Doing Interview Research

This book is not just yet another manual about interview procedures. Rather, the strength of this excellent extended discussion is that the author not only knows about interviews in theory, but is also experienced in actually putting that theory into practice when conducting interviews. This makes for a book that is able to address how to do interviews in a thoughtful and responsible way, as the discussion is grounded in the theoretical, ethical, methodological and practical thinking that shapes how interviews are conducted. – Julianne Cheek
A clear and practical guide to conducting research interviews for those inexperienced with qualitative methodologies and methods. – Shanu Sadhwani
Doing Interview Research is a comprehensive, captivating guide for carrying out interviews. It has everything the social science postgraduate researcher requires to explore the expansive nature of qualitative inquiry. A very informative resource for both students and supervisors. – Jessica Clapham
Uwe Flick tackles interviewing—a ubiquitous research method—in his exceptionally useful and user-friendly book. By ending each chapter with a recurring refrain—what you need to ask yourself, what you need to succeed, and what you learned—he invites readers to actively and reflexively engage with the material. – Karen Staller
This book gives the reader an excellent introduction to interview research. It provides rationales for choosing interviews and discusses when to do interviews and why. It is a comprehensive and yet accessible book that includes the whole process, from designing interview research to conducting different types of interviews in different contexts, and to analyzing and reporting interview data. Throughout each step, Flick thoughtfully discusses epistemology, quality, critiques, and reflexivity, so the book offers the reader a theoretical approach at the same time as clear guidance on how to design and conduct interview research. – Robert Thornberg

Uwe Flick is Senior Professor of Qualitative Research in Social Science and Education at the Freie Universität Berlin, Germany. He is a trained psychologist and sociologist and received his PhD from the Freie Universität Berlin in 1988 and his Habilitation from the Technical University of Berlin in 1994.

He has been Professor of Qualitative Research at Alice Salomon University of Applied Sciences in Berlin, Germany and at the University of Vienna, Austria. Previously, he was Adjunct Professor at the Memorial University of Newfoundland in St. John’s, Canada; a Lecturer in research methodology at the Freie Universität Berlin; a Reader and Assistant Professor in qualitative methods and evaluation at the Technical University of Berlin; and Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Medical Sociology at the Hannover Medical School.

He has held visiting appointments at the London School of Economics, the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris, at Cambridge University (UK), University of Lisbon (Portugal), Institute of Higher Studies in Vienna, in Italy and Sweden, and at the School of Psychology at Massey University, Auckland (New Zealand).

His main research interests are qualitative methods, social representations in the fields of individual and public health, chronic illness and vulnerability in fields like youth homelessness, peer relations or migration, and technological change in everyday life.

He is the author of:

• Introducing Research Methodology: A Beginner’s Guide to Doing a Research Project (4th edn, 2025)
• Designing Qualitative Research (2nd edn, 2018)
• Doing Grounded Theory (2018)
• Doing Triangulation and Mixed Methods (2018)
• Managing Quality in Qualitative Research (2nd edn, 2018)
• Doing Interview Research – The Essential How To Guide (2022)

He is the editor of:

• A Companion to Qualitative Research (2004)
• The Psychology of the Social (1998)
• The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Data Analysis (2014)
• The SAGE Qualitative Research Kit (2nd edn, 2018)
• The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Data Collection (2018)
• The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research Design (2022)
• The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research Quality (2025)

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