Topic 4 - Interviews

• Types of interview

  • Structured interviews
  • Unstructured interviews (including group interviews)
  • Semi-structured interviews
• Structured interviews

  The face-to-face or over-the-phone delivery of a questionnaire, using an interview schedule - a pre-set list of questions designed by the researcher and asked of all interviewees in the same way
• Unstructured interviews

  Ask mainly open-ended questions, with no fixed set of questions to be asked of every respondent, producing qualitative data because the interviewee can respond in words that are meaningful to them
• Semi-structured interviews

  Combining elements of both structured and unstructured interviews
• Why positivists use structured interviews

  • They start from the assumption that there is a measurable objective social reality, taking a scientific approach using standardised methods to obtain quantitative data
  • Structured interviews employ fixed lists of closed-ended questions, so answers can be classified, counted and quantified, allowing the researcher to identify patterns and produce generalisations and cause-and-effect statements
• Why interpretivists use unstructured interviews

  • They seek to discover the meanings that underlie our actions, using open-ended research methods that produce valid, qualitative data
• Structured and unstructured interviewing techniques can be used in a complementary way in the form of semi-structured interviews to produce both quantitative and qualitative data