Successful interviewers are able to use multitasking as a strategy to gather as much information as possible. During the entire interview you should be…
- Listening to make sure key points of your research question are being covered
- Relating comments to your research question
- Deciding how to respond and whether to alter questions or the order of question mid-interview
- Using probing questions
- Remembering certain points you want to return to
- Taking notes
This may seem overwhelming at first, but with a solid understanding of your research question, attentive listening, and helpful note taking, you’ll get the hang of it!
Getting started with an interview might be the most challenging part of the process, especially if you are not an experienced interviewer. To help you get over this hump of the interview process, here is a quick guide on how to begin an interview:
The clip below shows an example of a poorly done interview with a voiceover explaining the interviewer’s errors (Gibbs, 2013).
This next clip shows the same interview with the errors corrected!
If you’ve found this helpful you can the full video by Graham Gibbs titled “How to do a research interview.”
At this point, you hopefully have a good grasp on some essential practices that will help you be a successful interviewer. In the next section, you will learn in more detail about listening skills and rapport building.
