In practice, using qualitative methods is a matter of sensitivity to the local context, well-formulated questions and themes and good listening and observing. Some suggestions:
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Develop a topic guide on the themes you would like to address or observe during the interview, focus group discussion or participant observations.
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For interviews, decide whether an unstructured, semi-structured or structured approach best fits the purpose of your study. If you use a semi-structured or structured approach, you can formulate specific questions for each of the themes. Make sure to use open questions (ones that cannot simply be answered with a ‘Yes’ or ‘No’) and questions that do not lead your respondent to a particular answer or direction. Add probing questions that will help you to get in-depth information, such as ‘Why?’ ‘How come?’ ‘Have you experienced that before?’ ‘How did this feel to you?’ ‘Can you give another example?’ and ‘Can you tell me more?’ Please note that the topic guides for structured and semi-structured interviews may look quite similar – the difference between these two types of interviews lies primarily in the approach and attitude of interviewers, in terms of how much interviewers are encouraged to probe the respondent further and to go with the flow of the interview (semi-structured interviews involve more of this than structured interviews). In-depth training is required in order to be able to conduct unstructured interviews.
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For focus group discussions, select specific exercises that help you explore the themes you are interested in (e.g., participatory mappings like a body map or village map). Formulate probing questions that will help to get in-depth information.
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For participant observations, decide on precisely what you want to observe and when you want to observe it. Keep field notes and focus on what is happening and why; use different viewpoints and look for exceptions.
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Share your topic and interview guide, focus group discussion design and observation plan with colleagues and experts and ask for advice.