Ethnographic interviews can help create in-depth case studies and solutions for community problems, which in turn aids issues of representation as well as giving context and understanding for why participation and distrust occur in certain places. This method acknowledges that there will be different experiences and issues throughout smaller and wider contexts.

Solutions tend to be placed onto communities without real context or understanding of the different situations. The main aim of ethnographic interviews are to provide this missing context so solutions will be actually applicable to communities and give understanding to experts about how to contribute to identified barriers.

Generally the stakeholders and actors form a close relationship due to the nature of ethnographic interviews

This is a time intensive method, as it requires the researcher/s to establish a relationship with the interviewees and observe practices before interviewing subjects. This would take 2-4 weeks, however, the benefits of the process means connections with various communities and rich in quality data about problems and solutions. However, if there is a time constraint open-ended interviews  that allow for exploration are ok to do at the beginning instead of the end.

Select stakeholders to participate in interviews, depending on what the aim of the project is, e.g. understanding a particular community’s needs to reach climate neutrality. Participate in and get to know the community. In doing so, conduct open-ended and exploratory interviews with the community to understand the issues they perceive related to the topic. Through open-ended questioning, new topics that were not considered by the stakeholder may be opened. 

There is no one-fits-all model for preparing ethnographic interviews. Questions and answers emerge according to how stakeholders respond