Interview Guide Development as Reflexive Methodological Practice: A Practical Resource for Novice Qualitative Researchers

Interview guides are a foundational tool in qualitative research but often underexplained for novice researchers. We address this methodological gap by making explicit the tacit knowledge involved in interview guide design. Drawing on our interdisciplinary qualitative study of workplace friendship and wellbeing in the helping professions, this practice-based methodological article offers a transparent and practical account of how interview guides evolve through piloting and revision. Using a narrative vignette involving a graduate research assistant as a pedagogical entry point, this paper foregrounds the kinds of questions novice researchers frequently have but may hesitate to voice. Through examples drawn from multiple iterations of our interview guide, we present a practice-informed framework organized around four key elements of interview guide development: wording, sequencing, transitioning, and prompting. Rather than presenting interview guide development as a static preparatory task, we argue that it is a relational and reflexive form of methodological decision-making. This paper offers an accessible resource that demystifies interview guide design and supports emerging researchers in collecting rich and meaningful data regardless of their area of research or discipline.