General Guidelines for Conducting Successful MAP Interviews

The following provides some helpful hints on conducting successful interviews as well as some provocative questions, which can be easily tailored to the specific topic area.

Provide the interviewee a few sample questions as part of the interview so they have a chance to start thinking about the topic.

Provide the interviewee with a list of issues that others have been interested in, with the hope that it will stimulate potential questions for discussions.

Try to make the session more of an open conversation rather than an interview by a journalist.

Ask open ended questions rather than ones with “yes or no” answers.

Follow the energy and interests of the interviewee, not what you may have thought were important before you started. 

Watch the body language and listen to voice inflections.  This will tell you where the interviewee’s area of interest or areas of concern exist.

Respect the interviewee’s line of thought, and help develop it by asking follow-up questions if you perceive there is more the interviewee would like to say or more precision is needed.

Refrain from telling your own stories, or from drawing conclusions on what the interviewee said. 

Once a line of thought is completed, then introduce another topic and ask a question in a new direction, to keep the interview moving forward.