structured interviews

• Structured interviews

  A series of questions asked by the researcher to the respondent. They are tightly structured, pre-planned and the same for every participant.
• Structured interviews

  • Practical
  • Relatively straightforward and inexpensive for the researcher
  • Surveys that use structured interviews can cover a large number of participants with limited resources
  • Quick and easy to administer
• Structured interviews are favoured by positivists as they generate quantitative data that can be statistically analysed and generalised to the wider population
• Studies using structured interviews

  • Young and Willmott - Symmetrical Family
  • Crime Survey of England and Wales (CSEW)
  • Townsend - Poverty in the United Kingdom
• Young and Willmott's study


  Conducted structured interviews with 933 people in Bethnal Green, using pre-coded questions and standardised procedures
• CSEW

  Carries out 4,000 structured interviews annually, conducted by an independent research company, with the same set of questions asked each year
• Townsend's study

  Used structured interviews based on an index of relative deprivation, with standardised questions and trained interviewers