As a qualitative researcher, you should be familiar with the basic issues in constructing interview questions. We will discuss what guiding questions are and how to develop them.
After reviewing this document, you will be able to:
Guiding questions are found only in qualitative interviews. They ask for specific information that will answer the research question.
The list of guiding questions for an interview is sometimes called the interview protocol.
Because they are qualitative, Guiding questions are not structured or "closed," meaning they are open-ended and invite the respondents to provide information in their own words.
Guiding questions ask for specific kinds of information based on the research question. Thus, they are written ahead of time, although they can be used flexibly, making up what is often called a semi-structured interview.
This is an example of an open-ended guiding question:
"In your own words, and in as much detail as you can, please tell me about the last time you were involved in a conflict with one of your employees."
Notice how this specifies the topic for which you want a response, and provides guidance about how you want him or her to discuss it. Here's another example of an open-ended guiding question:
"During that conflict, how did you manage your anger?"
Notice that, this time, rather than simply identifying the topic and asking whatever the respondent wants to tell you, you specifically guide the respondent into a particular aspect of the topic. However, the question remains open: you do not specify any particular answer, which you might do in a quantitative survey item. Let's look at the same question changed into a quantitative survey item.
For a quantitative survey, you might ask the same question about anger in a different, more structured, or closed way. For example:
In a qualitative interview, on the other hand, you can ask specific details like this, but you should avoid the forced-choice format in favor of asking the question in a more open way. For example:
During that conflict, describe whether the issue of anger came up, and, if it did, how you handled it. For instance, talk about how directly or indirectly you expressed anger, how your body language changed, and anything else about it that occurs to you.
Here, the question seeks the respondent's own words, rather than feeding him words and asking him or her to agree or disagree.
Guiding questions are used in the majority of qualitative interviews. They are used when the interviewer wants to guide the respondent to focus on a particular issue.
The two most common types of guiding questions are follow-up questions and topical guiding questions.
Follow-up questions guide the respondent to say more or to go more deeply into something she has said. Here are a few different kinds:
You will never find the phrase "topical guiding questions" in research design texts, nor will most methodologists recognize it. We use the phrase simply to indicate what guiding questions do—direct attention to specific topics or issues you want discussed, as opposed to follow-up questions.
Guiding questions are found in all the qualitative designs. Some phenomenologists avoid topicals, but others use them. Talk to your mentor about this.
Guiding questions are needed when the respondent does not spontaneously bring up topics relevant to your research question. Let's look at an example.
Here is the research question for a generic or basic qualitative study:
How do fourth-grade teachers describe their perspectives on six commonly reported problems in teaching special education children?
Assume that the researcher for this study has studied the literature and has found that there are six common problems found in the quantitative literature for this topic, but no qualitative information is available for teachers' perspectives. For this reason, the researcher has decided to conduct a two-part interview.
In the first part, she will ask an open question, such as "Please tell me, in your own words and in detail, whatever you can about your experiences teaching special education children." No specific issues will be addressed, allowing the teachers to tell their story in any way they wish.
Then, in the second part of the interview, the researcher will ask guiding questions about the six commonly reported problems if the teacher did not spontaneously bring them up in the first part. If the researcher does not ask these questions, she will not be able to answer her research question, lacking information in the existing research about teachers' perspectives on the six reported problems.
Characteristics of successful guiding questions include:
This example is from a study asking, "How do female senior chief financial officers in global corporations describe the process of breaking through the "glass ceiling?"
The design was qualitative grounded theory. One of the data collection methods was intensive interviews with twenty such women executives. Here is one of the guiding questions used in that interview:
Please describe how you overcame gender bias in your career.
Before moving on, take a moment and consider what is wrong with this question, using the list of desired characteristics:
Here are some of the things that are wrong with this example:
It could be rewritten, "If you have experienced other people's bias about your being a woman, how have you handled it in your career?"
Let's try another example.
This example comes from a basic or generic qualitative study, which asked,
"What are the attitudes and beliefs of retired clergy about the role of prayer, study of religious texts, and attendance at worship for elderly people?"
This study made use of qualitative interviews, and one of the guiding questions was this, "Do you find that studying the scriptures is an ego-syntonic activity for elderly persons?"
Take a few moments to review this question and decide what is wrong with it. Here is a list of desired characteristics:
It could be rewritten, "What has been your experience regarding how elderly people feel when they study their own religion's scriptures?"
Let's try another example.
The following example is from a dissertation that used a mixed-methods design for a case study. The qualitative portion of the study used a two-part interview, the first part beginning an open-ended question and the second part using guiding questions to elicit information. The research question being investigated was as follows:
What lessons can be learned about organizational communication and ethics from the collapse of a large urban-based banking organization after the criminal conviction of its chief operating officer?
One of the guiding questions in the second part of the interview was this:
To what extent did any corporate leader make ethics a personal priority in their management decisions?
Here is a list of desired characteristics:
The question might be rewritten like this:
Some people argue that corporations have moral and ethical responsibilities, both to the communities that support them and to their stakeholders and employees. For instance, there is a belief that they should provide honest information when they discuss their business plans and activities in public. Please describe what you perceived to be the executive leadership's behavior in regard to honest reporting.
Imagine that you are designing a qualitative study with the following research question:
How do police officers describe the effects of having shot and killed a citizen in the act of committing a crime?
Imagine that you're writing a series of guiding questions based on a set of existing quantitative findings that suggest that police officers who kill someone in the line of duty subsequently experience guilt, anxiety, self-doubt, and resentment toward management. You're interested in exploring how the officers themselves describe these experiences. You are eager to hear their own stories, and you want to avoid prejudicing them. To do so, you decide that you will open your interview with an opening question, such as:
"I'm going to ask you some questions about your experience, but before I do, I'd like to hear your own story about how the shooting affected you. By "affected you," I mean anything you wish to tell me about—the emotions or thoughts or feelings you went through, how you handled it all, what effects there might have been on your health or on your family life—anything whatever that comes to mind. Just take your time and tell me whatever you can in your own words."
The officer does not tell you anything about feelings of guilt, although he touches on the other experiences that the quantitative research found. Please write a guiding question to get into the topic of guilt.
Compare your question with this example, using the list of characteristics below.
"Some research has suggested that officers feel a sense of guilt after a fatal shooting, but I notice that you did not describe that as part of your experience. I wonder if you would mind sharing your thoughts on guilt in this situation?"
"I wonder if you would mind sharing your thoughts" seems like a yes/no question, although it really isn't in the context. But, due to the topic's very sensitive nature, phrasing the question this way allows the officer to interpret it as permission to say if he does not want to share his thoughts.
Do you like your own version of the question better than this one? Does it satisfy the characteristics? Good for you!
This concludes the document. We have:
Doc. reference: phd_t3_u07s1_writeguide.html