Interviews are important source of views, information and data. They can accompany questionnaire surveys or be part of a case study approach. They are valuable in explaining why, identifying factors and conditions, understanding success or failure in the right context or exploring future plans and intensions. It takes a well-prepared interviewer to make the most of interviewing other people.
Making contacts and securing interviews
- Once you have established the list of relevant people to interview (partnership members, project coordinators, academic and/or industrial partners, funding agencies, other stakeholders, etc.), you can contact them via e-mail. It is important to clearly explain the aim of the interview as well as mentioning the name of the partnership coordinator in order to i) create a first layer of trust and ii) get the people more involved because "named" or "recommended" by someone they know. You may use the following e-mail messages (one for project participants, one for funding agencies) to contact them.
- Potential interviewees are usually busy. It is important to propose 3-4 dates enough time in advance to help them organise.
- A week before the interview, send an e-mail with a series of indicative questions or themes to the interviewee. Use this as a kind reminder of your call (as you contacted them a month ago): remind the date, the time and the contact number you have of the interviewee to make sure you have the right one.
- Depending on where you are based and where you will be calling, it is also important to precise the CET time of your call.
- Always indicate the possible duration of the interview in the invitation message and add a word of gratitude to the future interviewee for i) coming back to your email and ii) accepting to dedicate time for the interview.
- Some people may not come back to your first contact email. This may be due to various reasons. You can send a second e-mail similar to the first one but reminding that you tried to contact them x days/weeks ago.
- It is not unusual that people leave their institution or the project. Thus it is difficult to locate them and ask for an interview. You can search for them and find their new institution (Google their names; check on LinkedIn; check their recent publications). You can also mention your difficulty to contact specific people to those that you have identified – they may be able to help you.
- In some cases it is a Professor that is named in the project but effectively it is another researcher or sometimes a PhD student who is much more involved. It is interesting to talk to both; contacting only the Professor won't maximise your chance of getting an interview (and insights on the project).
- As a rule of thumb, people involved in successful projects tend to reply more often/positively to your request for an interview. People involved in less successful projects/partnerships may not want to talk about it or they may consider that there is nothing interesting to talk about. It is important to stress that the evaluation aims at making things better rather trying to identify/criticise who is to blame.
- Every time you interview someone, mention those you already talked to and also ask for other names of people that could also be interesting to talk to.
- It is especially useful to get the right contact person in institutions like the national funding agencies. In large countries or more decentralised systems this would be more than one within the same agency.
Collection of information
Depending on the level of the evaluation exercise (i.e. partnership and/or project level) interviews can be conducted with representatives of the selected partnership members and/or project beneficiaries. The interviews with the partnership members should include the coordinator, the call secretariat and the chair or a member of the advisory board and any stakeholder/user board involved. The purpose of the partnership interviews is to understand the strategic aims of the partnership, its evolution over time, the main achievements and challenges overall, and aspirations for the future. This is helpful when the whole partnership is evaluated. It is also helpful in order to put the perceived achievements of the supported activities and projects in the right context.
Interviews with project beneficiaries should include the coordinator and some selected members from participating research organisations and industry. Projects should be collected in close collaboration with the partnership Coordinator, the focus being on successful but also less-successful projects. The purpose of the project interviews is twofold: to explain the major achievements and failures as well as the factors that are instrumental for the level of success of the projects and to complement the responses to a questionnaire survey that might have taken place in the meantime.
In the case where you conduct interviews in parallel to a questionnaire survey, some of the interviewees may have already provided responses to the survey. It is important to have a look at their survey responses and build on those to bring some context to the interview discussion, get details on certain responses or get responses to certain questions left empty (if any). You may also highlight 'extreme' responses (that diverge significantly from the average) or unexpected answers during the interview. This may help you identify cases that you may decide to study further in more detail through the case study approach.
Interviews should be supported by a specific template:
Useful tips for before, during and after the interview are given on the right.
