structured interviews

• structured interviews

  • each interview is conducted in the same standardised way
  • fixed set of questions, wording, order
• practical advantages

  • can cover quite large numbers of people
  • quick and cheap
  • suitable for gathering straightfoward, factual information, like age, job, religion
  • results are easily quantified as close-ended questions used with pre-coded answers (suitable for hypothesis testing)
  • training interviewers is fairly cheap
  • response rates are usually higher than questionnaires- face to face request harder to turn down
• practical disadvantages

  • inflexible- interview schedule drawn up in advance and questions stuck to rigidly- hard to persue interesting leads
  • fail to capture the dynamic nature of social life- are only snapshots
• theoretical advantages

  • for positivists, structured interviews produce represenative and generisable findings
  • reliable, objective and detached method
• theoretical advantages (positivists)

  • hypothesis testing- they identify cause and effect relationships, establish correlations between variables by analysing interviewees' answers
  • allows us to make generalisations about behaviour patterns
• reliability (structured interviews)

  • any other sociologist can repeat research and obtain same results
  • act as a 'standardised measuring instrument'- easy to standardise and control
• representativeness (structured interviews)

  • large numbers can be surveyed- increases the chance of obtaining a represenative sample
  • relatively high response rates and sophisticated sampling technique
  • attractive to positivists- use representative data as basis for making generalisations and cause and effect statements
• interpretivism (structured interviews)

  • structured interviews usually use close-ended questions- forces interviewees to choose from a limited number of pre-set answers
  • little freedom- to explain misunderstandings
  • people may lie or exaggerate- produce inavlid data
• feminism

  • reject survey methods
  • argue relationship between researcher and researched reflects the exploitative nature of gender relationships in patriarchal society
  • oakley argues this positivist masculine approach to research places a high value on objectivity, detachment and hierachy rather than subjects
  • graham argues structured interviews give a distorted, invalid picture of women's experience- impose researcher's categories on women