ABSTRACT
Open-ended interviewing requires the cultivation of a relationship. In an open-ended interview, all questions are not created equal. When a reporter or historian interviews a source who was a participant in the events being studied, or a social scientist seeks to understand a process by talking to the people involved, the chances are they are using the open-ended, semistructured interview. Certain types of questions work better in different parts of the interview or with different people. It is possible through the use of open questions to create an atmosphere where the respondent is encouraged to think aloud, to fill in the blank page that the unstructured question represents. Closed interviews have questions that are fixed, if not for all time, then at least for the duration of the project in which these interviews figure. The questions are structured that they are asked and the responses recorded in a given order or a given cycle and in a given way.
