresponsive ” thus further compounding the economic hardship and risks of this alternative heating strategy.

Participants further described the dilemmas over choosing between affordable energy bills and maintaining comfortable temperatures in their homes. One Manhattan participant, who initially prioritized thermal comfort, shared their struggle to then manage the resultant high costs had to switch gears on their approach when he faced crisis. The participant said, “I couldn’t keep up with the bills. So, they [the energy company] stopped everything.” To avoid another disconnection due to unpaid bills, this participant decided to then limit their use of heating and cooling, causing them to face uncomfortable and potentially dangerous indoor temperatures in their apartment in the winter and summer.

These quotes collectively highlight the conscious decisions many New Yorkers make when deciding between being thermally comfortable and living within their financial means. The struggle to find the right balance was evident in the accounts of trade-offs and forgoing comfort, underscoring the significance of addressing the issue of energy insecurity for residents’ comfort and well-being from an economic perspective.

Personal responsibility to conserve and save

The personal responsibility to conserve and save subtheme refers to participants’ recognition of their personal responsibility in managing energy usage and their deliberate efforts to minimize costs. Individuals were conscious of the need to be diligent in their energy consumption to reduce the impact on their bills and sometimes blamed themselves for unexpected spikes. One participant emphasized the need to “be careful with your light bill,” while another revealed how they proactively “switch all the lights off. No lights on. No TV on when we leave the room” to reduce electricity expenses. This heightened awareness of the relationship between energy usage and billing led participants to take measures to be more mindful of their consumption habits and vigilantly conserve energy (Simes et al. 2023 ).

Housing deficiencies and inefficiencies

Physical deficiencies and inefficiencies was characterized by energy related challenges associated with features inside and outside of their homes, including outdated appliances, poor insulation, and lack of temperature control. Many participants discussed the subpar performance of their appliances, as one Manhattan participant noted, “The stuff that we use are probably not the best, probably not energy efficient” Some noted that they were unable to afford more energy efficient appliances or, as renters, unable to upgrade them on their own accord.

Some of the concern had to do with the aged housing stock of the building or the fact that the infrastructure was outdated. Participants also linked living on higher floors to having more uncomfortably hot apartments, as one participant described, “ I’m on the 6 th floor and… it seems to get extremely hot in there .” Often summertime and the use of air conditioning units exposed these fault lines in residential buildings. For instance, one participant from the Bronx was unable to support the basic use of an air conditioner. They shared that: “During summertime it is extremely hot. When I provide myself with an air conditioner it ‘outshortaged’ the rest of the house.” The electrical capacity was not enough to accomodate the air conditioning unit and when this happened the participant had to reset the circuit breaker and unplug other devices to free up capacity to run the air conditioner. Participants also shared that their air conditioning units did not have sufficient capacity to properly cool their apartments. Still others noted that the size, type and functionality of building windows restricted their ability to properly run air conditioning window units despite that being among their only cooling option besides a fan.

During the winter months, examples of physical energy inefficiencies included the inability to control heat in the apartment, poor insulation, and nonworking heaters. When primary heating systems were not functional, residents resorted to buying their own space heaters and, in some instances, using their stovetops or ovens to heat up their apartments. As one participant in the Bronx shared, “ I’ve struggled for many years, I was in a shelter with my kids and plenty of times we did not have water or gas and were forced to use electric stoves, which took hours to heat our home .” Additionally, participants were aware of the importance of insulation in their homes, as one observed: “ We have an old house and there’s lots of leaks. The first thing we had to do is get new windows, but still insulation is a big help because we … put some insulating materials in the ceiling and now the kitchen that was our coldest room has become our warmest.” Physical deficiencies and energy inefficiencies posed a significant challenge to participants and contributed to uncomfortable temperatures and higher energy costs.

Thermal agency

Thermal agency refers to respondents’ ability to control the temperature in their homes. Residents’ ability to control heating or cooling in their apartment varied drastically from total control to complete lack of control. One Manhattan resident explained that they were able to partially control their home’s heating “through the radiator.” They continued, “I can turn [it] on and off but in terms of the energy coming through I can’t control that.” Two additional sub-themes emerged from New Yorkers’ wide variation in thermal agency: (1) satisfaction based on ability to control indoor temperature and (2) unresponsive landlords.

Satisfaction based on ability to control indoor temperature

Residents’ satisfaction with their apartment temperature was strongly correlated with their ability to control it. Many New Yorkers complained about not being able to control their apartments’ heating during winter. One respondent in Brooklyn stated of the indoor temperature: “It’s controlled by my landlord, so I don’t have much autonomy with it… In the winter it gets pretty hot.” This New Yorker was frustrated that their apartment became uncomfortably hot in the wintertime and expressed frustration over the inability to reduce the amount of heat entering their apartment. Respondents wished that they could control the timing of their heat as well. One participant spoke of a desire to “put the heat on faster when it’s about to be winter.” New York City heating laws are seasonally driven and cover all of winter and some of fall and spring. There are also guidelines for the minimum temperature set points and mechanisms to enforce inadequate heating complaints ( Heat and Hot Water ). There is no equivalent mandate for maximum temperatures. Therefore, New Yorkers, especially those that reside in apartment buildings where the property owner has central control of the heating system, have little say about when the heat comes on or off and how hot it gets. The same is true for hot water. The aspect of control was often a sore point for participants, many of whom would prefer more agency in determining the indoor temperature conditions year-round. Residents who were able to control their apartments’ temperature appeared to be more satisfied. For example, one participant stated, “I have central AC. I think it’s just fine!” Technologies such heat pumps indeed have thermal agency benefits; however, the control also comes with a shift in responsibility for covering the costs such that the tenants would assume the costs of heating and cooling, which could also be burdensome.

Unresponsive landlords

The second sub-theme, unresponsive landlords, revealed the frustration and concern expressed by participants regarding their interactions with landlords surrounding temperature control. Many respondents shared experiences of unresponsive landlords who failed to address heating issues during the cold winter months, leaving them feeling helpless in creating comfortable living conditions. For example, one participant in Queens shared that, “wintertime [is] very cold, [I] complain about fixing heat, and they never do.” Multiple participants shared similar stories and despite the participants taking steps to improve the heating situation by filing a complaint, their landlord remained unresponsive, and the issue persisted. Many participants feel powerless regarding their ability to control home temperatures in the face of an unresponsive landlord. As one participant in Brooklyn shared: “Our neighbors —we call each other. We can’t do anything. We complain. They (the landlords) will just say, ‘I’m listening,’ but won’t do anything. Not responding, but you have to pay the rent anyways.” This participant highlights the vexing power imbalance between tenants and landlords; landlords can repeatedly fail in their responsibility to maintain safe temperatures and perform repairs, while tenants are still expected to pay rent or face consequences. Other participants attempted to act further on these heating issues and circumvent their landlord. As one respondent in Staten Island said that to finally get their heating fixed they, “had to call 311 (a hotline for non-emergency city services) at one time.” The subtheme of unresponsive landlords underscores the need for clearer communication and accountability from landlords to ensure more reliable energy services, particularly for renters who have little control, access, or knowledge about building energy systems.

Response to bill

The response to bill theme was characterized by respondents’ reactions to receiving energy bills. Participants often expressed a wide range of negative reactions (i.e., surprise, anger, disappointment, stress, etc.) to either high energy bills or unexpected spikes in energy bills. A common sentiment among participants was that their bills were, “more expensive than I want it to be” (Brooklyn) and were disappointed by the high costs: “[we] spend a lot, like, for electricity and stuff” (Queens). Others discussed how their energy bill had increased recently, as noted by one participant, “It’s gone up significantly over the last year. My bill went from like 90 a month to almost like 200 something a month.” The way in which individuals responded to energy bills generally fell into one of three subthemes: (1) emotional response, (2) personal responsibility to conserve and save, and (3) perceptions of inappropriate or inconsistent pricing with energy use.

Emotional response

Participants shared a wide range of negative emotions towards increasing energy bills, such as “getting a little peeved,” “feeling upset,” “not happy with the price,” “feel [ing] horrible,” and stating that, “it is stressful.” One participant even likened paying the utility bills to “a disaster.” A Manhattan respondent explained that such negative emotional responses to the bill are linked to the financial strain of paying, sharing: “I think a lot of New Yorkers are living paycheck to paycheck. I think a lot of New Yorkers especially… are struggling financially. I’m one of them, and so I think it’s hard when you see that bill that you weren’t necessarily expecting.” The unexpectedly high bills place strains on many New Yorkers and add additional, unanticipated stress in a high cost city. Moreover, many New Yorkers also knew the consequences of not paying utility bills- being shutoff- and therefore stress not only about the financial difficulty of paying but about the deleterious consequences of missing a payment. As one participant remarked, “ It worries me. I got to pay for the month and if not, they will cut your lights.” The emotional response subtheme highlights the significant negative impact that increasing energy bills has on participants’ well-being, evoking feelings of stress, anxiety, and discontent.

Perception of inappropriate and inconsistent pricing with energy use

The perception of inappropriate and inconsistent pricing with energy use is characterized by participants expressing their dissatisfaction and confusion over erratic and unpredictable energy pricing. Respondents shared instances where energy bills unexpectedly spiked, leaving them unable to comprehend and justify the substantial increases. Many participants voiced frustration with the lack of consistency in billing, as they expected bills to remain stable or decrease due to efforts to reduce energy use. One participant shared their frustrations with the inconsistent pricing by stating, “It’s getting more expensive, and the bill isn’t always the same. And I’m expecting it’s always the same. We’re not using the TV, and we use a small light during the night.” These comments revealed a sense of skepticism towards utility providers, with participants questioning the justification for the steep costs, especially considering the service provided.

Many participants expressed their dissatisfaction with pricing, deeming it excessive for the services rendered by corporate utilities, namely Con Edison and National Grid. One Manhattan participant thought their bill seemed unreasonably high and insisted that they wanted further justification, “I would like to know where all the money we pay to it [ConEd] is going to.” Along the same lines, another Manhattan participant shared, “I was gone for two months. It didn’t really show on my bill. I unplugged just about everything except for the Wi-Fi, and I should have had a lower bill at least a month after or something. I wrote them [ConEd] a letter just months ago, and I have not heard anything. I just wanted to know why that is. Am I just paying for it to come into the house? And I hardly use anything?” The perception of impropriety and inconsistency in pricing reflects participants’ sense that energy costs were not always commensurate with their actual usage, leading to a lack of confidence in the billing process, and a feeling of frustration and powerlessness in not being able to do much to reduce costs despite vigilant conservation efforts.

Disappointment and distrust in energy-related processes and oversight

Many residents that were interviewed on the streets of NYC expressed a strong desire for increased transparency, easily accessible and responsive support, effective communication and greater assistance from utility companies and the government. Participants felt unsupported by utility companies and government agencies. One Brooklyn participant explained the lack of support they received from the government when they called the city’s housing department for help with energy issues that their landlord was neglecting. This participant argued for greater enforcement: “The housing department needs to have more people checking [the energy conditions of apartment buildings]… When you call, they say that they will contact the landlord. And even if they do, and they put it on, the heat, it’s just for short 45 min and then that’s it.” This participant expressed disappointment in NYC governments lack of enforcing their own heating requirements. The participants followed the appropriate protocols and still did not receive the proper heating that their landlord is required to provide. The participant wished that the housing department took a more active role in addressing tenants’ complaints and ensuring landlord compliance.

Many participants expressed interest in the government and energy providers offering greater access and resources related to energy assistance programs, especially for low-income residents. One Brooklyn participant shared their call for help for the most vulnerable, “I just keep asking the government for help [and] support, especially for the lowest income families.” Another Manhattan participant hoped for more affordable rates across the board, “I would ask ConEd to make the bill lower for everyone.” Participants felt that energy bills were too high, and there was a need for better assistance programs from the utility companies or the government. However, participants also demonstrated a lack of knowledge regarding existing energy assistance programs. One Bronx participant shared that the lack of visibility precluded their participation in energy assistance programs, “I don’t really [know] any of kind of those things. I don’t see any programs.” This common sentiment among participants highlighted the need for more accessible information and enrollment in existing energy affordability programs.

Desire for and barriers to renewable energy adoption

Participants were hopeful and interested in renewable energy resources as alternatives to fossil fuels and unknown energy sources. One Brooklyn participant highlighted their disappointment in current energy sources, sharing: “I know it’s not coming from sustainable sources, so that kinda bums me out.” They wanted renewable energy options, particularly solar power, as expressed by a Manhattan participant, “I would like to get solar!” However, in NYC there are many barriers to accessing renewable energy, such as living in multiple unit housing or financing the installation of solar panels. Climate change concerns served as a motivator for clean energy adoption. Anxieties about the role of energy in exacerbating climate change was a critical inspiration for upgrading energy sources to renewables. One Brooklyn participant urged: “ Change the source of the energy itself. It’s really bad for public health and obviously climate change.” There was a palpable longing for clean energy among participants due to their desires to prevent and mitigate further deleterious effects of climate change. Still, there were also many perceived barriers to renewable energy uptake.

Financial constraints and practical challenges including the limitations associated with renting stood as impediments to acquiring renewable energy, despite recognition of the associated benefits. Participants voiced frustration over the inaccessibility of solar energy programs. One Bronx participant hoped to benefit from the potential financial savings of renewable energy stating, “ If the city of New York will allow us to have solar panels, maybe life will be a little bit easier. You know, the majority of [us] are paying light and gas and living from paycheck to paycheck .” This comment also expressed a desire for the government to take steps to make renewable energy more accessible.

A participant in Queens expressed their wish for apartment buildings to integrate solar energy solutions, while acknowledging the challenges of a slow return on investment and high upfront costs: “I wish I had more control over sources of energy but with solar panels it does not pay quickly; it is about 30 years to get money back.” Additionally, a Staten Island participant living in a single-family home shared concerns over renewable energy not being reliable by stating, “I’ve always thought about, like, getting solar but I’ve heard it’s just unreliable. It’s expensive to put in and then after that it doesn’t hold enough, or it doesn’t provide enough energy.” With more assurances on the reliability of solar to meet the household’s energy demand, this participant would opt to invest in solar energy, but the substantial doubts were a hurdle.

Participants discussed the economic disparity between renewable and non-renewable energy options from utility companies, with one Manhattan participant noting the higher costs of opting for energy sourced from clean energy: “ConEd has this thing where you can sign up for renewable energy, right? But it’s a lot more expensive than it [is] for regular energy.”

In New York City, participants shared that the ability to use sustainable energy is only attainable at high costs and therefore individuals who are struggling financially are unable to take on the associated financial burdens of switching to renewable energy sources despite strong interest. This highlights the need for more practical, accessible, and economically feasible options for New Yorkers, many of whom are otherwise ready to make the switch to clean energy.

Within the first year of launching the @hotandcold_nyc social media channels, they have amassed nearly 200,000 views and impressions. Figures 1 – 4 are sample screenshots of social media pages and engagement analytics from YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook, respectively. The engagement of videos differed by social media platform. To date, YouTube is our most successful platform, with over 88,795 views. Instagram is our second most successful platform with 41,730 views, closely followed by TikTok with over 47,285 views, and then Facebook with over 1,225 views as of July 28, 2024. There are also several thousand likes and comments across the platforms.

Sample screenshots of Hot & Cold NYC’s YouTube channel and engagement analytics.

Sample screenshots of Hot & Cold NYC’s Instagram page and engagement analytics.

Sample screenshots of Hot & Cold NYC’s TikTok videos and engagement analytics.

Sample screenshots of Hot & Cold NYC’s Facebook page and engagement analytics.

This study utilized a novel, ground-truthing, StreetTalk qualitative research methodology to understand public perceptions among NYC residents on issues of energy insecurity. The qualitative analysis revealed six major themes: (1) conservation and trade-offs, (2) housing deficiencies and inefficiencies, (3) thermal agency, (4) response to the bill, (5) disappointment and distrust in energy-related processes and oversight, and (6) desire for and barriers to renewable energy adoption. These themes summarize how energy insecurity impacts the lives of NYC residents and are congruent with prior quantitative and qualitative findings (Siegel et al. 2024 ; Hernández et al. 2016 ). Our results demonstrated the commonality of trade-offs, energy limiting behavior, and vigilant conservation (Cong et al. 2023 ; Hernández, 2016 ; Simes et al. 2023 ). Siegel et al. ( 2024 ) found that 39 percent of NYC residents report reducing energy to save on their bills, which was the most common energy insecurity indicator reported in a represented survey. Rather than being wasteful, participants tended to be extremely mindful of their energy consumption and did as much as possible to restrict use, primarily to manage costs. Yet, participants also found the physical inefficiencies and capacity limitations encumbered use of appliances and the ability to achieve comfort, which is consistent with prior research on housing quality as a core component of the energy insecurity experience (Bednar et al. 2017 ; Goldstein et al. 2022 ; Hernández, 2016 ).

In addition to confirming and further substantiating prior findings related to the energy insecurity phenomenon, the StreetTalk interviews also offered novel insights. Findings related to thermal agency, emotional responses to bills, perceptions of procedural injustices and oversight gaps, and interest in clean energy adoption among everyday people who are not affiliated with programs or larger movements extend the literature in important ways. While the concept of thermal agency is underexplored in the current literature on energy insecurity and related topics, there is well-established evidence base in the field of occupational health that indicates that thermal agency in the workplace increases productivity, workers’ health, and workers’ wellbeing (Cheong et al. 2003 ; Seppanen et al. 2004 ; Seppanen et al. 2006 ). Future studies should explore thermal agency further as a manifestation of household energy insecurity to understand, for instance, how decisions about heat provision by others activate coping strategies, such as using stoves, ovens, or space heaters, to compensate for the lack of control over thermal conditions. This could also be an outcome of interest in studies on the impacts of heating/cooling upgrades such as the installation of heat pumps which offer more thermal control, albeit often assuming additional costs in tandem.

Participants described themselves as feeling “impotent” vis-à-vis landlords, utility providers, governmental agencies, inflation and the rising cost of living. Having limited domain over their energy realities played a vital role in influencing indoor temperatures, home energy inefficiencies, utility rates, access to relief resources, mechanisms of enforcement and ability to keep up with expenses. Appreciating these nuanced power dynamics across domains and how some groups are rendered more powerless than others is another area worthy of further exploration. Moreover, our findings point to the emotionality of this experience including participants’ reactions to their bills which were often marked by frustration and a sense of hopelessness and resignation. While there was awareness and interest in renewable energy technologies and energy assistance programs, many participants described barriers that reduced the likelihood of uptake. These findings add to existing literature, but they also point to addressable issues that can alleviate the burdens of energy insecurity via greater supports.

The study’s findings shed light on respondents’ experiences of unexpected bill spikes and perceived lack of transparency in pricing, reflecting broader concerns within the energy sector. Previous research has explored the complexities of pricing transparency, energy literacy, and tariff structures, offering valuable insights into these challenges (Brounen et al. 2013 ; Numminen et al. 2022 ; Trotta et al. 2017 ). Studies focusing on pricing transparency have highlighted the importance of clear and accessible information for empowering consumers and promoting trust in energy providers (Kowalska-Pyzalska, 2018 ; Lavrijssen, 2017 ). Additionally, research on energy literacy has emphasized the need for educational initiatives to enhance consumers’ understanding of energy-related concepts and mitigate misconceptions (Abrahamse et al. 2005 ; Iweka et al. 2019 ). Energy literacy interventions and educational initiatives are essential, especially since we observed that some participants made statements that were based on incomplete or wrong information and misconceptions. For example, in NYC, rooftop solar panels do not typically affect the reliability of a home’s energy capabilities, unless that home has been fully islanded from the electricity grid, a practice that is not commonly utilized. Another example of misconceptions among NYC StreetTalk participants was the outdated belief that there is a 30-year payback period for solar installations. However, according to a systematic review published almost a decade ago, the payback time for rooftop solar ranges from one to four years, and given advancements since then, it is reasonable to assume that payback period is even shorter now particularly when factoring in incentives at the local, state and federal levels (Bhandari et al. 2015 ). Identifying and understanding these misconceptions is essential for advancing public education initiatives and policy decisions aimed at promoting accurate understanding of energy issues including the adoption of renewable energy technologies.

In this article, we introduce StreetTalk, a novel qualitative research method and ground-truthing process inspired by social media that allows for rapid data collection and timely, accessible dissemination of findings. Based on the numerous social media influencers who have conducted informal streetside interviews, we have developed a formalized research methodology for probing members of the public on a specific topic. In our case, we did so on a topic that affects almost everyone— household energy—and explored dimensions of this issue that affect people across the social and economic spectrum. These short form interviews allowed our research team to quickly gain a pulse of the public opinion on this given topic. Furthermore, the StreetTalk interview video recordings were easily edited for publication to social media platforms, thus providing easily digestible information to the public with a quick turnaround time between data collection and dissemination. In addition to a traditional research team (principal investigator, interviewers, data analyzers, etc.), the StreetTalk methodology requires training in the development of a social media campaign as well as content creation to populate and manage the social media component for broad-based dissemination. Doing this type of research also requires harmonizing efforts between human subjects and communications protections with informed consent and media release forms both being necessary to comply with legal and ethical protocols.

The StreetTalk method has potential to create a paradigm shift in how research is conducted and disseminated. The street intercept approach provides a mechanism to engage a broad swath of participants identified in public places, including those for whom energy insecurity is not an immediate threat or concern, offering a unique perspective often missing from similar energy insecurity research. We were able to obtain multiple perspectives from people across various racial/ethnic and socioeconomic strata. Other street intercept recruitment and survey methodologies have been employed to target hard-to-reach populations and explore subversive topics in prior studies (Graham et al. 2014 ; Miller et al. 1997 ; Ompad et al. 2008 ; Rotheram-Borus et al. 2001 ), however, these approaches have not been previously used for academic research on emergent environmental issues. Therefore, the StreetTalk street intercept interviewing methods is innovative and promising in its potential to reach varied participant pools and larger, more diverse audiences. As such, the StreetTalk qualitative research method allows for rapid data collection and timely dissemination—having the potential to alter scientific research accessibility and communication to the public, while maintaining rigorous standards in data analysis and reporting of findings.

Unlike traditional qualitative interview methods, the StreetTalk method was developed for community embedded data collection and timely and engaging dissemination of data via social media. After following established protocols for deciphering core themes of the interviews, the research team conducted multiple meetings to also decide on a strategy and approach to creating short-form videos appropriate for social media sites. The videos most often featured compilations of answers to interview questions or responses that clustered around themes that arose during the thematic analysis process. Within one month of completing the interview recordings, our team began sharing videos on social media platforms including TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube under the handle @hotandcold_nyc. Our research team continued sharing new videos every week and engaged with similar accounts to enhance exposure. The team also continuously studied and experimented with various social media styles to identify ways to hone video production and editing to increase engagement and viewership.

While the need to communicate science to the public is widely agreed upon, in practice, scientific findings are often siloed within industry and research institutions (Brownell et al. 2013 ). Most scientific findings are only published and disseminated in peer-reviewed academic journal articles. In addition to many journals having a paywall to access these articles, journal articles are often crowded by academic jargon that is difficult for the general public to understand (Bullock et al. 2019 ; Day et al. 2020 ). As such, both financial and educational barriers prevent the general public from accessing scientific information that resonates with their lived experience. Furthermore, academic research is often criticized for its lag time from data collection to research publication to public understanding and ultimately to policy change (Morris et al. 2011 ). As such, the StreetTalk qualitative research methodology was developed to both address these barriers to scientific knowledge access and to reduce the scientific lag time. Dissemination through social media is significantly faster than traditional academic means, as evident through our videos reaching hundreds of thousands of viewers in only a few months. And not only does StreetTalk allow for near immediate dissemination of findings, but it also allows for these findings to be shared on social media where the majority of the general public already receives information (Liedke and Wang, 2022 ).

Often overlooked within the public discourse, energy insecurity remains America’s hidden hardship (Hernández et al. 2022 ; Yoon and Hernandez, 2021 ). Normalizing conversations about this critical issue is essential to enhancing public understanding and engagement. By utilizing social media platforms, StreetTalk aims to bridge the gap between academic research and public discourse, making scientific findings more accessible and relatable to the public. The speed and reach of social media dissemination allow for near-immediate access to information that resonates with people’s lived experiences, breaking down both financial and educational barriers to scientific knowledge. Our social media channels have already reached almost 200,000 views and likes within a ten-month timeframe, a significant achievement in expanding the reach of academic research beyond traditional academic outlets. The active engagement we have received, including likes and comments discussing energy insecurity issues, highlights the importance of social media in fostering meaningful dialogue and community involvement. Moving forward, the research team plans on conducting further thematic analysis of user engagement. The analysis will examine factors that may have impacted more views and greater engagement to develop best practices in this approach. This follow-up study will also consider how to best refine this strategy, as well as evaluate whether this method is more effective in stimulating public discourse on the topic compared to traditional methods. For example, through a thematic analysis of comments, we can assess whether the engagement on social media platforms effectively humanizes the issue of energy insecurity by examining the depth and nature of discussions surrounding personal experiences, emotional responses, and connections made by users. By delving into the nuances of user interactions, we aim to determine the extent to which the study succeeds in humanizing the issue and fostering empathy and understanding among the public. The information gained from this current and the follow-up analyses will drive future research projects, while at the same time existing as a low-effort way for NYC community members to take ownership over and relate to energy insecurity research.

Strengths and limitations

This study has several strengths. As discussed earlier, this novel research methodology allows for rapid data collection and dissemination of findings. Additionally, the research methodology allows for distribution of information that is easily accessible to the public and not siloed within academia. Lastly, while this initial study had a small sample size, the methodology allows for a relatively large sample for qualitative interviews, due in part to its public and short-form format, thus providing a good pulse on the public perception of a specific topic. That said, there are also limitations to this study. StreetTalk interviews are intentionally focused and brief, and therefore responses may not have the depth and exploratory goals of understanding the particularities of their experiences as traditional qualitative research methods. As such, this research methodology is best used as a ground-truthing activity to begin exploring public perceptions and be a jumping off point for more traditional longform interviews, if warranted. The results from a study using StreetTalk can then be used to develop further qualitative approaches that can build on the initial findings in greater focus and depth. This study methodology is prone to selection bias based of who was available to stop and willing to speak to interviewers on camera. This street-based methodology may result in bias toward respondents who are comfortable appearing on social media and excludes individuals who are homebound due to medical or other conditions. This can be mitigated by reassuring participants that their appearance in social media is not required to participate and that techniques can be used to protect their identity such as filming in ways that does not capture their face or using audio only; we employed these tactics as instructed by participants. These participants’ responses can still be included in the analysis and included in social media content using various creative techniques such as audio alongside captions. Additionally, this study was conducted in the context of NYC and therefore the results may not be generalizable to other locations, though the methods are highly adaptable and can easily be used in other settings.

Based on the themes identified in the StreetTalk interviews, next steps include conducting more in-depth, home-based interviews in NYC that explore the themes discussed in this paper. Additional next steps include conducting these interviews in other cities and about other topics. For instance, the StreetTalk method can be applied as a ground truthing technique for unforeseen catastrophic events, such as extreme weather events, pandemics, and sociopolitical instability, all of which require rapid data collection and dissemination of findings (Adams et al. 2024 ).

This study employed an original StreetTalk qualitative research methodology designed to gain insights into perceptions of energy insecurity among NYC residents. Through a thematic analysis, we identified six major themes that shed light on how energy insecurity impacts the lives of local residents. Our findings reinforced prior research (Siegel et al., 2024 ; Hernández et al. 2016 ) by highlighting the prevalence of trade-offs, energy conservation, and the influence of external factors such as landlords, utility providers, and government policies.

The strength of the StreetTalk approach lies in its ability to engage a diverse range of residents, making it a valuable tool for exploring public opinion on various issues. Moreover, this methodology facilitates rapid data collection and dissemination, bridging the gap between scientific research and the general public. Our use of social media platforms to share findings has garnered significant public attention, demonstrating the potential for breaking down barriers to scientific knowledge and processes.

In practice, scientific research often remains locked within academic institutions, with lengthy delays in publication and limited accessibility. StreetTalk addresses these challenges by providing a means for connecting with the public and more swiftly disseminating study-related content to wider audiences on platforms they already frequent for information and engagement. The StreetTalk methodology represents a transformative approach to reducing the lag time between data collection, research publication, public understanding, and policy change.

Data availability

The data underlying this article are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We wish to acknowledge the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the JPB Foundation for funding this project and NIEHST32ES007322-23 for supporting trainees. We also extend our gratitude to the study participants for their essential role in thisresearch.

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Contributions

Conceptualization: NLS, IBF, MIR, ELS, DH. Methodology: NLS, IBF, MIR, ELS, DH. Software: NLS, IBF, MD, DH. Formal analysis: NLS, IBF, MD, JFHP, JB, DDLS, DH. Data Curation: NLS, IBF, MD, JFHP, JB, DDLS, DH. Writing-Original Draft: NLS. Writing-Reviewing & Editing: NLS, IBF, MD, JFH, JB, DDLS, MIR, GYM, ELS, DH. Visualization: NLS, JB. Supervision: GYM, ELS, DH. Project administration: IBF, MD, JB, DH Funding acquisition: DH

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This study was approved by the Institutional Review Board at the Columbia University’s Irving Medical Center [IRB AAAU3071]

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Team members reviewed and explained the consent and media release forms with the potential participant, while also highlighting the social media nature of the project. Individuals who agreed to participate then signed both the consent and media release forms prior to enrolling in the study.

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Sprague, N.L., Fan, I.B., Dandeneau, M. et al. StreetTalk: exploring energy insecurity in New York City using a novel street intercept interview and social media dissemination method. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 11 , 1109 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-024-03477-5

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Environmental Science: Water Research & Technology

Synergistic effect of the heterojunction g-c3n4/bi2moo6/clinoptilolite to enhance photocatalytic degradation of antibiotics in water in the presence of persulfate.

A novel and highly efficient photocatalyst of g-C3N4/Bi2MoO6/Clinoptilolite nanocomposite (CNBC) was synthesized by a hydrothermal method and acted as a Z-scheme heterojunction for efficient activation of peroxydisulfate (PDS) to degrade oxytetracycline (OTC) under visible light (Vis) irradiation. The morphology and structure of the photocatalyst were determined by XRD, FT-IR, FE-SEM, EDX, BET, TGA, UV-Vis DRS, and PL. The results showed that CNBC-30 had the best photocatalytic performance with an OTC removal efficiency of more than 87% within 120 min under the condition of [OTC] = 20 mg/L, [catalyst] = 500 mg/L, [Na2S2O8] = 1.26 mM, and pH = 4 at room temperature, which was much better than those of pure g-C3N4, Bi2MoO6, and CNB composites. This superiority is due to the excellent adsorption ability of clinoptilolite that effectively forms the g-C3N4/Bi2MoO6 heterojunctions, thus improving the ability to separate charge carriers while decreasing the recombination rate of electron-hole pairs. Furthermore, the effect of catalyst dosage, oxidant concentration, initial pollutant concentration, solution pH, and coexisting anions on the OTC degradation was comprehensively studied. The results showed that the CNBC-30/PDS system had high reusability and adaptability at different pH levels (3.0-11.0). Quenching tests showed that 1O2, O2•-, and h+ played the main roles in the OTC degradation. In addition, OTC intermediates were identified and degradation pathways were proposed based on the results of MS analysis. DFT calculations successfully predicted the positions on the OTC molecule with high Fukui numbers that are suitable for being attacked by oxidants. CNBC-30 was stable for OTC degradation after four cycles with a degradation efficiency of above 78%, demonstrating its durability and potential for practical applications. This study provides insight into the PDS activation in the visible light region by a clinoptilolite-based Z-scheme heterojunction for organic pollutant degradation.

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L. Phuong Thu, N. T. Phuong, D. Thi Hai , H. N. Nguyen, D. T. M. Thanh, T. T. Phan, T. Tsubota and N. T. Dung, Environ. Sci.: Water Res. Technol. , 2024, Accepted Manuscript , DOI: 10.1039/D4EW00549J

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Environmental Science: Water Research & Technology. ... Social activity. Tweet. Share. Search articles by author. Le Phuong Thu. Nguyen Thu Phuong. Do Thi Hai . Hong Nam Nguyen. Dinh Thi Mai Thanh. Thi Thuy Phan. Toshiki Tsubota. Nguyen Trung Dung. This article has not yet been cited. Loading related content.

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Chapter 11. Interviewing

Types of Interviews

Creating an Interview Guide

Type of Questions

Background/Demographic Questions

Temporality

Question Sequence

Probes and Flexibility

The Final Question

Conducting the Interview

How Many Interviews?

Your Final Product: The Ideal Interview Transcript

Final Tips from an Interview Master

Sample: Demographic Questionnaire

Example: Interview Guide

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Interviews in Social Research: Advantages and Disadvantages

Types of interview

Interviews: key terms

The Strengths and Limitations of Unstructured Interviews

The strengths of unstructured interviews

The Limitations of unstructured interviews

Sociological perspectives on interviews

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In This Article Expand or collapse the "in this article" section Interview Methodology

Interview Methodology by Heather Hamill LAST REVIEWED: 27 March 2014 LAST MODIFIED: 27 March 2014 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199756384-0105

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