Getting the best from research: Interviews

“I’ve always believed one-to-ones are more effective than focus groups” – so asserted a client last week. And I agreed. Their reasoning was that you can get a crowd mentality in focus groups – which can certainly be true (but then if you’re looking at workplace issues, you can get a crowd mentality there too.)
 

For me, it’s about arithmetic. If I speak to one person for just 15 minutes, I’ll get more from them than I will from any of the 12 people I speak to for 90 minutes. I’ll have the chance go deeper and explore more with them – and possibly to deviate a bit more from the interview guide.

But the chief down-side is arithmetical too. It takes a lot more time to speak to as many people. In those 90 minutes, I can talk to a maximum of 6 people one-to-one (and realistically fewer than that). It’ll create more transcripts, which will take longer to administrate, to analyse and to report. 

There are the benefits of being able to get more quickly and further into people’s heads. That can really help to understand what may initially seem like and alien organisation. And people may be willing to be even more open one-to-one. And, of course, you only have one person to manage. That’s, usually, manageable.

But there are downsides too. To some extent your interviewee may be devious, truculent and unreliable. They may have their own agenda and - particularly if they’re more senior – may be rather good at bringing you round to their opinion. You need to guard against this. Or they might not really want to take part and - taking your call between meetings - there’s only you to jolly them along.

And of course, there’s no-one but you to challenge them or introduce new ways of thinking - and it may not be appropriate for you to involve yourself like that. You can give them a good experience and make them feel valued, but you’re the only person that will learn anything new from the session. Sometimes focus groups can gain their own internal momentum, which can be very powerful.

So, you need to make sure you’ve got the best use of budget and time. Don’t put your eggs in one type of research – and I can help you strike the right balance.