Key informant interviews

Interviews are one of the most commonly used forms of data collection for needs assessments, research, monitoring, and evaluation. Such interviews may be part of safety audits, focus groups, or human rights monitoring.

However, when conducting interviews about violence against women the interviewer must take special care. When interviewing survivors of violence, or others about violence against women, ethical considerations should be of primary concern.

The following important ethical and safety considerations come into play whenever interviewing survivors or others about violence against women (World Health Organization, 2003):

• Do no harm: Treat each woman and the situation as if the potential for harm is extreme until there is evidence to the contrary. Do not undertake any interview that will make a woman’s situation worse in the short term or longer term.
• Know your subject and assess the risks: Learn the risks associated with violence against women and/or any particular woman's or girl’s case before undertaking an interview.
• Prepare referral information: Be prepared to provide information in a woman's native language and the local language (if different) about appropriate legal, health, shelter, social support, and security services, and to help with referral, if requested. Don’t offer advice or make promises that you cannot fulfill.
• Adequately select and prepare interviewers, interpreters, and co-workers: Ensure that interviewers are trained on the dynamics of violence against women and the potential for secondary trauma. Weigh the risks and benefits associated with employing interpreters, co-workers, or others, and develop adequate methods for screening and training.
• Ensure anonymity and confidentiality: Protect a survivor’s identity and confidentiality throughout the entire interview process – from the moment she is contacted through the time that any information she provided is made public.
• Get informed consent: Make certain that each respondent clearly understands the content and purpose of the interview, the intended use of the information, her right not to answer questions, her right to terminate the interview at any time, and her right to put restrictions on how the information is used.
• Listen to and respect each woman’s assessment of her situation and risks to her safety: Recognize that each woman will have different concerns, and that the way she views her concerns may be different from how others, including the interviewer, might assess them. Recognize that victims themselves can often best assess their own risk.
• Do not re-traumatize a woman or girl: Do not ask questions intended to provoke an emotionally charged response. Be prepared to respond to a woman's distress and highlight her strengths.
• Be prepared for emergency intervention: Be prepared to respond if a woman or girl says she is in imminent danger.
• Put information collected to good use: Use information in a way that benefits an individual woman or that advances the development of good policies and interventions for women and girls generally.

More resources related to the ethics of interviewing about human rights violations against women and girls are available in the Programming Essentials section of this website.

Good interviewing requires the interviewer to be non-judgmental, connect with the interviewee, communicate complicated issues clearly, be professional, be polite, be knowledgeable and sensitive to the issues, be well-prepared, and make inquiries in a non-confrontational or non-challenging manner. In general, interviewers should be prepared to carry out the interview, be knowledgeable about the issues and context, and be respectful to the interviewee. Steps in conducting useful interviews include:

• Determining the purpose of the interviewing;
• Identifying specific interviewees, or criteria for interviewee selection;
• Developing a set of questions or themes to address during interviews;
• Writing an interview protocol to ensure consistency throughout the process, especially if multiple people are conducting interviews;
• Pilot testing interview protocol and questions;
• Finalizing informed consent language and forms; and
• Creating the final protocol, including methods for recording the interview information either through notes, audio, or video recording.

Developing interview questions 

Practitioners can construct different kinds of questions as needed to gather information. For example, interview questions can:

• find out about the nature and extent of violations of women’s and girls’ human rights;
• learn what and how causes and risk factors contribute to or exacerbate the human rights violations;
• learn what consequences stem from human rights violations;
• target structural issues, such as laws or systems;
• elicit information on how pre-identified flaws in the law or policy play out in practice;
• seek clarification about procedures, guidelines, protocols and trainings and remind interviewers to obtain copies of any official documents or template forms during the interview;
• seek quantitative information to obtain estimates, such as asking police or judges about the number of cases of violence against women in a given period;
• learn what efforts non-governmental organizations and others are making to respond to the human rights violation; and
• ask about public perceptions, victim needs, and recommendations for change.

In general, the following guidelines may be helpful for practitioners as they develop their interview questions:

• Questions should be open-ended, non-leading and non-inflammatory. Use as few yes/no questions as possible.
• Avoid framing questions in a judgmental or aggressive tone. Practitioners should anticipate that interview questions about violence against women may generate strong emotions, or may elicit stories of abuse and violence from the interviewee in some cases.
• Craft interview questions to be concise, easy-to-understand, and as clear as possible. Avoid lingo, slang, and emotionally-loaded words. Use ordinary language and terms familiar to the respondent.
• If applicable, include a map or diagram to facilitate questioning and responses about events.
• Consider asking an expert or other appropriate person to review and critique questions beforehand to ensure that they are relevant and comprehensive.
• Lead off with more non-controversial and less sensitive questions. For example, asking the interviewee to describe their work and duties is an initial question that helps set a comfortable tone.
• Prioritize the most pressing questions in terms of question order.
• Ask for anecdotes without compromising confidentiality. The use of experiences and stories can help illustrate and lend credence to conclusions.
• Be prepared to deviate from the question set if needed during the interview to obtain clarification or more details.

Depending on the goal, practitioners may need to develop different question sets for different categories of interviewee. For example, separate question sets may be needed for judges, prosecutors, police, lawyers, community activists, survivors, perpetrators, advocates, and religious or other community leaders. If so, practitioners should assess what information is needed, what each group can provide, and develop tailored questions.

Developing an interview protocol

A protocol provides an overall description of the interview process to guide the interviewer, along with specific instructions about how to conduct themselves during the interview. The protocol should include an introductory script that introduces the interviewers and the organization, describes the project mandate, explains how the information will be used, explains what the interviewer can and cannot do with the information, and explains issues of confidentiality. All interview protocols should allow for time at the conclusion of the interview to:

• Ask if the interviewee has other additional names to recommend for an interview or other sources.
• Ask if the interviewee has anything else to add.
• Allow the interviewee time to ask questions of the interviewer.

Other tips for conducting Interviews (Amnesty International and CODESRIA 2000)

• If using mixed-gender interviewing teams, always provide an opportunity for women interviewees to speak with women interviewers alone.
• Be prepared to hear about personal experiences of violence from women who are your key informants, even if they have not been initially identified as survivors. With one in four women experiencing violence in their lifetime, it is very common to hear from women judges, advocates, activists, legislators, police officers, and other about the violence they have experienced.
• Remember that sexual violence is one of the most difficult allegations to discuss because of the social, cultural, moral, and political environment. In almost all societies, a woman or girl coming forward with allegations of rape, sexual violence, or sexual humiliation, has a great deal to “lose” and is likely to face extraordinary pressures and ostracism from the closest members of her family to the society at large.
• Adopt a policy for interviewers on a gender-sensitive language, including using words and expressions that do not obscure women’s and girls’ experiences. For instance, you could use generic terms and titles, such as: people, human beings, society, individual, men and women, and chairperson rather than such terms as: man, men, mankind, or chairman.
• Build trust with the women you are interviewing, understand the cycles of violence, and at which stage the women are, before bringing up sensitive issues.

Additional Resources for Researching Violence Against Women and Girls:

Researching Violence Against Women: A Practical Guide for Researchers and Activists (PATH/WHO, 2005). Available in English.

Monitoring the Implementation of Domestic Violence Laws: A Human Rights Methodology (The Advocates for Human Rights, 2011). Available in English and Russian.

International Violence Against Women Survey (Springer, 2008). Available in English. Survey questions available in the back matter.

Ethical and Safety Recommendations for Interviewing Trafficked Women (World Health Organization, 2003). Available in English.

Putting Women First: Ethical and Safety Recommendations for Research on Domestic Violence against Women (WHO, 2001).  Available in English, French and Spanish. 

WHO Ethical and Safety Recommendations for Researching, Documenting and Monitoring Sexual Violence in Emergencies (WHO, 2007). Available in English and French. 

A Methodology for Gender-Sensitive Research (Rights and Democracy, 1999). Available in English.

Ukweli: Monitoring and Documenting Human Rights Violations in Africa (Amnesty International and CODESRIA, 2000). Available in English.