The agency wrote discussion guides for their research interviews. The aims of the interviews were to understand:

• the direction of the aviation industry in the Glasgow area
• the current and future needs of the aviation workforce
• the respective skill sets needed
• possible approaches to future skills development

To do this they planned to speak to 4 groups:

• further education providers
• aviation industry leads
• airport leads
• subject matter experts

The different groups’ different expertise meant that they needed 4 different discussion guides (although they all had the same structure).

First the researcher wrote themselves a short paragraph on the purpose of the interview. Keeping this in mind, they worked on a first draft, starting with the topics that would be covered. For the airport leads discussion guide, these included the aviation industry’s:

• current and future needs
• their respective skill set
• approaches to future skills development

These then became headings and themes for questions to fall under. 

They ended up with 4 themes and 4 questions under each theme. Each question had some extra prompts that the interviewer could use if the conversation seemed to get stuck.

For example:
What do you think will be the skill needs in the aviation industry in 4 to 5 years’ time? 

For example, technical skills to adapt to the transition to zero-emission flight and the changing use of fuel and fuelling. 

Another would be operational automation. Would there be a need for highly skilled roles (specialised training) and also lower skilled roles?

They added an introduction that included:

• Information about the design agency and why they were doing this work
• Background to the project
• What they would cover in the interview 
• Confirmation of the interviewee’s consent

Finally, the team worked together on a couple of iterations until the discussion guide was ready to go!

Two researchers joined the online interview, one to lead the interview and the other to take notes. Sometimes having more researchers than interviewees can create an awkward power imbalance, so the note taker turned their camera off to make the interviewee feel more comfortable.

They started the conversation with questions about the interviewee and their role in relation to the future of aviation. They then mainly followed the script in the discussion guide. But sometimes the interviewee answered a question before the interview got there. It’s fine to skip questions you already have an answer to.

Similarly it’s fine to gently bring an interviewee back to the current topic if they start talking too much about an upcoming one. The first topic in this interview was ‘skills’, and during that discussion the interviewee went on to talk about some of their partnerships with other industries. Partnership was the third topic they would be covering, so the interviewer waited for the interviewee to finish their point, advised that they will come back to partnership, and used another prompt about skills to get the conversation back on track.

It’s also okay to go off-script if there’s something you’d like to dig into more deeply. The interviewee also mentioned some figures about sustainability that the researchers weren’t aware of, so the interviewer noted them down, waited for the interviewee to finish their point, and then reiterated the stat, asking for more detail.

As you learn more about the topic, you might incorporate some of this off-script questions into the discussion guide for future.

At the end of the interview, the lead gave the notetaker the chance to ask follow-up questions. Then they tied off the conversation by asking the interviewee if they had any questions, or if there was anything else they should know about.