The Interview Method in User Studies: A Detailed Look

When a library wants to know whether its services are actually working, it needs to hear from the people who use them. Circulation statistics and gate counts reveal usage patterns, but they cannot explain the reasoning behind those patterns. The interview method fills this gap. By sitting down with users and having a guided conversation, librarians and researchers gather rich, first-hand accounts of needs, frustrations, and expectations that numbers alone cannot reveal. This post explains how interviews work in user studies, the different forms they take, and how to conduct them well so that libraries can make decisions grounded in real user experience.

Why interviews matter in user studies 🔗

A user study is a systematic effort to understand how people interact with a library’s resources, services, and facilities. The goal is to learn what users need, what they prefer, and where they struggle, so that the library can improve. Data for these studies can be collected through several methods, including questionnaires, observation, analysis of library records, and interviews. Among these, the interview is the most personal and the most flexible.

The interview is classed as a general or conventional method of user study, sitting alongside the questionnaire, the diary, and observation in the standard classification of use study techniques. What sets it apart is the two-way exchange. In a questionnaire, the respondent works alone with a printed form. In an interview, an investigator sits with the user, asks questions, listens, and follows up. This live interaction allows the researcher to clarify confusing answers, pursue interesting points, and read tone and hesitation that a paper form would never capture.

This is why interviews are valued so highly in qualitative research. They let researchers document people’s experiences and interpretations in their own words. A circulation report might show that a particular database is rarely used. Only a conversation can reveal whether users find it irrelevant, cannot locate it, or never learnt that it existed. The interview moves the library from guessing about user behaviour to understanding it.

The Indian library sector offers clear examples of this value. Research bodies have long used interviews and surveys to map information needs. INSDOC, now part of NISCPR (formerly NISCAIR), conducted a pilot survey to assess the information needs of electronics researchers, combining structured questioning with direct interaction to understand how scientists actually sought information. Academic libraries in institutions across the country use similar approaches when redesigning reference and research-support services.

What interviews reveal that statistics cannot 🔗

Interviews are particularly good at answering the “why” and “how” behind user behaviour. Suppose a survey shows that postgraduate students rarely attend information-literacy workshops. The numbers stop there. An interview can uncover the reasons: the timings clash with lab work, the content feels too basic, or the students did not know the sessions were optional rather than compulsory. Each of these reasons points to a different fix.

Interviews also surface needs that users themselves had not articulated. When a researcher asks open questions about a person’s research routine, the conversation often drifts into areas the study never anticipated, such as difficulty understanding research metrics, confusion about predatory journals, or anxiety about copyright. These unprompted disclosures frequently become the most useful findings of the whole study, because they identify gaps the library did not know existed.

Structured versus unstructured interviews 🔗

Not all interviews look the same. Researchers usually describe three types, defined by how tightly the questions are fixed in advance: structured, unstructured, and semi-structured. The choice among them shapes the kind of data collected and how easily that data can be compared and analysed. Harvard Library’s research guide and most methodology textbooks treat these three formats as a spectrum of structure, from completely fixed to entirely open.

Structured interviews 🔗

A structured interview uses a fixed list of predetermined questions, asked to every participant in the same words and the same order. The interviewer reads from an interview schedule and does not deviate from it. Because everyone answers the same questions in the same way, the responses are highly consistent and easy to compare across a large group of users. This makes the structured interview closer to a spoken questionnaire, and it is often treated as a quantitative method rather than a purely qualitative one.

The strength of this format is comparability and reliability. The weakness is depth. Because the interviewer cannot stray from the script, unexpected or revealing comments tend to be cut short. A structured interview tells you how many users feel a certain way, but rarely the full story behind those feelings. It works well when a library needs clean, countable data from many people, such as a satisfaction survey conducted face to face.

Unstructured interviews 🔗

An unstructured interview sits at the opposite end. Here the interviewer has a topic in mind but no fixed questions, and the session unfolds like a guided conversation. It has been described as a controlled conversation that follows the participant’s lead while staying loosely anchored to the researcher’s interests. This format gives users maximum freedom to express themselves in their own words and at their own pace.

The payoff is depth and the chance to discover the unexpected. Unstructured interviews are common in long-term fieldwork and exploratory studies where the researcher is entering unfamiliar territory and does not yet know which questions matter. The trade-off is that every conversation goes in a different direction, so the responses are difficult to compare and the analysis becomes time-consuming. There is also a real risk of drifting away from the research focus.

Semi-structured interviews 🔗

The semi-structured interview blends the two. The researcher prepares a set of predetermined but open-ended questions, sometimes called an interview guide, and asks them of every participant, while remaining free to add follow-up questions, probe interesting answers, and let the participant shape the flow. As the semi-structured format combines structured and unstructured interviewing, it carries the advantages of both: enough consistency to compare responses across users, and enough flexibility to explore each person’s experience in depth.

This balance is why the semi-structured interview is the most widely used format in qualitative research. It is well suited to answering “what”, “how”, and “why” questions, and it produces data that can support careful thematic analysis without sacrificing richness. For most library user studies, where the aim is both to identify common patterns and to understand individual experiences, the semi-structured interview is usually the right default choice.

Best practices for conducting interviews in libraries 🔗

A good interview does not happen by accident. The quality of the data depends heavily on preparation, on how the interviewer behaves during the session, and on how the responses are handled afterwards. The following practices apply across all three interview types, though they matter most for semi-structured and unstructured work.

Prepare before you begin 🔗

Start by defining exactly what you want to learn. A clear research objective is the single most important qualification for good interviewing, because it lets the interviewer judge in the moment which answers to pursue and which to let go. With the objective fixed, write an interview guide. This can be a full list of questions or a set of topic bullet points; the purpose is to keep the conversation on track while leaving room to dig deeper when something interesting comes up.

Practical preparation matters too. Choose a quiet, comfortable setting, arrange recording and note-taking tools in advance, and check that they work. Where possible, involve a second person so that one can focus on guiding the conversation while the other captures responses and begins noting emerging themes, an approach the public-health field recommends for its qualitative data standards.

Build rapport and ask good questions 🔗

Begin by putting the user at ease. Explain the purpose of the study, reassure participants that there are no right or wrong answers, and let them know they can decline to answer anything. Good rapport encourages honest, detailed responses and reduces the tendency to give answers that simply sound socially acceptable.

Favour open-ended questions that invite explanation rather than yes-or-no replies. Ask “How do you usually search for journal articles?” rather than “Do you use the catalogue?” Avoid leading questions that hint at a preferred answer, because they bias the data. When a participant gives a brief or vague reply, use probing questions to draw out more, for example, “Can you tell me more about why that was difficult for you?” A skilled interviewer must exercise judgement about when to probe and when to move on, rather than marching through the guide like a checklist.

Record, transcribe, and analyse responses 🔗

Capturing the data accurately is essential. With the participant’s consent, record the interview and transcribe it as fully as possible, ideally word for word. Working from an accurate transcript prevents errors from creeping into the analysis later. Incomplete recordings or disorganised files can drain the value out of even an excellent interview.

Analysis usually follows a clear sequence: transcribe the interviews, then code the data by tagging segments with labels that capture their meaning, then group those codes into recurring themes, interpret what the themes reveal, and finally report the findings. Coding should focus on meaning rather than volume, with consistent definitions applied across every interview so that responses can be compared fairly. Reviewing the codes periodically against the research questions keeps the analysis aligned with the study’s purpose. Done carefully, this process turns scattered conversations into a coherent picture of user needs.

Turn findings into service improvements 🔗

An interview study only earns its keep when it changes something. Once the themes are clear, identify the high-impact issues that affect the most users or block the most important tasks. Share these findings with library staff through short reports or presentations so that colleagues understand and support the changes. Then implement specific improvements with clear responsibilities and timelines, and follow up afterwards to check whether the changes actually solved the problem. This loop, from listening to acting to re-evaluating, is what makes the interview method a tool for genuine service development rather than a one-time data-gathering exercise.

What do you think? If you were studying how postgraduate students in your institution use the library, would you choose structured, unstructured, or semi-structured interviews, and what would drive that decision? And how might an interviewer guard against unconsciously steering participants toward the answers the library hopes to hear?

References

1. https://ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in/lisp15/chapter/methods-and-techniques-of-use-studies-part-1/
2. https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/38166/chapter/333002245
3. https://guides.library.harvard.edu/c.php?g=796889&p=10476198
4. https://www.simplypsychology.org/interviews.html
5. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4194943/
6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semi-structured_interview
7. https://www.dhs.wisconsin.gov/lh-depts/qualitative-data-standards.pdf
8. https://www.cdc.gov/field-epi-manual/php/chapters/qualitative-data.html