Interviews to complement questionnaire data.

Interviews are often used to follow up responses to written questionnaires. For example, a random sample of questionnaire respondents can be chosen, either individually or in groups and asked to ‘say more’ or clarify why they gave particular answers to the questionnaire. This can provide qualitative data in addition to the quantitative information obtained from questionnaires.

It is also possible to analyse questionnaire data and speculate on the meaning of the responses. Then you can run group or individual interviews to feed back these speculations to respondents. Respondents then become involved in ‘theorising’ with the researchers why particular responses or patterns of response were obtained. This can help to enhance the validity and reliability of speculations.