ENVM7003 Chap.7 Interview and Focus Group Guides
Interview and Focus Group Guides
The workshop draws one distinction and builds everything on it. A structured interview runs from a schedule: the same wording in the same sequence on every occasion. A semi-structured interview runs from a guide: the same territory, with flexibility in how and when you ask. Neither is more rigorous.
Structure buys comparability, which matters when several people are interviewing or a planned comparison is coming. Flexibility buys the ability to follow what you did not anticipate, which is usually where the finding is.
A guide is then built from a toolkit rather than a wish list. Six question types are named: descriptive, storytelling, opinion, structural, contrast and devil's advocate.
Five prompt types support them: secondary, clarification, nudging, summary and receptive cues. Ordering is either funnel, opening broad and narrowing to the specific experience, or pyramid, opening concrete and widening to judgement. Eight to ten questions is the working length. Focus groups use the same construction with an extra variable that dominates everything: composition.
Who is in the room, and their relationships to one another, decide what can be said in it.
What this chapter covers
- 01
7.1 Schedule against guide, and what each form buys
- 02
7.2 Six question types, from descriptive to devil's advocate
- 03
7.3 Five prompts written into the guide rather than improvised
- 04
7.4 Funnel and pyramid order, and which participant needs which
- 05
7.5 Focus group composition, size and the dominance problem
- 06
7.6 Piloting a guide and the faults it reveals
An eight-question semi-structured guide in funnel order
- +2Open descriptive. How long have you lived here, and what brought you to the area? Easy, factual, and it establishes the participant as the expert on their own situation.
- +2Move to storytelling. Can you tell me how you first heard the project was coming? Sequence and causation arrive together, and nudging prompts keep it going.
- +2Ask for the opinion only once there is something to hold it against. How useful did you find that process?
- +2Add the structural question most guides omit. What do you think led you to see it that way? This is what turns an opinion into something analysable.
- +2Close with contrast, then the confronting framing. Comparison with earlier consultation, and only at question eight the argument that consultation cannot change a funded decision.
Key terms
- Interview schedule
- A fixed list of questions asked in the same wording and order for every participant, used when responses must line up question by question.
- Interview guide
- A planned set of topics and openings that allows flexibility in wording and order, used when depth matters more than strict comparability.
- Structural question
- A question asking how a participant came to hold a view, prompting reflection on the experience behind an opinion. It is the type most often missing from student guides.
- Contrast question
- A question comparing experience across place, time, role or another dimension, which surfaces change the participant may not volunteer directly.
- Nudging prompt
- A short intervention used to continue a line of questioning, such as asking how something felt or inviting more detail.
- Receptive cue
- A minimal signal that encourages a participant to keep speaking, whether verbal acknowledgement or a nod. It is the least intrusive prompt available.
- Funnel order
- Beginning with broader general questions and narrowing toward specific experiential ones, which suits participants who need warming up or a sensitive topic.
- Pyramid order
- Beginning with specific questions and widening toward general big-picture ones, which suits busy or sceptical participants who disengage from abstraction.
Interview and Focus Group Guides FAQ
How many questions should an interview guide have?
The workshop asks for eight to ten, and that number is roughly what fits an hour once prompts and follow-ups are allowed for. A guide with twenty questions is a questionnaire being read aloud. If your draft runs long, cut the descriptive questions whose answers you could obtain from a public record instead of spending a participant's time on them.
How big should a focus group be?
The workshop recommends between six and ten participants, with usually three to five groups depending on the purpose of the research and the availability of participants. Fewer than six tends to behave like a group interview; more than ten and several people never speak.
What do I do if one person dominates the discussion?
Treat it as a data problem, not a manners problem. What you have recorded is one opinion plus polite agreement, and analysing it as several views misrepresents the session. The repairs are ordinary: address questions around the table by name, ask explicitly whether anyone sees it differently, and take an individual written response before opening a contentious item.
Should I use strangers or an existing group?
It depends what you need to observe. Strangers with a shared experience speak more candidly because nobody has to live with what is said. An existing group such as a committee discusses a specific decision efficiently and brings its hierarchy into the room, which suppresses dissent. Mixed roles make disagreement itself observable and require active protection of the quieter party.
What does a pilot of an interview guide reveal?
Different faults from a questionnaire pilot. Look for the question that produced a one-word answer, which usually means it was closed when you intended it to be open; the question your participant had already answered, which means two questions overlap; and the moment you had no prompt ready and the silence worked, which is worth keeping.
Assessment move
Draft the guide, then annotate it with the type of every question and the prompt you would use. If one type accounts for most of the guide it will produce a flat interview, and the fix is to convert two opinion questions into a storytelling question and a structural one.
Pilot with somebody outside the group and record yourself if you can; the thing to listen for is how often you filled a silence that the participant was about to fill.
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