The informality of unstructured interviews allows the interviewer to build a rapport with the interviewee
Dobash and Dobash used unstructured interviews to study domestic violence
Useful for studying sensitive topics
William Labov found that adopting a more relaxed, informal style bought a different, more open response from the children he was interviewing.
There are no set questions meaning the interviewee has more opportunity to speak about things they think are important
Unstructured interviews make it much easier to check each other's meanings.
Questions can be explained, and answers can be expanded
Unstructuredinterviews are highly flexible as the interviewer is not restricted to a fixed set of questions
Unstructuredinterviews can be a good method of exploring a topic you may not know much about
As they are in-depth explorations, unstructured interviews take a long time to conduct - often several hours. This also limits the number that can be carried out making a relatively small sample
Training needs to also be more thorough for unstructured interviews
In unstructured interviews, interviewers also need good inpersonal skills so they can establish a rapport
The small numbers in unstructured interviews mean that the sample interviewed is less likely to be representative. This will make it harder to make valid generalisations
Unstructured interviews are not reliable as they are not standardised
The answers of unstructured interviews can not be pre-coded, making it very difficult to count and quantify the numbers of interviewees giving this or that answer
Unstructured interviews are generally seen to produce valid data.
Some argue that the fact they involve an interaction inevitably colours and distorts the information obtained
