This section is based on an article in the Work Group Evaluation Handbook: Evaluating and Supporting Community Initiatives for Health and Development by Stephen B. Fawcett, Adrienne Paine-Andrews, Vincent T. Francisco, Jerry Schultz, Kimber P. Richter, R.K. Lewis, E.L. Williams, K.J. Harris, Jannette Berkley, Jacqueline L. Fisher, and Christine M. Lopez of the Work Group on Health Promotion and Community Development, University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas.
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What does interviewing key participants involve?
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Why should you interview key participants and identify critical events?
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When should you conduct interviews with key participants?
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How should you conduct interviews with key participants?
What does interviewing key participants involve?
To understand an initiative, talk with people who know its work from different perspectives. Leaders and active members can offer valuable insights, as can staff, volunteers, program participants, community partners, and people directly affected by the initiative. Their knowledge may come from professional expertise, organizing experience, or everyday experiences in the community.
Interviews can help you understand how the initiative operates, what people have experienced, and which factors may have supported or limited progress. Alongside other evaluation methods, this information can guide improvements in your group's work with the community.
Key participant interviews are guided conversations with people who have relevant knowledge or experience of the initiative. Participants can describe what happened, what they learned, how they experienced activities, and what they would change. Interviews can also reveal concerns, differences in perspective, and important events in the initiative's development. Including people who participated less often, left the initiative, or disagreed with its approach can help you understand experiences that might otherwise be missed.
Critical events are milestones, turning points, or developments that participants consider important to the initiative's direction or progress. They may occur within the group, in the community, or in the broader environment. An event may create opportunities, introduce barriers, or affect people in different ways.
Critical events might include:
- Applying for, receiving, or losing funding
- Developing, adopting, or substantially revising an action plan
- Achieving an important objective or recognizing that an objective needs to change
- Responding to a crisis within the community or the initiative
- Changing the initiative's mission, leadership, or major partnerships
- Experiencing another significant development, such as a policy change or a shift in community priorities
Interviewing people who organized, participated in, or were affected by these events can help you identify their significance. Different participants may identify different turning points or interpret the same event differently. Those differences are useful information about how the initiative has developed and whom it has reached.
Why should you interview key participants and identify critical events?
Interviews allow you to explore experiences in depth. You can ask participants to explain an answer, give an example, or describe circumstances that a survey might not capture. Open-ended questions and attentive listening create opportunities to understand the initiative from participants' perspectives, including experiences you may not have anticipated.
Identifying critical events gives these conversations a useful focus. Examining what happened before, during, and after an event can help explain how the initiative changed and what your group can learn from that experience.
Interviews about critical events provide qualitative information
Monitoring systems and event logs can document activities, dates, participation, and other details. Counts of activities or participants provide quantitative information, while descriptions and notes can provide qualitative information. Both types of information help establish what the initiative did and the circumstances surrounding its work.
Interviews can add detail about how people experienced an event, why it mattered to them, and how they believe it affected the initiative. Qualitative information includes descriptions, accounts, and interpretations; it does not simply mean judgments about quality. Ask open-ended questions that invite participants to explain their experiences rather than only answering yes or no.
Questions might include:
- What made this event important to you or to the initiative?
- What changed afterward, if anything?
- Who had opportunities to participate or influence decisions, and who faced barriers?
- What worked well, what did not, and what examples support your assessment?
- How did the event reflect or conflict with the priorities and values of different community members?
Follow-up questions such as "Can you give an example?" or "What led you to that conclusion?" help participants explain their responses. Avoid suggesting that an event must have been successful, fair, or important. Leave room for uncertainty, mixed experiences, and disagreement.
Qualitative and quantitative information can complement each other. Comparing interview accounts with activity records, survey findings, and other evidence can reveal patterns, gaps, and contradictions. Combining methods does not automatically make conclusions more accurate; the value depends on the quality of the information and how carefully you interpret it.
Critical events can provide a history of the initiative
Tracking critical events helps document how the initiative began, adapted, and developed. A timeline can show achievements, setbacks, changes in direction, and lessons that shaped later decisions. Compare participants' recollections with available records to clarify dates and details, and acknowledge uncertainty when accounts differ.
Critical events can help identify factors that supported or limited progress
Exploring critical events can reveal actions, relationships, resources, and outside conditions that participants believe affected progress. Use these accounts to investigate possible explanations rather than treating them as proof of cause and effect. Consider whether an approach that worked in one situation would need to change under different conditions.
Critical events can inform planning and renewal
Use what you learn to reconsider priorities, strengthen effective practices, and address barriers. Interviews can also help your group recognize contributions and achievements that routine records overlook. Discuss the findings with participants and community partners so that future plans reflect both the initiative's goals and the experiences of people involved in its work.
When should you conduct interviews with key participants?
Schedule interviews when the findings can inform decisions. Useful times include after an important event, during a periodic review, before revising an action plan, or as leadership or funding arrangements change. Interviews near the end of a grant period can support reflection, but earlier conversations allow more time to act on what you learn. Balance the value of timely accounts with participants' availability, your resources, and the need to avoid repeatedly asking people for information without sharing results.
How should you conduct interviews with key participants?
Prepare interviewers to ask clear questions, listen without judgment, and document responses accurately. Practice with a colleague or a small group before beginning. Agree on the purpose of the interviews, how you will protect participants' information, and how the findings will be used.
There are four main steps to conducting key participant interviews.
Determine whom to interview
Identify the experiences and perspectives needed to answer your evaluation questions. Ask initiative members and community partners to suggest participants, but do not rely only on nominations of highly visible contributors. Include people with different roles, lengths of involvement, and experiences of the initiative, especially people directly affected by its work.
Create a participant list that reflects those perspectives, then review whose experiences may be missing. A small initial set of interviews can help you begin, but four or five people may not capture the range of experiences relevant to your questions. Choose the number of interviews based on the evaluation's purpose, the diversity of experiences, and available resources. Explain how participants were selected and avoid presenting their views as representative of everyone in the community.
Conduct the interviews
Develop an interview guide with a manageable set of open-ended questions. Use the same core topics across interviews so you can compare accounts, while allowing follow-up questions that explore each participant's experience. Begin with a brief explanation of the initiative and the period you want to discuss, and clarify what you mean by a critical event.
Questions might include:
- Which events or turning points stand out in the initiative's history, and what was your involvement in them?
- What made each event important, and to whom?
- What was happening within the initiative and the community at the time?
- What actions, people, partnerships, and resources shaped what happened?
- What barriers, disagreements, or concerns arose, and how were they addressed?
- What intended or unintended changes followed for the initiative and the community, and how did different people experience them?
- What lessons would you draw from these experiences, and what might others see differently?
- What should the initiative continue, change, or explore next?
Offer participants the topics or questions in advance so they have time to reflect and locate relevant records if they wish. Explain the expected length of the conversation, how the information will be used, and who will have access to it. Make participation voluntary and let people know they may decline questions or end the interview. Ask about language, accessibility, scheduling, and other needs that would help them participate comfortably.
Interviews can take place in person, by phone, or through a video call, depending on participants' preferences and access. Choose a setting where others are unlikely to overhear. Interviewers may be evaluation team members or other people trained for the role; consider whether existing relationships or differences in authority could discourage candid responses. Obtain explicit permission before recording, and offer note-taking as an alternative. Recordings can support accurate documentation, but they do not guarantee accurate accounts. Check notes or transcripts for errors, limit access, and establish how long the material will be retained.
Build trust by listening carefully, using neutral follow-up questions, and respecting participants' boundaries. Do not promise anonymity when the interviewer knows a participant's identity. Instead, explain how confidentiality will be handled and any limits to it. Be clear about whether names or quotations may appear in reports and obtain permission for identifiable attribution. In a small initiative, even an unnamed description may reveal who spoke, so consider that risk when reporting findings.
Bring the information together
Review the notes or transcripts systematically, organizing information by event and recurring theme. Prepare a timeline where useful, distinguish documented details from participants' interpretations, and retain differing accounts rather than forcing agreement. Look for both common patterns and experiences that challenge the main interpretation. Compare accounts with other records when available. The report should explain whom you interviewed, how you analyzed the information, and the limitations of the findings. Where appropriate, invite participants to check summaries for factual errors or missing context without requiring them to agree with every conclusion.
Use the findings to understand the initiative and guide future action
Share an accessible summary with participants and others involved in planning. Discuss what the interviews suggest about the initiative's development, strengths, barriers, and opportunities for improvement. Decide which actions to take, who will be responsible, and when you will review progress. Explain how the findings informed those decisions, including suggestions that need further investigation or cannot be acted on immediately.
Bringing the findings into practice
Key participant interviews help explain how people have experienced an initiative and why particular events mattered to them. They can preserve its history, reveal overlooked perspectives, and identify useful directions for change. Their value comes from thoughtful participant selection, respectful conversations, careful interpretation, and follow-through. Used alongside other evidence, interviews can help your group make better-informed decisions with the community.