Know-How Exchange : Research/Metrics

Apparently $ 100 per hour is the going rate for interviews:

https://forum.researchinfo.com/showthread.php?p=11920

It depends on who must be interviewed...

If you are plannning to interview winos, it takes just a moment to locate and line them up. On the other hand, if you plan to interview winery owners, establishing a contact could take hours.

I personally charge 350 to interview the principles of 10-100 million dollar businesses.

It depends on WHO you're going to have to interview and how much time you think it's going to take you to set up the interviews.

I've charged as much as $750 (each) for one-on-one telephone interviews.

Don't bid the job based on hours though. Give the client a flat fee and live with it. If you're really efficient, you'll make more per hour. If you're not, you'll make less. But either way you'll have to really think about what's going to be involved in the project.

If your client is sympathetic, you can always agree on a fee for, say, 10-12 of the interviews, after which you can quote a price for the remaining interviews. That will give you a chance to see how much it takes to set up the interviews.

Another thought: There are interviews and there are interviews. If you're just reading a bunch of questions from a static questionnaire and recording simple multiple choice answers that's one thing. If you need to understand the subject matter and think on your feet and make mid-course corrections as you go, that's a very different thing.

You can probably get someone to do the former for $50 an hour (or less). At the other end of the spectrum, you're adding a lot of value to the process, and you should be able to charge much, much more.

There is also variation in rates, because if you are going to analyze the similarities and differences between interviews, look for various themes and see how each in unique, and pull together a presentation that includes verbatim remarks, you will want to account for that time (and the resources required) in your estimate as well.

Koen has the right idea for a commodity rate for a skilled interviewer – but it’s a bit like saying that the going rate for a brief is £100 / hour whilst forgetting that if needed, a QC costs £2000 / hour and that the back-office costs are as per itemised bill. (Would you believe it, some lawyers even charge you for the time and effort, paper and envelope for writing out your bill!) And Frank! Ever tried interviewing winos? I suspect that the interview might be very expensive if you want to understand the answers but I get your point.

If interviewing and understanding the answers is the hard bit that’s fine as a price, but what about turning the answers into useable information? Unless the client is going to tell you how to process and present the data that is potentially a far tougher call to get right.

Juliet (See top 100 experts) led a project based on interviews, surveys, analysis and presentation of the data in the field of outdoor education. It was felt that getting the interview and survey rates would be one of the hardest items but thanks to her approach that went well. Where we really had to burn the midnight oil was in data collation and analysis as the results were subject to scrutiny and checking. In other words if she said that something was 30% likely to be the case, the figures had to back the statement and any error had to be explicable. That’s often $1000 / hour work, so we were glad to be working to a fixed price for the job.

You sound like a professional – so offer a price for the entire job and stress to the client that you are prepared to share the risk that you underestimate the time it takes to recruit or question your sample or how long it takes to make sense of the data.

Steve Alker
Xspirt