🎯 The Short Answer: Yes. You need to ask all participants the same core questions to ensure consistency and maintain IRB approval. You can use follow-up questions in semi-structured interviews, but your base questions must stay the same throughout your study.
If you’re planning to conduct interviews for your dissertation or thesis, you’ve probably wondered whether it’s okay to adjust your interview questions as you go along. It seems logical, right? You might think of a better way to phrase something, or realize you need to ask about a topic you didn’t anticipate. But here’s the thing: changing your interview questions during your study is risky and can create serious problems for your research. Let’s explore why consistency matters and how to structure your interviewing process to stay on track.
🎯 Choose Your Interviewing Mode Upfront
The first step is deciding which type of interviewing approach you’ll use. You have two main options: structured interviews or semi-structured interviews. With structured interviews, you create eight to ten questions and ask those questions only, with no deviations. With semi-structured interviews, you also create eight to ten base questions, but you’re allowed to ask follow-up questions to dig deeper into interesting responses. The key difference is that you’re being intentional about which approach you’re taking, not just winging it as you go.
This decision matters because it shapes everything else about your research design. When you write your methodology chapter, you need to be crystal clear about which approach you’ve chosen. You’re not just casually mentioning it either; you’re making a formal commitment to your readers and your research ethics board that this is the approach you’ll follow.
📝 Lock In Your Questions Before You Start
Before you conduct a single interview, you need to draft your interview questions and get them finalized. This isn’t something to rush. Spend real time thinking through your questions. Make sure they’re clear, that they actually address what you’re trying to research, and that you’re not missing any important angles. This is where many researchers stumble. We often see our coaching clients realize halfway through their interviews that they should have asked about something else, but by then it’s too late to make changes without jeopardizing their study.
Once you’ve drafted your questions, include them as an appendix in your dissertation. This creates a formal record of exactly what you asked. You’re also going to stick to those questions throughout your entire study. No adding new questions, no removing ones that feel awkward. The questions you finalize are the questions you use, every single time, with every single participant.
💡 Get Expert Feedback on Your Questions
Before you finalize your questions, consider getting feedback from someone who knows your research area well. This could be a colleague, mentor, or subject matter expert who won’t actually be interviewed in your study. Ask them to review your questions and identify any gaps or nuances you might have missed. This expert review process helps you catch problems early, when you can still make changes without complications.
You might realize you need to rephrase something to make it clearer, or you might discover that you’re missing a whole area of questioning that’s important to your research. This is exactly when you want to discover these issues. Once you move forward to your IRB review, your questions are locked in, so getting this feedback now is a smart investment in your research quality.
⚖️ Understand Your IRB’s Role
Here’s where consistency becomes non-negotiable: your IRB (Institutional Review Board) panel will review your interview questions as part of their ethics approval process. This is actually a good thing, because it means experts are checking your work. But it also means your questions become part of your approved research protocol. If you deviate from those questions after you receive IRB approval, your study is no longer approved. You’d have to go back through the entire IRB review process again, which can set you back months.
At some institutions, the IRB only meets once every few months. If you need re-approval and you miss the current meeting window, you could be waiting three months or longer just to get back on the agenda. That’s a massive delay in your research timeline. This is why you need to be thorough and careful before you submit to IRB. Once you’re out of IRB review, you don’t make changes. Period.
🔄 Prepare Follow-Up Questions in Advance
If you’re doing semi-structured interviews, you’ll want to ask follow-up questions based on what participants tell you. That’s the whole point of semi-structured interviewing. But here’s the thing: even your follow-up questions should be thought through beforehand and included in your interview protocol. You’re not just making them up on the fly during the interview.
Think about what kinds of follow-up questions might be relevant based on your research questions. Prepare a set of probes you might use to encourage participants to elaborate. Include these in your appendix alongside your main questions. This way, you’re still being consistent and deliberate about your interviewing approach. You’re not deviating from your approved protocol; you’re using the flexibility that semi-structured interviewing allows in a structured, planned way.
✅ Ensure All Participants Answer Your Base Questions
Whether you’re doing structured or semi-structured interviews, every single participant needs to answer the same eight to ten base questions. This is what gives your research consistency and validity. When all participants answer the same core questions, you can actually compare their responses and identify patterns. If everyone’s answering different questions, your data becomes messy and hard to analyze.
The follow-up questions might vary from participant to participant (in semi-structured interviews), but the base questions stay the same. This consistency is what allows you to draw meaningful conclusions from your research. It’s also what keeps you compliant with your IRB approval and your methodology chapter commitments.
📌 Key Takeaways
- Choose structured or semi-structured interviewing upfront and document your choice clearly
- Draft and finalize all interview questions before conducting any interviews
- Include your interview questions in your dissertation appendix as a formal record
- Get expert feedback on your questions before submitting to IRB for approval
- Never deviate from approved questions after IRB approval without going through review again
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