Definitions of qualitative interviews
| Authors | Definition | Purpose |
| DiCicco-Bloom and Crabtree10 | Semistructured interviews are ‘organized around a set of predetermined open-ended questions, with other questions emerging from the dialogue between interviewer and interviewee/s’ (2006, p 315) | ‘To contribute to a body of knowledge that is conceptual and theoretical and is based on the meanings that life experiences hold for the interviewees’ (2006, p 314) |
| Hatch12 | ‘special kinds of conversations or speech events that are used by researchers to explore informants’ experiences and interpretations’ (2002, p. 91) | ‘To uncover the meaning structures that participants use to organize their experiences and make sense of their worlds’ (2002, p 91) |
| Kvale7 | ‘attempts to understand the world from the subjects' point of view, to unfold the meaning of peoples' experiences, to uncover their lived world prior to scientific explanations’ (1996, p 1) | ‘To gather descriptions of the life-world of the interviewee with respect to interpretation of the meaning of the described phenomena’ (1983, p 174) |
| Josselson15 | ‘a shared product of what two people—one the interviewer, the other the interviewee—talk about and how they talk together’ (2013, p 1) | ‘To enter the world of the participant and try to understand how it looks and feels from the participant’s point of view’ (2013, p 80) |