Defining key informant interviews
Key informant interviews (KIIs) are a qualitative research method in which someone (likely a person from your team or possibly a contractor) poses a standard set of questions to stimulate an in-depth discussion with individuals about their observations and perspectives on the issues, processes and challenges impacting the community. The interview subjects’ social positions give them extensive and specialist knowledge about the community in focus, so they can provide you with valuable insights and information into the causes and manifestations of community issues. They might also provide possible recommendations or solutions to the issues and may be able to recommend additional people to interview. You could select community leaders, heads of professional associations, leaders of neighborhood groups, nongovernment organization representatives, activists or other well-connected individuals to interview.
An important feature of KIIs is that they are open-ended discussions that enable the interviewer to dig into the subject’s answers to given issues. These conversations can provide a rich understanding of the context, which subsequently informs your further data-gathering activities, helping you to plan your outreach better. For instance, the information generated by KIIs can help you shape and frame the questions you ask in focus groups with a broader set of representatives from the community or the questions you put to larger groups of people through a survey. These latter two research methods also provide qualitative data but do not (typically) yield as much detail as KIIs. Additionally, KIIs can help you develop risk mitigation and do no harm strategies.
Depending on your preference, available resources and the interviewer’s personality and experience, KIIs can be carried out using a structured or semi-structured interview style or simply following a list of themes that you have predetermined to be the most important to understanding the needs of your community. However, keeping the interview style and structure consistent across all subjects is important to enable accurate comparison when you analyze the data.
There are many benefits to KIIs, especially as part of the feedback loop process. However, it is important to state upfront some of the drawbacks of this particular data collection method. KIIs can be a labor-intensive process in both the planning and execution of the interviews. This is dependent on the number of community members that you will interview. Additionally, selecting the “right” key informants (people with substantive experience and who are representative of the community) can be a difficult task and potentially a divisive issue, depending on the political context of your community. The guidance on how to conduct KIIs below includes ways to overcome these challenges.
The purpose of key informant interviews
As mentioned above, there are multiple reasons why you might pursue KIIs, and it will be necessary to distill your goal for KIIs before initiating planning and executing them. This option may be useful to the data collection team to frame their data collection efforts, refine wording and understand gaps and risks.
- Framing data collection efforts: You can present your initial plans for data collection, such as a draft survey questionnaire, and ask the interviewee how they or their peers may respond to this outreach.
- Refining wording: Inquire about the language used in government communications and whether changes should be made.
- Understanding gaps and risks: How is the local authority perceived by this individual, their peers and their community? How likely are they to respond to the questionnaire or participate in dialogue activities?
With these functions of KIIs in mind, it might be most beneficial to undertake KIIs at the beginning of the data collection process. They may also be a helpful tool, perhaps with fewer interview subjects, to sense-check the implementation of your actions to address the (eventual) priority issues later in the feedback loop process.
Furthermore, KIIs can effectively gather information from the various groups within your community, helping you identify the most salient local socioeconomic categories. Through these discussions, you might also identify and recruit other members of the community who can help with other stages of the feedback loop process, for example, individuals who are effective at communicating with and engaging hard-to-reach members of your community. Additionally, and while this is not the goal of KIIs, conducting interviews with key community members can provide you with meaningful opportunities to strengthen relationships with key stakeholders in the community.
Viewing KIIs as part of a “suite” of community engagement tools may be helpful. This type of interview is most helpful in gathering information about the observations and perceptions about issues in your community. However, KIIs are not an effective or efficient tool for gathering information from large numbers of people or collecting direct number data. In this case, a survey would likely be more appropriate – this tool is covered in the next section.
Preparing for the key informant interviews
The first step in preparing for the KIIs is to determine what information you are seeking to get. You and your team should have a solid understanding of the research question – you’re interviewing people to discover the issues within and affecting the community. Be clear on what you want to know. You are a member of the community, so you will know foundational information about it. However, try to gather as much supplementary information as possible beforehand to ensure you get the most out of the interviews – information that cannot be found in community records or datasets.
Next is selecting the KII candidates, which, as already mentioned, can be a challenge. What follows are some considerations that might be helpful as you brainstorm possible interview subjects. Select informants who are both experts in and on the community. Given that KIIs are a direct method of communication, it is important to select experts who are willing to be interviewed. When contacting these potential interviewees, stress the importance of their input and inform them in advance of the time commitment required for the KII process. Of the candidates who are willing to be interviewed, you should understand their (possible) stake in the feedback loop process. This is pertinent because the feedback loop process will entail resources, funding and engagement across the community as it aims to foster better engagement between the local authority and all members of the community and ultimately to deliver for them.
Your data needs, available time resources and community structure will determine the number of candidates you interview. This will also help you determine how many people are needed to conduct the interviews. If you use more than one interviewer, conduct a training session to ensure they all ask the same questions in the same way. Consistency when conducting interviews is integral to the eventual data analysis process.
When selecting the interviewer(s), consider their gender, socioeconomic position and their position in the community. Is there a power differential between the interviewer and subject? Are there certain topics that are inappropriate with particular interviewer-subject pairings? If so, try to adjust accordingly – use another interviewer if necessary.
The next step is to decide how to conduct the KIIs. The most common techniques are either face-to-face or via telephone.
Face-to-face key informant interviews
Face-to-face KIIs are the most frequently used format. This technique gives the interviewer greater control over the discussion: they can repeat questions, probe answers, use discretion in which questions to ask, engage in a more complex questionnaire, control the ambient of the interview and capture nonverbal and spontaneous answers from the subject.
At the same time, face-to-face interviews can be time-consuming and expensive as you might need to book a venue for the interviews and provide stipends to subjects who miss employment to attend the interviews. In this vein, scheduling face-to-face interviews with some subjects may be difficult, especially for those with other responsibilities, including caring responsibilities and professional commitments. If you do conduct face-to-face interviews, consider the accessibility needs of the interview subjects, especially for people with disabilities.
Telephone key informant interviews
Telephone KIIs can be a practical method to reach subjects who are hard to reach due to time constraints or geographic restrictions. This format is typically more cost- and time-effective than face-to-face interviews, as telephone interviews are typically shorter. They can also be the most convenient and least time-intensive way to interview busy key informants. The downside of telephone interviews, though, is that it might be harder for the interviewer to build a rapport with the subject, and you cannot capture nonverbal behavior.
As you decide how to conduct your interview, you can also consider the structure of the KIIs. The types of interview structures exist on a spectrum. Highly structured interviews are when the interviewer draws from a list of questions that are asked identically to all subjects. Semi-structured KIIs typically follow a predetermined list of questions, but there is scope for the interviewer and subject to digress into other topics as appropriate. Finally, a loosely structured interview will likely not include a predetermined list of questions but will consist of a conversation that raises contextually appropriate questions that meet the objectives of the interview.
Whatever degree of structure you choose for your KIIs, it is essential that the interview questions are prepared in advance and that the interviewers have sufficient time to familiarize themselves with the questions and the objectives of this information-gathering process. Consider the order of the questions. It can be helpful to build up to the complex and sensitive issues through the course of the KII, using earlier questions to establish a relationship with the interviewee to encourage them to give as complete and honest answers as possible. Questions can include:
- Simple, introductory questions that can establish a rapport between the interviewer and the subject
- Questions that relate to the central focus of your interview, with to-the-point specific answers
- Questions that check the reliability of other answers, including the answers from other interviewees – this is sometimes referred to as triangulation
- Questions that probe for more complete answers – this might be particularly helpful when talking to KIIs about the roots of community issues and possible solutions
When asking questions, be sure to ask separate questions on separate issues – do not ask two questions in one. Additionally, during the KII, the interviewer should pace the questions to ensure they get every subject’s answers to key questions. It is important for later analysis that the data collected is comparable.
Documenting the key informant interviews
Before the interviews, consider with your team how you will document the KIIs and, subsequently, how the data gathered will be organized and stored in preparation for analysis. Consider which documentation methods will best enable you to perform efficient and consistent data collection. Whichever method you choose, make clear what are direct quotes from the subjects and what are the interviewer’s notes to ensure the subject’s words are not embellished.
Taking notes during the interviews can be a useful method of capturing first impressions of the subject’s answers. However, the interviewer should not let the note-taking process disrupt the flow of the conversation. Immediately following the interview, the interviewer should review their notes and fill in as many further details as possible.
Using a tape recorder to document what key informants say can free the interviewer to focus solely on the conversation. It may still be beneficial to take some brief notes, though. If you do use a tape recorder, you must get informed consent from the interview subject to audiotape the conversation ahead of the interview.
As you determine which documentation method to use, consider how you will store the data collected from the KIIs and protect the confidentiality of the interview subjects. The goal of the KIIs is to get as complete and honest answers from the subjects as possible, so you should reassure interview subjects that your interest is in the content of their answers rather than in who said what. Even if a subject’s answers are not sensitive or controversial, it is important to ensure that the information gathered is not attributable to any particular individual. Consider keeping all identifiable information in a separate and secure location from the answers, which should also be kept securely.
With these confidentiality and data management considerations in mind, it can be helpful to assign one person in your team to manage the “chain of data.” Their role will be to organize the compilation and storage of this large amount of qualitative data. Throughout the feedback loop process, they should always know where the data is during the data collection and analysis process.
After the KIIs are conducted, the interviewer or another person on your team should formalize the interview notes, using the audiotapes (if applicable) to fill in the gaps, into one document. In line with the above guidance on confidentiality, assign each person with a unique number, for example, “Person 1 . . .; Person 2 . . .” This document has the potential to be very long, so it can be beneficial to think of the organizational categories for the qualitative data before the data collection. You might decide to group different answers according to the question or perhaps different geographic areas of the community. The goal of this categorization is to make the data comparable and usable.
Conducting the key informant interviews
During the KII itself, the interviewer should reiterate the nature and goals of the project to the subject, which will include the purpose of the interview and an explanation of why the key informant’s good faith engagement in identifying local priorities and challenges is essential to the broader feedback loop process. The interviewer might consider restating information about the organizer of the KII (the leader of the team) and the procedures around data collection and protection.
After the interview, thank the subject for their cooperation, and provide them with the proposed next steps in data collection and broader feedback loop processes. Demonstration of your appreciation for their time and input can help strengthen relationships with key community stakeholders. The next stage of the KII process is analysis, which is covered in Step 5.