Interview guide: what it is, how to write one, and a ready template

An interview guide is a structured document containing the questions, topic areas, and prompts a researcher uses to conduct a qualitative interview. It is not a script — it is a flexible framework that ensures consistent coverage across interviews while leaving room for the conversation to go where it needs to go. A good interview guide for a 45-60 minute session typically covers 4-6 topic areas, contains 12-20 questions with probes, and is written backwards from what the research needs to establish.

What is an interview guide?

An interview guide is the backbone of semi-structured qualitative interviewing. It sits between two extremes: a fully structured questionnaire (which reads like a form and produces shallow answers) and an unstructured conversation (which is hard to compare across participants and easy to derail).

The best interview guides do six things simultaneously:

• Ensure you cover the ground your research requires, even under time pressure
• Give you prepared follow-up probes for when you hit interesting territory
• Provide enough structure that different interviewers on the same project stay consistent
• Allow you to follow unexpected threads without losing your footing
• Build confidence in the interviewee that there is a method behind the conversation
• Make coding and analysis easier, because questions map to your analytical framework

Interview guides are used across academic research, strategy consulting, market research, user research, HR, and policy work. The structure and emphasis differ by context, but the underlying logic is the same.

What should an interview guide include?

Within each topic area, a well-built guide includes:

• An opening question — open-ended, easy to answer, invites the interviewee to orient themselves
• 2-4 follow-up questions — more specific, moving from context to evidence
• Probe prompts — reminders to yourself to ask for examples, stories, or data when something interesting surfaces
• A synthesis prompt — a reminder to play back what you have heard before moving on
• A time marker — so you know when to move on

What types of questions should an interview guide contain?

Different question types serve different purposes. A well-designed guide mixes them deliberately:

Open and behaviour-based questions produce the richest data. Save strongly leading questions for the final third of the interview, once rapport is established. More detail on each question type is in the full guide on writing a perfect interview guide.

How long should an interview guide be?

For a 45-60 minute interview: 12-20 questions across 4-6 topic areas, plus probes.

A common mistake is writing 40 questions for a 60-minute interview. That produces a rushed, shallow conversation where the interviewer is checking boxes rather than listening. Fewer, better questions with prepared follow-up probes almost always produce richer data.

The guide should feel like something you could conduct as a conversation, not recite as a questionnaire. If it takes you more than 5 minutes to read aloud at a normal pace, it is probably too long.

How do you structure an interview guide?

The most reliable structure follows a funnel: broad and easy to answer at the start, increasingly specific and potentially sensitive toward the end.

A standard funnel structure for a 60-minute research interview:

1. Introduction (5 min): Who you are, what the research is for, how the findings will be used, whether the conversation will be recorded, and whether they have any questions before you start
2. Warm-up (10 min): Their role, background, how this topic comes up in their work — questions with no wrong answers that get them comfortable talking
3. Core topics (35-40 min): 3-4 topic areas, each starting with an open question and moving toward specific evidence and examples
4. Closing (5 min): "Is there anything important I have not asked about?" and an invitation to follow up

The principle behind this sequence: by the time you reach sensitive topics, you have built enough rapport that people will answer honestly. Asking about failure, criticism, or controversy in the first 10 minutes produces guarded or diplomatic answers. Asking at minute 45, after a genuine conversation, often produces the most candid insights of the whole session.

For a useful variation on this, see the conducting effective business interviews guide, which covers the "Columbo technique" of saving the most candid question for the final moments of the interview.

Interview guide template

A ready-to-use template for a 45-60 minute semi-structured research interview. Replace the bracketed content with your topic.

INTERVIEW GUIDE — [Research topic]
Duration: 45-60 minutes | Interviewer: _________ | Date: _________

---
INTRODUCTION (5 minutes)

"Thank you for making time. I am researching [topic]. The goal is to understand [specific objective].
This conversation will be [recorded / summarised in notes] and the findings will be [used for / shared with].
There are no right or wrong answers — I am interested in your experience and perspective.
Do you have any questions before we start?"

---
WARM-UP (10 minutes)

1. Can you tell me a bit about your role and how [topic area] typically comes up in your work?
   [Probe: How long have you been doing this? What does a typical week look like?]

2. How would you describe your relationship to [topic area] — is it a daily concern, occasional, something you have been dealing with more recently?

---
CORE TOPIC 1: [Current situation] (10 minutes)

3. How do you currently handle [core challenge]? Walk me through what that looks like in practice.
   [Probe: Can you give me a recent example?]
   [Probe: What tools or processes are involved?]

4. What tends to go smoothly, and where does it break down?
   [Probe: Can you tell me about a time it went wrong? What happened?]

[SYNTHESIS: "So it sounds like X works reasonably well but Y is where it gets difficult. Is that right?"]

---
CORE TOPIC 2: [Pain points and workarounds] (10 minutes)

5. What have you tried to make this easier? What has and has not worked?
   [Probe: Why did X not work for you?]

6. Some people have mentioned [emerging pattern from earlier interviews]. Does that resonate with your experience?

---
CORE TOPIC 3: [Priorities and forward-looking] (10 minutes)

7. If you could change one thing about how [process] works, what would it be?
   [Probe: Why that specifically?]

8. What would significantly better look like? What would it make possible that is not possible now?
   [Probe: How would you know it was better?]

---
CLOSING (5 minutes)

9. Is there anything important about this area that I have not asked about?

10. Is there anyone else you would suggest I speak with who might have a different perspective?

"Thank you. This has been really helpful. Would you be open to a follow-up question if something comes up as I look across the full set of interviews?"

---
NOTES TO SELF: [Any context-specific reminders, e.g. "this person is sceptical of X", "remember to ask about Y if time"]

How do you adapt the guide for different research contexts?

The same structural logic applies across contexts, but the emphasis shifts:

Academic research: Map questions explicitly to your research questions or theoretical framework. Keep core questions consistent across interviews for comparability. Document all iterations to the guide with rationale, as this forms part of your methods section. Be sparing with leading questions — in published research, their use needs to be justified. See the reflexive thematic analysis guide for how the guide relates to the broader analytical approach.

Consulting and business research: Design questions to populate your deliverable structure. Working backwards from the output — the slides, the report, the recommendation — is the single best discipline. Iterate fast, sometimes after every 2-3 interviews in a fast-moving project.

Customer discovery and product research: Follow real user journeys chronologically rather than abstract frameworks. Ask about past behaviour ("tell me about the last time you...") rather than hypothetical intent ("would you use a product that..."). Workarounds are the most revealing signal — they show where a problem is real enough to spend effort on.

HR and exit interviews: Questions need to be consistent enough to aggregate patterns across a large number of conversations. The goal is not just one person's story but patterns across the workforce.

How do you test your interview guide before using it?

Test it before the first real interview. Two practical approaches:

AI simulation: Feed an AI a persona description of who you will be interviewing and ask it to generate a realistic 60-minute interview transcript using your guide. Look for questions that produced confusion, sections where answers were too vague, and probes you forgot to include. This takes 30 minutes and saves you from discovering the same problems in a real interview.

Colleague role-play: Have someone play the interviewee role while you run through the guide. Get their feedback on clarity, flow, and gaps. Particularly valuable when multiple people will be conducting interviews from the same guide.

How do you improve an interview guide as you go?

Your first guide will not be your best one. After each interview, spend 5-10 minutes noting:

• Which questions produced the richest responses
• Where you got vague or generic answers (those questions need rewriting or stronger probes)
• What came up unprompted that you had not anticipated (add it to the guide)
• What language the interviewee used for key concepts (match their vocabulary in future interviews)

Every 3-5 interviews, create a new version incorporating those refinements. Analysing your first 5-10 transcripts with a tool like Skimle as you go lets you identify emerging themes quickly, spot gaps in your coverage, and refine remaining interviews based on what you are already learning. This real-time iteration is one of the strongest arguments for AI-assisted qualitative analysis as part of the interview workflow, not just at the end of it.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between an interview guide and an interview script?

An interview script lists exact questions to be read in exact order. An interview guide lists topic areas and possible questions that the interviewer can adapt in real time. Scripts produce consistency at the cost of depth. Guides produce depth while preserving enough consistency for cross-interview analysis. For qualitative research, guides almost always produce better data.

How many questions should an interview guide have?

For a 60-minute interview: 12-20 questions across 4-6 topic areas, plus probe prompts. This may feel like too few, but each question with its probes can easily take 8-10 minutes. A guide with 40 questions for a 60-minute interview produces rushed, shallow answers across everything rather than genuine depth on what matters.

Should you share the interview guide with participants in advance?

For expert or professional interviews: share a short agenda (3-4 topic bullets) 24 hours beforehand. This sets context, helps them prepare relevant examples, and shows respect for their time. For research where you want unmediated first reactions — usability testing, customer discovery — share only the general topic area and not the specific questions.

What is the difference between structured, semi-structured, and unstructured interviews?

Structured interviews use identical questions in identical order for every participant, like a spoken questionnaire. Semi-structured interviews use a guide with core questions but allow the interviewer to follow interesting threads and adapt the order. Unstructured interviews have no fixed questions, only a broad topic. Most qualitative research uses semi-structured interviews: enough structure for comparability, enough flexibility for depth.

How do you write an interview guide for academic research?

Map each question to your research questions or theoretical framework. Ensure your guide covers all dimensions your analysis will need to address. Keep a core set of questions identical across all interviews. Document your rationale for any changes made mid-fieldwork. Test for leading questions — in academic contexts these need to be justified, particularly if answers to them will be quoted as evidence. See the sample size guide for how the guide relates to saturation and data sufficiency decisions.

Ready to move from interview guide to analysis? Try Skimle for free — upload your transcripts and let AI-assisted analysis surface the patterns across your interviews while keeping every insight traceable to the exact source quote.

Related reading:

• How to write the perfect interview guide: 10 practical tips
• How to conduct effective business interviews: tips from a former McKinsey partner
• How to analyse interview transcripts: 5 steps from raw data to insights

About the authors

Henri Schildt is a Professor of Strategy at Aalto University School of Business and co-founder of Skimle. He has published over a dozen peer-reviewed articles using qualitative methods, including work in Academy of Management Journal, Organisation Science, and Strategic Management Journal. His research focuses on organisational strategy, innovation, and qualitative methodology. Google Scholar profile

Olli Salo is a former Partner at McKinsey & Company where he spent 18 years helping clients understand the markets and themselves, develop winning strategies and improve their operating models. He has done over 1000 client interviews and published over 10 articles on McKinsey.com and beyond. LinkedIn profile