Overcoming Research Interview Angst

Research interview angst is real. If you’ve spent any amount of time interviewing participants, you have almost certainly experienced this. You’ve done your preparation, found a seemingly ideal candidate to talk to, and started the discussion. And then…things go off-kilter. You realize you don’t have any chance of getting through your discussion guide at the pace things are moving. Maybe the participant seems disengaged, and you feel like you’re slowly and painfully trying to drag every answer from them. Or you find yourself listening to an abundance of detail about a topic that is completely unrelated to what you’re trying to explore.

I’ve spent the majority of my professional career immersed in qualitative research, and over the years, I’ve developed some tips and tricks for handling common sources of research interview angst. I’ve sourced the angst-inducers for this article from questions raised during a research class I’ve been teaching and have shared some tried-and-true ways to salvage interviews gone wrong.

Angst Inducer 1: Off-Topic Discussion

You’re researching a particular process as part of product research, and during the interview, the participant keeps talking about a part of the process that is out of scope. How do you address this?

Be open to the idea that your scope may be set incorrectly. Even though your team has good intentions, talks to customers, and carefully considers a process, sometimes a critical step or priority can be missed. Listen closely to what is shared, and pay attention in later participant discussions to evaluate whether this might be an important trend.

Consider proactively asking for “missed steps” feedback. Ask questions like, “Can you think of anything important to this process that I may have missed?” or “Is there anything you’re surprised that you don’t see here?”

Reflect on what you’ve heard and redirect the focus if needed. After listening closely to the participant’s feedback, consider where you want the focus of the interview to be and redirect. For example, “Thank you for sharing that. Now, I really want to spend a little more time digging into Step 2.” If they shared anything about Step 2 in their earlier conversation, you could also refer back to that feedback. This lets the participant know you were listening but drives the remaining discussion towards your area of interest.

In some cases, you may have to interrupt the participant to redirect. One way to do this might be, “I’m sorry to interrupt you. That was a great explanation, and I think I understand where you’re coming from. Now, I’d love to talk to you more about [topic].”

Respond directly to off-topic feedback by letting the participant know you’ve heard them. If a participant pushes back as you redirect, you might say, “That feedback has been constructive; I’m going to make sure this gets shared with our product team. For today’s conversation, though, I’d love to do a deeper dive on this particular area of the process.” This reassures the participant that you’re listening while still achieving your goal of getting the conversation back on track.

Encourage shorter responses by adding qualifiers to your questions. For example, “Really briefly can you tell me about [topic].” This prompts the participant to limit the length of their answers.

Angst Inducer 2: Addressing Previous Feedback

You’re speaking to a participant you’ve talked to before, and it’s evident that you need to show progress on their previous feedback in order to have a current productive discussion.

Lead by recognizing the previous interaction(s) and acknowledging what you’ve heard. The participant wants to know that they’re not speaking into a void. This particular challenge is common when you have long relationships with participants (for example, VIP participants, advisory boards, or repeat participants).

One way to do this might be to say, “Last time we met, you told us all this great information about [topic]. We took that feedback to our executives, showed it to our marketing teams, and shared it with our product managers. Now we’re digging into a particular area of that same topic — you shared some earlier feedback, but let’s get deeper today.” This lets the participant know that you value their earlier feedback and assures them that you’re not wasting their time asking duplicative questions.

Enable rich conversation by addressing the elephant in the room. The reality is, sometimes there is no clear resolution to share regarding previous feedback — the current state is not what they are going to want to hear. Maybe they have told you several times that a process is too hard, and there’s a reason you are not able to fix it right now.

Anticipate this scenario and come up with a way to speak to this that your team feels comfortable with. For example, “We know you have already shared feedback about [topic]. That’s still an issue, and we are exploring some ways to address it.” Again, this lets them know that you haven’t forgotten their input.

Angst Inducer 3: The Silent Type

The participant you’re trying to have a conversation with is incredibly quiet. You have heard about leveraging silence during interviews, but how much is too much?

Implement the “five-second rule.” After key discussion points, mentally count to five to give the participant time to expand on their previous response. Getting comfortable with some silence is a critical skill when interviewing.

Provide some warm-up questions that ask about something low-stakes. Sometimes you find that the whole conversation is tough — maybe you’re finding yourself waiting five seconds after every statement, desperately hoping for that expansion of feedback. It can feel like you have to pull answers out of the participant.

Asking questions like, “What do you enjoy about your job?” can help the participant speak more freely. Then, you can return to your outlined discussion guide.

Remind the participant that honesty is appreciated. For example, “This is a learning experience for us, so any insights you share will only help us improve our understanding and our products.” This can allow a participant who is worried about sharing constructive feedback to feel more comfortable.

Encourage the participant to think aloud. This gives them the freedom to speak without carefully crafting an answer. An example of this might be, “It can be beneficial for us to hear how you’re thinking about a topic, so feel free to think aloud.”

Explore whether the topic may just not be top-of-mind for the participant. Directly address this by saying something like, “Sometimes participants tell us that a task is just not something they spend a lot of time doing, and that’s OK — that information is helpful for us to know too.” If the participant doesn’t have a lot of feedback on a topic or can’t remember details from the last time they performed a task, this gives them an “out” and provides you with helpful context.

Angst Inducer 4: Mixed Depth of Feedback

Despite a great start to the interview, the participant suddenly does not have a lot to say about the topic you’re exploring and does not provide any real perspective about the concept.

Change course if a participant lacks feedback in one area of the discussion. Sometimes a participant shares a great perspective in part of a discussion but has much less to say in later lines of questioning. It may be that the participant just hasn’t invested any time thinking about the concept you’re exploring, or they may be less experienced than you anticipated in a particular topic.

If this happens, you may need to change course and accept that struggling through a series of questions that mismatch with the participant’s experience will just be painful for you both.

Lean on questions around the participant’s current experiences. Use questions participants don’t have to invest a lot of forethought in to share insights with you. Inquiries like this can offer interesting data points that add context, even if they are not directly specific to your topic. Examples of this include:

“How are things working today?”
“Tell me about the teams you collaborate with.”
“What are current moments of delight or points of frustration with this process?”
“What kinds of things does your manager care about?”

Ask questions to understand why a particular set of questions was off-base for them. For example, “Is [concept] something you’ve ever considered? Tell me more about that.” This can help provide valuable intel — perhaps the participant has no mental model for the concept you’re exploring, or maybe the participant has tried something similar previously and had a poor experience that you could learn from.

Angst Inducer 5: Hidden Agendas

In some conversations, you might experience a participant who keeps returning to a specific point. For example, you might be trying to talk about a “success journey,” and the participant brings up a recent support experience over and over.

Address the point the participant is sharing directly, then try defining (or redefining) your scope. For example, “It sounds like you’re telling me a lot about our support team. That sounds like a frustrating experience, and I will make sure to share that with our support leadership. For today’s conversation, when I refer to “success journey,” I mean [topic].“

Listen respectfully, share what you hear with the right people if applicable, and chalk it up to an outlier. There are rare situations where you may have to write off an interview. Every once in a while, you find a participant who has specific things they want to tell you regardless of your agenda or redirection.

Angst Inducer 6: Time Management

The participant conversation reveals great insights, but the timing is off — the conversation is either too fast or too slow for the allotted time.

Always plan for less time than you have booked with a participant. Preparation is the key to effectively managing time challenges. Save five minutes or so at the beginning for getting things going — people often run a minute or two late, and there will be logistics (start recording, introductions) to get through. Also, save time at the end to cleanly wrap things up — say thank you and ask if there is anything else the participant wants to add.

Have a discussion guide to plan for the rest of your time, and jot specific-time-oriented notes for yourself. Determine when you want to wrap up a specific section of questions and stick to your guide. Write this down — it can be hard to do the math on the fly while facilitating. For example, “My session starts at 1:00. I want to wrap up section 1 of questions around 1:15, section 2 around 1:20, section 3 around 1:30.”

Keep a clock within plain view. This allows you to gauge how the conversation’s going. If you’re far behind your planned time milestones, you may need to drop a section of questions altogether or start skipping lower priority questions; if you’re ahead, you can ask more probing questions to draw out additional details.

A few core techniques around preparation, redirecting, directly addressing challenges, and making participants feel heard can go a long way to easing research interview angst and help you approach your future participant conversations with more confidence!