An interview script is basically a list of topics and questions that an interviewer intends to ask his or her interviewee. They can be very useful regardless of the genre of the interview, be it work, research or journalistic, among others..
In addition, the interview scripts can be used in any circumstance, whether the interview is for radio, television, for a company, or for a newspaper or magazine..
The use of interview scripts occurs mainly in structured interviews. These are a type of interview in which you know in advance what kind of information you want to collect with it, and where the interviewer only limits himself to following the established order of the questions.
Additionally, interview scripts are used for semi-structured interviews, which are similar to structured interviews, although the interviewer is free to ask questions that are not in the script..
An interview script must contain the following three sections:
In this section, the data will simply be placed to identify the interview, within which the following can be found:
Then, a section is placed with the relevant information about the person who is going to be interviewed. Some of these data may be the following:
The last section is the most important of the interview script, it is the sector where all the questions that you want to ask the interviewee are placed. As it is a guide, it is important that the questions are not too long, and that they are well written.
In the event that the interview is structured, the questions will follow a pre-established order, which the interviewer must follow without deviating.
For a semi-structured interview, the script will have some general questions so that the interviewer can be guided with them, and in this way do not forget to consult any topic of interest. However, the order in which the questions were placed may not be followed.
To prepare an interview script, a series of steps must be followed, which will be described below. For practical purposes, for the explanations of each step, an interview with Lionel Messi will be taken as an example.
The first step in developing an interview script is choosing a topic to research, and a person or character to interview..
For example, the interview will be conducted with Lionel Messi, and the main topic or objective of it is to know if he is going to renew his contract with Barcelona when it ends..
Then, you should investigate and try to know everything about the subject and the person to be interviewed. In this way, you will have a broad knowledge of the subject that will later help to formulate better questions.
For example, read all the latest news about Messi's contract and watch videos of interviews conducted today that talk about the subject. In addition, study everything related to Messi, such as his place of birth, where he currently lives, the number of children and the titles obtained, among other data..
Once you have information about the topic and the character, you proceed to write the objectives you want to achieve with the questions.
For example, the main objective of the interview with Messi would be:
Then, we proceed to write all the questions that will be asked in the interview. These depend, on the one hand, on the amount of time available to carry out the interview, and, on the other hand, on the type of interview.
If it is a structured interview, the questions must be precise and must be placed in a specific order, which has a certain logic.
If it is a semi-structured interview, you can place open questions, or topic triggers, which refer to the topics you want to discuss.
In both cases, the tonic of the questions should be more general at the beginning, so that the interviewee feels comfortable, and then guide them towards the objective of the interview..
For example, in the case of the Messi interview, a semi-structured interview will be done, so the questions could be:
In the last step, we proceed to create the interview script by placing the identification data of the interview at the top. Then, the identification data of the person interviewed. And finally, the battery of questions.
For example:
Below are brief examples of interview scripts:
The following example is an interview script about contamination, carried out with a Mexican researcher.
The following example is an interview script about COVID-19, carried out with a Spanish doctor.
The following example is an interview script about social networks, carried out with an Argentine psychologist.
The following example is an interview script about abortion, conducted with a Chilean doctor.
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