Structured Interview

Analyzing semi-structured interviews

Once you’re confident in your themes, you can take either an inductive or a deductive approach.

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  An inductive approach is more open-ended, allowing your data to determine your themes.
  
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  A deductive approach is the opposite. It involves investigating whether your data confirm preconceived themes or ideas.
  

NoteThematic analysis is relatively subjective, which can lead to issues with the reliability of your results. Its dependence on your judgment and interpretations can lead to biased analysis.
Be extra vigilant about remaining objective here, even if your analysis does not confirm your initial hypotheses or thoughts.

Presenting your results (with example)

After your data analysis, the next step is to report your findings in a research paper.

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  Your methodology section describes how you collected the data (in this case, describing your semi-structured interview process) and explains how you justify or conceptualize your analysis.
  
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  Your discussion and results sections usually address each of your coded categories.
  
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  You can then conclude with the main takeaways and avenues for further research.
  

Example of interview methodology for a research paper

Let’s say you are interested in vegan students on your campus. You have noticed that the number of vegan students seems to have increased since your first year, and you are curious what caused this shift.
You identify a few potential options based on literature:

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  Perceptions about personal health or the perceived “healthiness” of a vegan diet
  
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  Concerns about animal welfare and the meat industry
  
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  Increased climate awareness, especially in regards to animal products
  
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  Availability of more vegan options, making the lifestyle change easier
  

Anecdotally, you hypothesize that students are more aware of the impact of animal products on the ongoing climate crisis, and this has influenced many to go vegan. However, you cannot rule out the possibility of the other options, such as the new vegan bar in the dining hall.
Since your topic is exploratory in nature and you have a lot of experience conducting interviews in your work-study role as a research assistant, you decide to conduct semi-structured interviews.
You have a friend who is a member of a campus club for vegans and vegetarians, so you send a message to the club to ask for volunteers. You also spend some time at the campus dining hall, approaching students at the vegan bar asking if they’d like to participate.
Here are some questions you could ask:

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  Do you find vegan options on campus to be: excellent; good; fair; average; poor?
  
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  How long have you been a vegan?
  
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  What is the single biggest factor that led to your decision to become vegan?
  
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    Follow-up questions can probe the strength of this decision (i.e., was it overwhelmingly one reason, or more of a mix?)
    
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  Do you think that more people should be vegan?
  
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    Why?
    

Depending on your participants’ answers to these questions, ask follow-ups as needed for clarification, further information, or elaboration.
NoteBe careful of leading questions. Here’s an example:

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