Market Research: Foundations to Practice · Qualitative Research Methods
In-Depth Interviews
One-on-one interviews remain the workhorse qualitative method for a reason: they let a researcher genuinely follow an unexpected thread. This chapter covers what makes them work and where they fall short.
An in-depth interview is a one-on-one conversation, typically 30 to 60 minutes, using a semi-structured guide, a set of planned topics and questions flexible enough to let the researcher follow up on unexpected or particularly rich responses rather than mechanically working through a fixed script regardless of what the participant actually says.
Key Takeaways
- In-depth interviews use a semi-structured guide, flexible enough to let a researcher follow unexpected, valuable threads a fixed script would miss.
- The semi-structured format's core value is adaptability, since a rigid script has no mechanism to probe an unanticipated response.
- Interview quality depends heavily on interviewer skill: rapport-building, avoiding leading, and knowing when to probe further.
- Interviews produce data from few participants and cannot be assumed to generalize; they're for depth, not for measuring how widespread a view is.