ABSTRACT
An interview guide is the product of a series of design steps. The term ‘questionnaire’ is often used as an alternative to the term ‘interview guide’. Strictly speaking, however, ‘questionnaire’ refers to a list of questions to be asked, which is only one element of the interview guide. A complete interview guide containing all the elements listed above is indispensable in cases requiring different interviewers to conduct various interviews belonging to a single series. The initial step in the design of an interview guide is, therefore, to decide what kind of information needs to be gathered in the interview or, to be more precise, what information need underlies the interview. Structured interview guides consist of precisely worded questions and, for the most part, of nothing more. The designer of an interview guide knows exactly what the guide is meant to achieve and how the interviewer and the interviewee are supposed to behave and respond.
