Research Governance

Interview Guide

An interview guide is a structured plan of topics, prompts, and follow-up questions used to conduct a research interview.

Concept facts

An interview guide is a structured plan of topics, prompts, and follow-up questions used to conduct a research interview.

Also known as
Interview protocol, discussion guide, interview schedule, semi-structured guide.
Used in
User interviews, stakeholder interviews, field research, qualitative UX research, service evaluation, and institutional research.
Interpret with
Moderation guide, research protocol, informed consent, sampling strategy, thematic analysis, and codebook.

Plain-language explanation

An interview guide helps researchers conduct interviews consistently while still allowing participants to explain their experiences in their own words.

It usually includes an introduction, consent reminder, warm-up questions, topic sections, core prompts, follow-up probes, and a closing question. In UX research, it helps researchers explore user goals, barriers, routines, decisions, expectations, and service experiences.

Why it matters

Without an interview guide, researchers may ask leading questions, skip important topics, or collect data that is difficult to compare across participants.

In institutional and high-stakes service contexts, an interview guide also helps protect participants by avoiding unnecessary sensitive questions and by structuring difficult topics carefully.

Use contexts

An interview guide is used when:

  • conducting semi-structured user interviews
  • interviewing staff, stakeholders, or implementation partners
  • exploring service journeys and workflow problems
  • collecting qualitative data before or after usability testing
  • comparing perspectives across user groups or institutional roles

Application guidance

An interview guide should be aligned with research questions. Questions should be open-ended, neutral, and understandable. The guide should avoid asking participants to design solutions before the team understands the problem.

Probes should help the researcher explore examples, sequence, context, decision points, consequences, and exceptions.

For sensitive or high-power-distance settings, the guide should include careful wording, reassurance about confidentiality, and clear boundaries around what participants are not required to answer.

Practical example

A consulting team studies an ERP migration for a large organization. The interview guide includes separate sections for department heads, data-entry staff, IT administrators, and finance reviewers.

Instead of asking, “Do you like the new system?” the guide asks participants to describe how they complete a specific workflow, where they switch to spreadsheets, when they ask another department for clarification, and what happens when records do not match legacy data.

The guide helps the team identify operational friction, training gaps, governance issues, and data-quality problems without reducing the study to preference questions.

Interpretive boundaries

An interview guide should not be treated as a rigid questionnaire unless the method requires that. In semi-structured interviews, researchers should follow important participant-led explanations while still covering core topics.

A good interview guide does not guarantee good interviewing. Moderator skill, rapport, listening, ethics, and analysis quality still matter.

Applied at Userhub

Userhub uses interview guides to support structured but flexible qualitative research across UX, service design, institutional research, and digital transformation projects.

Interview guides help maintain research focus while allowing participants to explain real workflows, constraints, and decision environments.

See Userhub UX Lab for applied UX research and evaluation context.

Sources and references

Brinkmann, S., & Kvale, S. (2015). InterViews: Learning the Craft of Qualitative Research Interviewing (3rd ed.). SAGE Publications.

Castillo-Montoya, M. (2016). Preparing for interview research: The interview protocol refinement framework. The Qualitative Report, 21(5), 811–831. https://doi.org/10.46743/2160-3715/2016.2337

Rubin, H. J., & Rubin, I. S. (2012). Qualitative Interviewing: The Art of Hearing Data (3rd ed.). SAGE Publications.

Seidman, I. (2013). Interviewing as Qualitative Research: A Guide for Researchers in Education and the Social Sciences (4th ed.). Teachers College Press.

Cite this entry

APA

Userhub. (2026). Interview Guide. UX Reference. https://userhub.com.bd/reference/interview-guide/