Writing Interview Questions

My podcasting journey so far has involved working with people from all over the world and learning something from every one of them. Currently I've been working with the English Teachers Association of Queensland on a podcast called Hoops of Steel which is 'a space where English teachers in Queensland and beyond can connect about the joy and point of learning, language, and literature.' Working with English teachers is delightful. As I guide them through the ins and outs of the podcasting medium I am also taking every opportunity to learn from their vast amount of skill and knowledge in communication and storytelling.

Recently we were refining a series of interview questions for an episode about inclusive education. One of the questions was written in a way that would result in a yes or no answer. The question was: 'Have you found in your work that there is some confusion about what inclusive education is (and isn’t)?'

I provided the feedback that a yes/no interview question is usually a leading question and I shared the strategy of redrafting it several times using a template of: who?, what?, where?, when?, why? and how?. This process helps the interviewer get to the core of what they're asking, while giving the guest room to be expansive.

Using the template I came up with the following examples:

Who: 'which educational settings have you found to be most effective at implementing inclusive education practices? and least?'

What: 'what are the areas of inclusive education that are most poorly understood?'

or 'what factors contribute to the poor implementation of inclusive education?'

When: 'in what circumstances do you find that teachers struggle to implement inclusive education policies'

Where: 'are there areas of the state where inclusive education is handled better?'

Why: 'why is it important for teachers to have a clear understanding of inclusive education?'

or 'why do you think that the quality of inclusive education differs so much?'

How: 'In your experience, how do teachers react to inclusive education?'

In every stage of the process I advise podcasters to be thinking about their goal (eg. why am I making this podcast?), the audience, and the vibe. This counts for the whole series and is further refined for individual episodes. These three questions are a useful guide for everything from the title of the podcast, to the selection of a particular guest, to the process of writing interview questions. Thinking about goal, audience and vibe you can then identify which version of the question gets to the core of what you want to find out.

It turns out that not only was I preaching to the choir, but that the English teachers could do me one better, and so now I share with you the QChart (Weiderhold & Kagan, 2007):

	Is	Did	Can	Would	Will	Might
Who
What
When
Where
Why
How

When using the QChart the simplest questions are located in the upper left-hand corner and the most complicated in the bottom right. A useful tool indeed!

Happy podcasting, all. Keep learning! Keep asking questions!