You have prior interview experience. Spontaneous questions are deceptively challenging, and it’s easy to accidentally ask a leading question or make a participant uneasy.
Your research question is exploratory in nature. Participant answers can guide future research questions and help you develop a more robust knowledge base for future research.
Just like in structured interviews, it is critical that you remain organized and develop a system for keeping track of participant responses. However, since the questions are less set than in a structured interview, the data collection and analysis become a bit more complex.
Semi-structured interviews are often considered “the best of both worlds.” Combining elements of structured and unstructured interviews gives semi-structured interviews the advantages of both: comparable, reliable data, and the flexibility to ask follow-up questions.
The ability to design a thematic framework beforehand keeps both the interviewer and the participant on task, avoiding distractions while encouraging two-way communication.
While similar methods-wise to structured interviews, questionnaires, and surveys, semi-structured interviews introduce more detail and richness due to their more open-ended nature. Participants can be asked to clarify, elaborate, or rephrase their answers if need be.
