A structured interview uses an interview guide (a set of questions) which every participant will be asked in the same order. This means that the researcher may not add questions, alter wording or change the order of the questions that are asked. Structured interviews are used when there are specific things that the researcher wants to know. It is a technique also used when there are a lot of interviews that need to be carried out so that the data collected is standardized, making it easier to draw conclusions about trends in the data. Like all interview techniques, training is essential to make sure that the method is used effectively.

Strengths of this method include that the interview process is standardized and allows for relatively easy analysis. It is also easy to administer to large groups over time. Limitations include that answering questions in this way may be seen as an artificial way to communicate between people and thus have low ecological validity. Also, by deciding on the questions in advance, the researchers may be unintentionally limiting what they are studying. The nature of the questions may also influence the responses from the interviewee - either by inducing demand characteristics (like social desirability effect) or by priming schema that would influence the recall of memories.

A focus group is a group interview. The participants interact with each other, making for a natural conversation. The conversation is not just between the researcher and the participants, but the participants react and respond to each other.

A researcher would use this method for several reasons. On a practical level, it allows more interviews to be carried out in a shorter period of time. In addition, it helps to establish the credibility of comments made in the interview as other members of the focus group will confirm or challenge the ideas that are expressed. It can also happen that participants will expand on ideas of other members of the group which they would not have considered speaking about if they had not heard it from another participant. Focus groups also help to build rapport as the members of the group feel support from one another and it is not so important whether the researcher him/herself has a similar life experience.

The limitations include that there could be power hierarchies within the group which lead to conformity effects. In addition, there is the question of the anonymity of the responses. Although the researcher may guarantee that each person's identity will remain anonymous, it is difficult to guarantee that other members of the group may not reveal such information. It is also important that the facilitator (researcher) is able to manage the group's discussion without influencing the results. A group interview which is poorly managed may lead to a lot of irrelevant data that is not fit to the purpose of the research.

An unstructured interview asks the interviewee to "tell a story." Holocaust research and criminal psychology have made extensive use of unstructured interviews, asking people simply to "tell their story" or "tell me what you saw." Unstructured interviews do not have a set of questions to be asked and often flow like a normal conversation. This eliminates the problem of the questions actually influencing the memory of the participants. It is also a more natural way of communicating between two people. The researcher may ask clarifying questions, but overall uses language tags and body language to communicate interest and empathy. This type of interview is often used for complex human realities where it is important to understand how people construct meaning in their lives. They are also used in criminal investigations in order to avoid memory distortion.

The limitation of unstructured interviews is that they are very time-consuming. They also may be rather unfocused in nature and not necessarily fulfil the researcher's aim of the research. Therefore, a lot of information irrelevant to the goals of the research may be collected. Finally, when there is no standardized interview schedule, it makes it difficult to draw conclusions from a large number of interviews.

There are several things that a researcher should consider when setting up an interview. What type of interview will be used? Will a team need to be trained? Which questions should be asked - and then, pilot the questions to make sure that they are good questions. How will the sample be obtained? How will data be recorded? How will data be transcribed? What are the ethical considerations for this study and how will we address them?

When carrying out an interview, rapport is important. The researcher needs to be careful with body language and the way that he/she interacts with the interviewee. If the interviewee feels that s/he can trust the interviewer, then the interviewee is more likely to disclose personal information and speak freely. It is also important that the researcher does not interpret or include his/her own thoughts on the subject being discussed. Finally, ethics must be followed. If an interviewee feels uncomfortable, it is important to remind them that they don't have to answer the questions and that the interview can be stopped. The interviewer also has to be careful not to ask invasive questions which are disturbing to the interviewee.

There are several problems with carrying out a one-on-one interview. First, it is important to establish rapport with the interviewee so that s/he feels comfortable. The one-on-one nature may seem very formal and unnatural to the interviewee. One-on-one interviews also take a lot of time and require scheduling many individual appointments.

A group interview can be difficult because it is important that the researcher keep some control over the group without influencing their behaviour. This is a difficult balance. In addition, the researcher has to try to make sure that the discussion is inclusive and not just limited to one or two dominant members of the group. Finally, the data collection for a focus group can be difficult to collect. Even in the case of recording the conversation, if there is a lot of emotion in the discussion, it may be difficult to determine who and how many people agree with an idea that is said.

There are several ethical considerations that must be made when carrying out an interview. First, the interviewee should give informed consent. They should know the purpose of the interview and how the data will be used. The interviewee should also not feel forced to discuss things that they find distressing or embarrassing. In addition, the identity of the interviewee should remain anonymous. Finally, the interviewee has the right to withdraw at any point during the interview process.

Traditional transcription is verbatim transcription. This simply means that every word that the interviewee says is written down.

Post-modern transcription is more inclusive. It includes body language, language tags, sighs, laughter and facial expressions with the goal of giving a richer understanding of the interview data.

An inductive content analysis would take the following steps. First, the interview would be transcribed. Then the researcher would read through the text looking for data that "emerges" from the text. Then the raw data is organized into themes. The researcher than would write an interpretation of the themes.

Back translation is used only when a researcher has to conduct an interview in a different language. Let's say that I am part of a team interviewing Holocaust survivors from across Eastern Europe to see how they are reflecting back on their adult lives after the Holocaust. If I interview a Czech Holocaust survivor in Czech, I would then translate the text into English so that the team could carry out a content analysis. But what if my translation is poor or biased? In back translation, I would give the English translation to another researcher who would translate it back into Czech. The translation would then be taken back to the interviewee to see if s/he feels that this represents what s/he said in the interview. This is a way to establish the credibility of the translation.

There are three ways that an interviewer can establish credibility. First, there should be inter-coder reliability - that is, other researchers come to the same conclusions about the same interview. Secondly, credibility can be established through method triangulation. If I carry out an interview on how someone handles a stressful situation, I may then carry out an observation to see if the person responds as they said in the interview. Finally, I can also take my interpretation back to the person who was interviewed in order to see if they agree with what I have concluded.