Probably the easiest part is deciding where to begin the interview, and you may well wish to begin all your interviews with a similar opening or ‘warm-up’ question or topic. But as each interview progresses you need constantly to make decisions about what to ask next in the context of that particular interview. This means working out whether you want to ask a question which relates to what you and your interviewee(s) have just been talking about, or whether you want to change the subject and move the interview onto new terrain. Whichever of these you decide to do, the social task is to orchestrate an interaction which moves easily and painlessly between topics and questions. The intellectual task is to try to assess, on the spot, the relevance of each part of the interaction to your research questions, or to what you really want to know. Although you are likely to have some form of aide-mémoire to remind you about the topics and issues you are interested in, you nevertheless need to be able to make connections between rele- vant issues quickly, and to spot and follow up issues which may be relevant, but which you had not anticipated.