Key Informant Interview and Focus Group Sample Questions

Before conducting any focus groups or key informant interviews, it is important to decide what information you would like to obtain from your qualitative methods. The objective of collecting these qualitative data is to identify the most relevant contributing factors in your community. Based on the information you’d like to obtain, you can create questions. Here are some sample questions you may use. Remember that these are only suggestions – feel free to adjust, discard or add any questions to adapt your qualitative methods to your specific community.

Tips:

• Always provide definitions for terms like prescription opioids and opioid misuse so that you and your participants are on the same page.
• Start with 1 – 2 warm-up questions to build rapport. These are easy, fact-seeking questions.
• Use 5 – 7 core questions to obtain in-depth information and 1 – 2 wrap-up questions to allow respondents to share final thoughts.
• Either use a recorder or have a second person taking notes and debrief immediately.