Transitioning from a broad topic to a defensible qualitative interview design

[AlexanderMM]

I'm designing my master's thesis in sociology, which will involve qualitative interviews, but I'm struggling to justify my methodological choices and create a robust research design that will stand up to scrutiny from my committee. I understand the broad paradigms, but the practical details of things like developing an effective interview guide, ensuring ethical recruitment, and choosing between thematic analysis and grounded theory feel overwhelming. For graduate students and researchers in the social sciences, what resources or steps were most helpful in moving from a broad topic to a concrete, defensible methodology? How did you navigate the balance between a structured, replicable process and the necessary flexibility for emergent themes, and what are common pitfalls in interview-based studies that I should proactively address in my proposal?