Mom to 3 Boys
★★★★★
“I am preparing for my dissertation and I am a couple months out, so I gave it to someone else and they are so grateful, because it is helping them with their interviews.”
Read on Amazon →Home › Shop › Designing the study and collecting data › The Interview and Focus Group Workbook
For researchers designing interviews or focus groups
Ask the right questions. Collect data you can trust.
The Interview and Focus Group Workbook
A research interview is not a conversation: it is a data collection instrument. This workbook gives you the infrastructure to go from a research question to defensible transcripts: 48 fill-in templates, each with a worked example.
- Interview guides aligned question by question to your research question
- Probe plans and scripts for difficult moments in the room
- Focus group moderation, piloting and transcription, all documented
By Dr. Rafiq Muhammad, MD, PhD · 252 pages · In person, Zoom or Teams · Paperback $36.99 · ★★★★★ 10 reader reviews
What readers say
Reader reviews
★★★★★ 10 reader reviews from Amazon
John T.
★★★★★
“I have two masters degrees but in my programs they didn't have reading material that showed how to plan qualitative research using interviews and focus groups.”
Read on Amazon →Alana S.
★★★★★
“The templates are especially helpful, they take a lot of the guesswork out of designing interview guides and focus group questions.”
Read on Amazon →Jodi B.
★★★★★
“This workbook takes you from your strategic planning map to saturation! As a PhD student getting ready for this part of my research, I found it extremely useful.”
Read on Amazon →Angie T.
★★★★★
“It makes the research process less stressful and more organized.”
Read on Amazon →Amanda K. Z.
★★★★★
“Plenty of templates and good ideas to be able to use!”
Read on Amazon →Kurt
★★★★★
“It includes templates and while it’s considered a workbook, it has actual reading material that I deem helpful.”
Read on Amazon →Tammy H.
★★★★★
“This is a great book and I highly recommend it.”
Read on Amazon →trae
★★★★★
“Great skills and suggestions for running a focus group and surveying data.”
Read on Amazon →Caitlin
★★★★★
“This workbook has many different templates to help you with interviews and focus groups.”
Read on Amazon →Sound familiar?
Where qualitative data collection goes wrong
“My committee called my interview questions "leading".”
“I don't know what to do when a participant goes silent or off topic.”
“One person dominates every focus group.”
“I'm worried I'll spend hours recording data I can't use.”
Good qualitative data is designed before the first interview. When your questions are aligned to your research question, piloted, and backed by a plan for every difficult moment, the data you collect is data you can analyse and defend.
How it works
Design. Pilot. Collect.
The full data collection lifecycle, one template at a time.
Step 1
Design the protocol
Sampling, question types aligned to your research question, and probes planned in advance.
Step 2
Pilot and refine
Test your questions before you spend your best participants on them.
Step 3
Collect and manage
Moderation, field notes, transcription quality and pseudonym logs, ready for analysis.
What you will have
What you will have
- A sampling plan and a justification for your data collection method
- Semi-structured, narrative or phenomenological interview protocols
- Probe plans, and response scripts for difficult participant scenarios
- A focus group moderator's guide, composition plan and room setup
- Recruitment, consent and withdrawal communications
- Virtual interview protocols and a Zoom and Teams setup checklist
- Pilot debriefs, transcription checks, field notes and a saturation log
Look inside
Every template comes with a worked example
One study is worked through the book, so you see each protocol, probe and script filled in before you write your own. These are real pages. Tap to enlarge.
Is it for you?
Built for qualitative data collection
It is for you if
- You are designing a qualitative or mixed-methods study
- You are interviewing participants or running focus groups for the first time
- Your committee has flagged your protocol as leading, vague or unaligned
It is not
- A textbook on qualitative theory
- A guide to analysing the data. For that, see The Qualitative Coding Workbook.
- A substitute for your ethics board's own requirements
Dr. Rafiq Muhammad, MD, PhD
Clinician-researcher, PhD from Karolinska Institutet, and author of the Mastering Research books and workbooks, used by graduate students from the research question to the viva.
Choose your format
Ways to get it
Paperback
$36.99 on Amazon
- The same 252 pages in print
- Write in it by hand
- Shipped by Amazon
Interview & Focus Group Kit
$19 instant download
- Every fill-in template, as a fillable PDF
- Type, save and print; US Letter and A4
Not ready to buy? Get the free toolkit for designing the study and collecting data by email and start today. Get it free
Questions
Before you buy
My interviews are online.
There are templates for adapting interview and focus group protocols to virtual settings, with a setup checklist for Zoom and Microsoft Teams.
How do I know when I have enough interviews?
The data saturation monitoring log helps you track new information across interviews and document when, and why, you stopped.
Does it help with ethics approval?
It includes recruitment, consent and withdrawal communications and a data security protocol, the documents ethics boards ask to see.
What comes after data collection?
Analysis. The Qualitative Coding Workbook picks up from your transcripts.
Your participants are waiting
Go in with aligned questions, planned probes and a protocol you have tested.
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