Structured interviews

• What is a structured interview?

  A verbal questionnaire whereby a list of pre-set (usually closed questions) are asked by an interviewer who records the answers. They are often conducted to overcome the low response rate of questionnaires.
• Structured interview example: The Crime Survey (England & Wales)


  • It helps the government understand the true levels of crime.
  • It has previously shown that only 4 in 10 crimes are actually reported to the police.
  • It's crucial value is to find out about crimes that do not get reported to, recorded by the police.
  • Helps us to tackle crime and prioritize it.
  • It is conducted for the ONS by kantar public.
  • 50,000 are done every year in respondents homes (randomly selected from the electoral register and post office register).
• The main problem with interviews is that there is a risk of interviewer bias. This is when the characteristics or behaviour influence the responses of the respondent. (characteristics being gender, age and ethnicity & behaviour being the tone of voice and avoiding eye contact).

  This can be avoided by:

  • dressing appropriately
  • matching the interviewer to the respondent (i.e. behaviour and characteristics being similar)
  • making them feel comfortable
  • remain objective and non-judgemental.
• PET advantages of structured interviews:

  Practical: quick and relatively low cost, data is easy collated and quantified, improves response rate of questionnaires.

  Ethical: ethically sound as they gain informed consent and there is no deception.

  Theoretical: standardised procedure meaning its easily replicable, can get data from a large group of people.
• PET disadvantages of structured interviews:

  Practical: costly to train and pay interviewers, inflexible as the questions are pre-set.

  Ethical: no ethical disadvantages!

  Theoretical: its a snapshot of reality meaning it doesn't give a fully valid picture, not as large scale as questionnaires, risk of social desirability which affects validity, lacks validity anyway due to interviewer bias.
• Who prefers to use structured interviews?

  Positivists prefer to use this method as it is a standardised procedure meaning it can be easily repeated so therefore it is reliable. However interpretivists reject structured interviews because there is a lack of validity due to pre-set questions.