Translations:Een kennisborgingsproject bij Netwerk/47/en

• Ensure that you are well prepared before conducting an interview. It is important that you are well informed about the topic and the broader subject matter of the interview. This makes it easier to draft a list of questions and to ask supplementary questions during the interviews. On the other hand, it is also a good idea to ask an outsider to conduct the interview, because he or she can look at the organisation with fresh eyes.
• Make sure that an interview does not go on for too long. This process has taught us that an interview should not last for longer than 2 hours. In addition, there should always be a short break after an hour.
• If you are working with a digital recording device, do not forget to check in advance whether there is sufficient space on the memory card and whether the batteries are loaded.
• Writing up interviews and making tape content files takes more time that you might expect. During a discussion, people have the tendency to repeat things, or to use long sentences. It takes time to turn this into a clear, well-written text.
• When writing up, you lose certain nuances that are conveyed in non-verbal communication, which can make the interviewee come across as annoyed or curt in the transcript text. One potential solution is to report the non-verbal communication in brackets, for example (laughs).