Preparing and conducting interviews to collect data

To describe three styles of interviews and discuss issues regarding planning and conducting interviews.

Interviews are probably the approach most used to collect data in studies. They are particularly useful in uncovering the story behind a participant's experiences. Researchers can follow a line of questions to gain information about a topic, or further explore responses or findings. But the researcher needs to plan and decide the format of the interview before collecting data. REVIEW METHODS: The authors included papers on structured, unstructured and semi-structured interviews published in a peer-reviewed joumrnal and in English.