DEPTH INTERVIEW

• depth interviews are an unstructured and direct way of obtaining information but, unlike
focus groups, depth interviews are conducted on a one-on one basis.
• A depth interview is an unstructured, direct, personal interview in which a single
respondent is probed by an experienced interviewer to uncover underlying motivations,
beliefs, attitudes and feelings on a topic.
• A depth interview may take from 30 minutes to over an hour. It may occur on a one-off
basis or it may unfold over a number of meetings between an interviewer and a
respondent.
• the interviewer should begin by explaining the purpose of the interview, showing what the
respondent will get out of taking part in the interview and explaining what the process
will be like.
ROLE OF INTERVIEWER
1 Do their utmost to develop an empathy with the respondent.
2 Make sure the respondent is relaxed and comfortable.
3 Be personable to encourage and motivate respondents.
4 Note issues that interest the respondent and develop questions around these
issues.
5 Not be happy to accept brief ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answers.
6 Note where respondents have not explained clearly enough issues that need
probing.
CONSIDERATIONS IN DEPTH INTERVIEW
• 1 Hectic schedules. The best respondents tend also to be the busiest and most successful
people. They can make time for an interview, but are rarely able to spare the much greater
time needed for them to come to a group discussion at some location away from their office.
So groups exclude the best respondents.
• 2 Heterogeneity. Whereas mothers evaluating nappy ads, or beer drinkers the latest lager,
have only their personal preferences to consider, it is very different for an executive
evaluating copiers, airline advertisements or computer software. This is because their
reactions are complicated by the type of job they do and who they work for. The group
discussion is dependent on the group’s composition being fairly homogeneous; the job
backgrounds of business people make them too varied to be entirely comfortable in a group.
• 3 Live context. A lot of information comes from seeing the respondent at his or her desk,
which is missed in a group discussion. Work schedules pinned to the wall, the working
atmosphere, the freebies from suppliers on the desk, the way coffee is served, help fill out
the picture.
• 4 Interviewer reflection. Groups do not allow the researcher enough thinking time. Two
groups, each taking an hour and a half over successive evenings, do not even begin to
compare with two or three full days of non-stop interviewing. Individual interviews give
much more scope for experimentation. If one way does not work, it’s only one respondent,
not a whole group, that is affected.
ADVANTAGES OF DEPTH INTERVIEW
1 Uncover greater depth of insights than focus groups. This can happen through
concentrating and developing an issue with the individual. In the group scenario, interesting
and knowledgeable individuals cannot be solely concentrated upon.
2 Attribute the responses directly to the respondent, unlike focus groups where it is often
difficult to determine which respondent made a particular response.
3 Result in a free exchange of information that may not be possible in focus groups because
there is no social pressure to conform to group response. This makes them ideally suited to
sensitive issues, especially commercially sensitive issues.
4 Be easier to arrange than the focus group as there are not so many individuals to coordinate
and the interviewer can travel to the respondent.
DISADVANTAGES OF DEPTH INTERVIEW
1 The lack of structure makes the results susceptible to the interviewer’s influence, and the
quality and completeness of the results depend heavily on the interviewer’s skills. As with all
qualitative techniques, the interviewer needs to develop an awareness of the factors that make
them ‘see’ in a particular way.
2 The length of the interview, combined with high costs, means that the number of depth
interviews in a project tends to be few. If few depth interviews can be managed, the researcher
should focus upon the quality of the whole research experience. ‘Quality’ in this context means
the qualities that the respondent possesses in terms of richness of experience and how relevant
their experiences are to the study; the quality of drawing out and getting respondents to express
themselves clearly and honestly; and the quality of analysis in terms of interpretation of
individual respondents and individual issues evaluated across all the interviews conducted.
3 The data obtained can be difficult to analyse and interpret. Many responses may not be taken
at face value; there can be many hidden messages and interpretations in how respondents
express themselves. The researcher needs a strong theoretical awareness to make sense of the
data or the technical means to develop theory if using a grounded theory approach. As well as
the transcripts of the interview, additional observations add to the richness and multifaceted
analyses and potential interpretations.
APPLICATION OF DEPTH INTERVIEW
1 Interviews with professional people (e.g. finance directors using banking services).
2 Interviews with children (e.g. attitudes towards a theme park).
3 Detailed probing of the respondent (e.g. new product development for cars).
4 Discussion of confidential, sensitive or embarrassing topics (e.g. personal hygiene issues).
5 Situations where strong social norms exist and where the respondent may be easily swayed
by group response (e.g. attitudes of university students towards sports).
6 Detailed understanding of complicated behaviour (e.g. the purchase of fashion or ‘high-
status’ goods).
7 Interviews with competitors, who are unlikely to reveal the information in a group setting
(e.g. travel agents’ perceptions of airline travel packages).
PROJECTIVE TECHNIQUES
• A projective technique is an unstructured, indirect form of questioning that encourages
respondents to project their underlying motivations, beliefs, attitudes or feelings regarding
the issues of concern.
• In projective techniques, respondents are asked to interpret the behaviour of others rather
than to describe their own behaviour.
• In interpreting the behaviour of others, it is contended that respondents indirectly project
their own motivations, beliefs, attitudes or feelings into the situation.
• Thus, the respondent’s attitudes are uncovered by analysing their responses to scenarios that
are deliberately unstructured, vague and ambiguous.
• The more ambiguous the situation, the more respondents project their emotions, needs,
motives, attitudes and values, as demonstrated by work in clinical psychology on which
projective techniques are based.
• As in psychology, these techniques are classified as association, completion, construction
and expressive
• There are several variations to the standard word association procedure illustrated here.
Respondents may be asked to give the first two, three or four words that come to mind rather
than only the first word. This technique can also be used in controlled tests, as contrasted
with free association. In controlled tests, respondents might be asked ‘What banks come to
mind first when I mention ‘hi-tech’’?’
ASSOCIATION TECHNIQUES
• In association techniques, an individual is presented with a stimulus and
asked to respond with the first thing that comes to mind.
• Word association is the best known of these techniques.
• In word association, respondents are presented with a list of words, one at a
time, and are asked to respond to each with the first word that comes to mind.
• The words of interest, called test words, are interspersed throughout the list,
which also contains some neutral, or filler, words to disguise the purpose of
the study.
• The interviewer, not the respondent, records the responses
• The underlying assumption of this technique is that association allows
respondents to reveal their inner feelings about the topic of interest.
Responses are analysed by calculating:
• 1 The frequency with which any word is given as a response.
• 2 The amount of time that elapses before a response is given.
• 3 The number of respondents who do not respond at all to a test word within
a reasonable period.
COMPLETION TECHNIQUES
• In completion techniques, respondents are asked to complete an incomplete
stimulus situation.
• Common completion techniques in marketing research are sentence
completion and story completion.
• Sentence completion is similar to word association. Respondents are given
incomplete sentences and are asked to complete them.
• Generally, they are asked to use the first word or phrase that comes to mind
• one advantage of sentence completion over word association: respondents
can be provided with a more directed stimulus.
• Sentence completion may provide more information about the subjects’ feelings than word
association.
• Sentence completion is not as disguised as word association, however, and many
respondents may be able to guess the purpose of the study.
• A variation of sentence completion is paragraph completion, in which the respondent
completes a paragraph beginning with the stimulus phrase.
• A further expanded version of sentence completion and paragraph completion is story
completion. In story completion, respondents are given part of a story, enough to direct
attention to a particular topic but not to hint at the ending.
Story completion A finance director had been conducting business with a leading Norwegian
bank for over 10 years. Her company was planning to make more use of the Internet to manage
transactions. The manager that was her main contact at the bank knew little of the applications
and benefits of the Internet for her business. So, she spent three months in talks with a variety
of software suppliers, primarily trying to get over the problem of integrating new software with
the systems she already had. After going through a major selection process and being at the
point where she was about to commit her company, another department of the bank contacts
her with an Internet solution that solves her integration problems at a much cheaper price
compared with her selection process
What is the finance director’s response? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Why? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The respondent’s completion of this story will reveal characteristics of the relationship she
‘enjoys’ with the bank. Why, after such a lengthy relationship, may the bank take the business
for granted? What role is expected of the bank manager? What must happen in a relationship to
get it to the point when switching to another bank is inevitable, whatever the costs?
Construction techniques
• Construction techniques are closely related to completion techniques.
• Construction techniques require the respondents to construct a response in the
form of a story, dialogue or description.
• In a construction technique, the researcher provides less initial structure to the
respondents than in a completion technique.
• The two main construction techniques are picture response techniques and
cartoon tests. The roots of picture response techniques can be traced to the
thematic apperception test (TAT), which consists of a series of pictures of
ordinary as well as unusual events.
• In some of these pictures, the persons or objects are clearly depicted, while in
others they are relatively vague.
• The respondent is asked to tell stories about these pictures.
• The respondent’s interpretation of the pictures gives indications of that
individual’s personality.
• For example, an individual may be characterised as impulsive, creative,
unimaginative, and so on. The term thematic apperception test is used because
themes are elicited based on the subject’s perceptual interpretation
(appereption) of pictures.
• In cartoon tests, cartoon characters are shown in a specific situation related to
the problem.
• Respondents are asked to indicate what one cartoon character might say in
response to the comments of another character.
• The responses indicate the respondents’ feelings, beliefs and attitudes towards
the situation. Cartoon tests are simpler to administer and analyse than picture
response techniques.
Expressive techniques
• In expressive techniques, respondents are presented with a verbal or visual situation and
asked to relate the feelings and attitudes of other people to the situation.
• The respondents express not their own feelings or attitudes, but those of others.
• The two main expressive techniques are role playing and third-person technique.
• In role playing, respondents are asked to play the role or to assume the behaviour of
someone else.
• The researcher assumes that the respondents will project their own feelings into the role. A
major use of role playing is in uncovering the nature of a brand personality.
• In the third-person technique, respondents are presented with a verbal or visual situation
and are asked to relate the beliefs and attitudes of a third person rather than directly
expressing personal beliefs and attitudes.
• This third person may be a friend, a neighbour, a colleague, or any person that the
researcher chooses.
• Again, the researcher assumes that the respondents will reveal personal beliefs and
attitudes while describing the reactions of a third party.
• Asking an individual to respond in the third person reduces the social pressure to give an
acceptable answer
ADVANTAGES OF DEPTH INTERVIEW
• Projective techniques have a major advantage over the unstructured direct techniques
(focus groups and depth interviews):
• they may elicit responses that subjects would be unwilling or unable to give if they knew
the purpose of the study.
• At times, in direct questioning, the respondent may intentionally or unintentionally
misunderstand, misinterpret or mislead the researcher.
• In these cases, projective techniques can increase the validity of responses by disguising
the purpose. This is particularly true when the issues to be addressed are personal,
sensitive or subject to strong social norms.
• Projective techniques are also helpful when underlying motivations, beliefs and attitudes
are operating at a subconscious level
DISADVANTAGES OF DEPTH INTERVIEW
• Projective techniques suffer from many of the disadvantages of unstructured direct
techniques, but to a greater extent.
• These techniques generally require personal interviews with individuals who are
experienced interviewers and interpreters, hence they tend to be expensive.
• Furthermore, as in all qualitative techniques, there is the risk of interpretation bias.
• With the exception of word association, all are open-ended techniques, making the
analysis and interpretation more Problematic.
• Some projective techniques such as role playing require respondents to engage in what
may seem to be unusual behaviour.
• Certain respondents may not have the self confidence or the ability to fully express
themselves with these techniques.
• In role playing, for example, the skills of acting may make one respondent more articulate
at expressing their feelings compared with others.
• The same may be said of techniques where pictures and cartoons are put together and
interpreted, in that distinctive skills may make certain respondents more adept and
comfortable in expressing themselves.
• To counter this, one could argue that there is a great amount of skill required in expressing
oneself in an open-ended depth interview. One could point to fiction writers or poets who
are able to encapsulate particular feelings most clearly and succinctly, which again is
enormously skillful.