Unstructured interviews

• What is an unstructured interview?

  The opposite to a structured interview; they are more like an everyday conversation, they tend to be more informal. Open questions are used meaning they are flexible and free flowing. Questions are pre-set, although there are usually certain topics that the researchers wish to cover called an interview schedule.
• How is an unstructured interview conducted?

  • Put the interviewee at ease in an informal, comfortable setting (e.g. in their house)
  • Start off with closed questions and then goes into deeper and harder questions.
  • Important to find out about childhood for context and for rapport so they feel like they know you.
  • Focuses on political views too
  • Open questions that can develop
  • Answers should emerge naturally, making the data seem more valid and true.
  • Interview schedule is also used
• Problems with unstructured interviews?

  • Interviewer bias
  • Social desirability, given answers for approval
• PET advantages for unstructured interviews:

  Practical: Flexible for the researcher who can explore further into certain topics or answers.

  Ethical: Gains fully informed consent, no deception, confidentiality can be maintained.

  Theoretical: A rapport can be developed, allowing the interviewee to open up, leading to high validity, verstehen can be gained.
• PET disadvantages of unstructured interviews:

  Practical: Time consuming to train, arrange and conduct, can be costly (i.e. venue, training, often paying the interviewee), researchers need to be highly skilled.

  Ethical: Sensitive topics may cause distress.

  Theoretical: Risk of interviewer bias which affects validity so must be carefully planned, social desirability may occur, open questions are an unreliable method, unrepresentative data as its opinion based and is small scale.
• What is a Group interview?

  It is performed by planned discussion and interview with a small group of people conducted by a moderator. The group participants are sampled from the study population. The aim is to obtain knowledge of the participants considerations on a specific topic. Group interviews are qualitative in nature and often study the dynamic of the group.
• PET advantages of Group interviews:

  • Practical: Quicker, more time efficient, researchers can combine questioning with observation of the group dynamic.
  • Ethical: Participants may feel more comfortable in a group setting
  • Theoretical: Participants may stimulate each others thinking and create more discussion which enhances the data.
• PET disadvantages of Group interviews:

  • Practical: Hard to access as you need to find time/space to conduct the interview, also difficult to access certain groups (i.e. parents)
  • Ethical: Peer pressure may cause distress to some participants.
  • Theoretical: Group data very complex to analyse, difficult to repeat exactly meaning there is a low reliability, respondents may lie so validity may be compromised.
• Unstructured interview


  • Jo Van Every; Liberal heterosexual women changing the family: Refusing to be a wife 1995
• Why did she do the research?

  She was interested in finding out what happened to liberated women who believed in feminist values when they started a family. She decided she would research 'alternative' households that didn't follow traditional patterns.
• Sampling method


  • Conducted purposive sampling, knew who she wanted to research, focused on women who had chosen anti-sexist living arrangements
• Interview method


  Informal interviews lasted 90 minutes, covered a range of topics, took place in respondents home, found husbands/wives were willing to talk about themes Van Every was interested in (marriage, childcare etc), interviews were taped & transcribed