Structured Interviews

• Structured Interviews:

  Each interview is conducted in the same standardised way, with precisely the same questions, wording, order, tone of voice, etc. They are like questionnaires as both involve asking people fixed sets of questions that tend to be closed ended, meaning the data produced is quantitative. Though structured interviews involve a social interaction.
• Practical Issues:

  Structured Interviews can cover large samples as they are quick and fairly cheap to administer. Young and Willmott interviewed 933 people using structured interviews when researching families in East London. They are suitable for gathering straightforward factual information (such as age, gender, job, religion, daily routine, etc). Results can be easily quantified as the close ended questions are pre-coded, allowing hypothesis testing.
• Practical Issues:

  Training interviewers is relatively straightforward and cheap; however, it is more costly than posting questionnaires to respondents. Response rates are usually higher, perhaps this is due to people finding it harder to turn down a face-to-face request. Young and Willmott only had 54 refusals. They are inflexible, as an interview schedule is planned prior, and the interviewer has to stick to this rigidly. Meaning it is impossible to pursue any leads which may emerge.
• Practical Issues:

  As the interview schedule is drawn up in advance, researchers must have knowledge of the subject and a clear hypothesis to test; meaning unstructured interviews cannot be used for investigating unfamiliar topics. Additionally, structured interviews are only snapshots taken at one moment in time, meaning that they fail to capture the dynamic nature of social life.
• Theoretical Issues: Positivism

  Adopts a scientific approach to studying society. Seeing structured interviews as achieving their main goal of maintaining the features of science in sociology. They produce representative and generalisable findings. They are reliable, objective and detached meaning they can be used to test hypotheses, produce quantitative data, and develop causal laws of social behaviour.
• Theoretical Issues: Positivism

  Hypothesis Testing- Positivists model their approach off the natural sciences, meaning that structured interviews are attractive as they can identify possible cause-and-effect relationships. They can establish correlations between variables through statistically analysing answers. This allows wider generalisations about social behaviour (e.g. women are less likely to commit crime). Once these are identified, further hypotheses can be constructed and researched (e.g. women commit less crime due to their socialisation).
• Theoretical Issues: Positivism

  Reliability- Positivists see structured interviews as standardised measuring instruments, they are reliable because they are easy to standardise and control. The procedures can be replicated, as they aren't dependent on the researcher's personal characteristics. Pre-coded answers are then the same, and will be categorised in the same way as the baseline study. Answers are then easily comparable, meaning similarities and differences can be identified in different groups.
• Theoretical Issues: Positivism

  Representativeness- they are relatively quick and cheap meaning that large numbers can be surveyed. High response rates and sophisticated sampling techniques increase the representativeness, meaning that findings can be used as a basis for making generalisations and cause-and-effect relationships about the wider population. Though those with the time to be interviewed may be untypical of the wider population which could undermine the validity.
• Theoretical Issues: Interpretivism

  Concerned with uncovering the meanings that actors construct within their social reality. Arguing that to do this, researchers need a method which is high in validity- it gives a true picture of the subjects being studied. They claim that this can only be achieved using qualitative methods.
• Theoretical Issues: Interpretivism

  Structured interviews use closed ended questions which forces the interviewee to choose from limited pre-set answers, and if none of these options match it means the data is then invalid. They give researchers little freedom to explain or clarify any misunderstandings. People can lie and exaggerate, producing invalid data. The sociologist has to prepare the interviewing schedule in advance, making it inflexible- imposing their framework of ideas onto the respondent.
• Theoretical Issues: Interviews as Social Interactions

  This can undermine the validity of the data for several reasons. Status Differences- can affect the respondent's honesty or willingness to answer, the larger the status difference the more invalid the data becomes. Cultural Differences- can cause misunderstandings over varying definitions. Social Desirability- wishing to not appear ignorant then means that they will answer questions in ways which makes them appear 'respectable'. Interviewer Bias- leading questions.
• Theoretical Issues: Feminism

  Reject structured interviews, arguing that the relationship between the researcher and the researched reflects the exploitative nature of gender relationships in patriarchal society. Reinharz calls this research method 'research as rape': seeing researchers as intruding into their subjects' privacy, and once they are satisfied, they break off contact with the subjects.
• Theoretical Issues: Feminism

  Oakley argues that the positivistic 'masculine' approach places high value on objectivity, detachment, and hierarchy- regarding 'science' as more important than the interests of those being researched. Interviewees have a passive role- mere objects of study, milked for information by answering the questions, having no role to decide the subject or direction of the study.
• Theoretical Issues: Feminism

  Graham claims that questionnaires and structured interviews give a distorted and invalid picture of women's experience. They impose the researcher's categories, making it difficult for them to express their experiences; this then helps to conceal the unequal power relationships between the sexes.