Vijay Ratna Kumar Blog

In-depth interviews are essentially a hybrid of the one-on-one interview. Intensive interviews are unique for these reasons:

• They generally use smaller samples.

• The respondents give specific answers for reasons with detailed background. Elaborate data are obtained concerning respondents’ opinions, values, motivations, recollections, experiences, and feelings.

• They allow for lengthy observation of respondents’ nonverbal responses.

• They are usually long. Unlike personal interviews used in survey research that may last only a few minutes, an intensive or in-depth interview may last several hours and may take more than one session.

• They can be customized to individual respondents. In a personal interview, all respondents are usually asked the same questions. Intensive interviews allow interviewers to form questions based on each respondent’s answers.

• They can be influenced by the interview climate. To a greater extent than with personal interviews, the success of intensive interviews depends on the rapport established between the interviewers and the respondent.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Intensive Interviews

The most important advantage of the in-depth interview is the wealth of detail that it provides.

Intensive interviewing provides more accurate responses on sensitive issues. The rapport between respondent and interviewer makes it easier to approach certain topics that might be taboo (distasteful) in other approaches.

 On the negative side, intensive interviewing is typically done with a non-random sample. Since interviews are usually non standardized, each respondent may answer a slightly different version of a question.

 Another disadvantage of in-depth interviews is that they are especially sensitive to interviewer bias. In a long interview, it is possible for a respondent to learn a good deal of information about the interviewer. Despite practice and training, some interviewers may inadvertently communicate their attitudes through loaded questions, nonverbal cues, or tone of voice.

The amount of data collected is tremendous, and analysis may take several weeks to several months.

Interviewees may become tired and bored. Interviews must be scheduled several hours apart, which lengthens the data collection effort.

Small samples do not allow for generalization to the target population.