Without excellent probing skills, interviewers may allow the discussion of a specific
topic to end before all the potential information is revealed. Most interviewers have to work
at learning to ask good probing questions. For example, in-depth interviews of business
students about what they want in their coursework often reveal that ‘‘real-world projects’’
are important learning experiences.
But what do they really mean by ‘‘real-world projects’’? What specifically about these projects makes them good learning experiences? What kinds of projects are more likely to be labeled as ‘‘real-world projects’’? It takes time and effort to elicit participants’ answers, and ending a sequence of questions relatively quickly, as is the tendency in everyday conversation, is not effective in in-depth interviewing.