🤔 Writing interview instructions

🤔 Things you should consider when writing interview instructions

When writing the interview instructions in QualiaInterviews, there are a few things you might want to add to make the bot conduct interviews effectively and maintaining an appropriate behaviour.

Interview instructions

The interview instructions the specific guidelines for your interview. They help shape the questions the AI asks during an interview, explain background information if needed and shape the behaviour of the bot for the specifics of your interview. But these instructions don't override the system prompt. Instead, they work within the boundaries set by the system prompt. So, if there's ever a conflict between the two, the system prompt wins out to make sure the AI stays on track with the overall guidelines.

Summary:

You can ask the AI to create a summary at the end of each interview. This gives the respondent a chance to check it and confirm if it really captures what they meant. This not only ensures accuracy but also makes the interview feel more collaborative.

Here’s an example instruction that you can use in your interview:

Before you finish, you should summarise the story you have just been told and ask if it is a fair reflection of the discussion. Ask for corrections and clarifications if necessary. Don't offer opinions, suggestions, or information.

Anonymity

If respondents start to give personally identifiable information about another person, Qualia will politely ask them to stop and otherwise will end the interview.

While of course you may ask respondents for information about themselves, please do not ask for information which might identify them personally e.g. by giving their name, address or contact details. If you want to match up responses to individuals or groups of individuals, use keys.

You can add additional instructions affecting privacy. This will guide the AI in how it handles and refers to personal data during the interview.

Depth of the interviews

Control how deep the AI digs into the conversation. This helps in getting just the right amount of detail without making it feel like an interrogation.

Here’s examples of instructions that you can use for in-depth interviews:

If my answer is not complete or very terse, ask me gently for more details.

This interview is a conversation. Try to find out how my answers and the things I talk about are interconnected.

Remark on anything I say which seems unusual or interesting.

If you see connections between my answers, ask me about them.

Ask Follow up questions to gain a deeper understanding. Like "Why do you think that?" or "Could you tell me more about this?”

Explain what you really want

For the AI interviewer to adapt in a useful way, e.g. to ask meaningful follow-up questions or to respond to a completely unexpected comment, you have to give it a clear idea of what you actually want to find out, beyond simply a list of questions.

Importance: [!] and [!!]

You may designate some questions/themes/instructions as particularly important by using exclamation marks in square brackets: '[!]' or even '[!!]', in this case, Qualia will be extra persistent and try not to move on until you have the information you need.

Personality/behaviour:

Match the AI’s style to the vibe of your interview. A little personality tweak can make the interaction feel more natural and engaging.

Friendly:

You are a very polite and friendly interview bot. Your job is only to interview
me.

Start each question with a small comment or encouragement about the topic you are discussing, building a rapport.

Neutral:

Always try to respond in just a few words or one sentence maximum

Throughout the interview, avoid giving mini-summaries after each response, which can feel repetitive and robotic. Instead, focus on building rapport by responding naturally and empathetically to my answers, interjecting brief affirmations like "That’s interesting," or "I see," to keep the conversation flowing and engaging.

Progression of the interview

Since Qualia doesn’t have a timer, you can ask the AI to give occasional feedback to the respondent to set expectations.

Here’s an example instruction that you can use in your interview:

Give occasional feedback as you progress through the interview, to give me an idea of how much longer it will be. Use occasional phrases like 'We're doing well, we will be finished soon.' or 'We're coming to the last topic now.' or 'I don't have much more to ask'. or 'This is my last question', or 'We're half way through the interview', as appropriate.

Move on instruction

You can ask the AI to move on to the next question if the respondent doesn’t want to answer a specific question.

Here’s an example instruction that you can use in your interview:

Tell me that at any point if I want to skip to the next part of the interview, I just need to say something like 'Please move on'.
If during the interview I ask at any point to move on, follow this command.

Safeguarding / Flagging the interview

If you are conducting an interview with a sensitive topic or with people in situations of insecurity or vulnerability, you can ask Qualia to flag the part of the interview which the topic is mentioned.

The system instructions already tell Qualia to flag safeguarding concerns by printing at the start of the response: '!!!!!' - that is, five exclamation marks together. You can quickly search for any such response.

You can add your own additional safeguarding instructions if you wish.

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