5) Interviews

• Semi-structured interviews – Cicourel and Kitsuse: always followed up their questions with ‘How do you mean?’ as a way of gaining more information. Additional questions can be asked where the interviewer thinks it is relevant.
• Group interviews – Willis: used group interviews as part of his research into the ‘lads’ and schooling.
• Response rate – Young and Willmott: out of the 987 people they approached for their main sample, only 54 refused to be interviewed.
• Feminist criticisms – Graham: survey methods such as questionnaires and structured interviews are patriarchal and give a distorted, invalid picture of women’s experiences. Sociologists need to use methods that allow the researcher to understand women’s behaviour, attitudes, and meanings. Therefore, advocates the use of direct observation instead of structured interviews.
• Rapport and sensitivity – Labov: using a formal interview technique to study the language of black American children, Labov found that they appeared to be tongue-tied and ‘linguistically deprived’.
• Rapport and sensitivity – Dobash and Dobash: used unstructured interviews to study domestic violence. The empathy and encouragement of the interviewer will help the interviewee to feel comfortable discussing difficult or personal subjects like abuse.
• The interviewee’s view – Dean and Taylor-Gooby: used unstructured and tape-recorded interviews, lasting up to 90 minutes, with 85 claimants. It gives the interviewees the freedom to talk in their own terms.
• Interviewer bias – Oakley admits that, she found it difficult to remain detached and neutral when interviewing other women about maternity and childbirth.
• Status and power inequalities – Rich: show that when adults interview children, the child’s need to please the interviewer will affect their answers.
• Status and power inequalities – Griffin: to abandon interviewing in favour of using participant observation.
• Cultural differences – Mead: research on adolescents in Samoa in the western Pacific had been criticised on the ground that mead, who could not speak the language, was unable to spot that the girls she interviewed had deliberately misled her.
• Improving the validity of interviews – Kinsey: interviews on sexual behaviour asked questions rapidly, giving interviewees little time to think, and used some questions to check the answers given to others.
• Improving the validity of interviews – Becker: developed another approach in his interviews with 60 Chicago schoolteachers. Used aggression, disbelief and ‘playing dumb’ as ways of extracting sensitive information from them that they might not otherwise have revealed, about how they classified pupils in terms of their social class and ethnic background.
• Improving the validity of interviews – Nazroo: study of the health of Britain’s ethnic minorities were carried out in the language of the interviewee’s choice.
• Practical issues – Powney and Watts: young children tend to be more literal minded and often pay attention to unexpected details in questions and may use a different logic from adult interviewers.
• Reliability and validity – Bently: began each interview by showing them a ‘jokey’ image of her fooling around with her daughter. She maintained a relaxed atmosphere by nodding, smiling, and making eye contact.
• Access and response rate – Field’s: study of pupil’s experiences of sex and health education in schools had a relatively high refusal rate of 29%, mainly because of parents withholding consent.
• The interviewer as ‘teacher in disguise’ – Bell: pupils may see interviewers as a ‘teacher in disguise’.
• Improving the validity of interviews with pupils – Greene and Hogan: interviewers should be open-ended, not interrupt, tolerate long pauses, recognise that children are far suggestible and avoid repeating questions.
• Improving the validity of interviews with pupils – Labov: this can encourage interviewees to open and respond more fully, thus producing more valid data.

  Group interviews with pupils – Greene and Hogan: group interviews are particularly suitable for use with pupils. Create a safe peer environment and they reproduce the small group settings that young people are familiar with in classroom work.