2. education with methods in context Flashcards
Who prefers structured interviews and why?
- positivists because the data is quantifiable
What are some practical strengths of structured interviews?
- typically faster + cheaper than conducting unstructured interviews as the interviewer doesn’t need to be highly trained
What are some practical weaknesses of structured interviews?
- more time consuming and costly than postal and other self-completion questionnaires
- interviewer cannot change the questions, making it inflexible
What are some ethical strengths of structured interviews?
- less interviewer bias as all the interviewer has to do is read out the questions and record the answers and therefore is less likely to influence the participants’ answers
- there is informed consent
- right to withdraw
What are some ethical weaknesses of structured interviews?
- the tone, body language and facial expressions of the interviewer could influence the participants’ responses
What are some theoretical strengths of structured interviews?
- more likely to produce data which can be directly compared, and different researchers are likely to get the same results from the same participants as they are asking the same questions - producing highly reliable data
- data is easy to quantify
What are some theoretical weaknesses of structured interviews?
- participants have little to no opportunity to discuss/qualify their answers and researchers cannot ask further questions to extract meaning, suggesting a lack of validity
What educational studies used structured interviews?
- David Hargreaves = Social Relations in a Secondary School looked at the emergence of subcultures in different streams in the school
- Maria Papapolydorou = investigated the significance of social class to students’ friendships in school, using focus groups as well as semi-structured individual interviews
Who prefers unstructured interviews?
- interpretivists
What are some practical strengths of unstructured interviews?
- researcher can help and encourage participants to spell out complexities and can ask for clarification
What are some practical weaknesses of unstructured interviews?
- much more time consuming than structured interviews as the questions are not set
- expensive = takes a skilled researcher to help draw out complexities in participants’ responses
What are some ethical strengths of unstructured interviews?
- researcher can build a rapport with the participant making it easier to discuss sensitive topics
What are some ethical weaknesses of unstructured interviews?
- the relationship between the interviewer and the participant can affect the development of the interviewer
- social desirability effect = participants may emphasise socially desirable aspects of their behaviour and attitudes in the presence of interviewers which potentially reduces the validity of the data
What are some theoretical strengths of unstructured interviews?
- participants have the opportunity to take control and direct the interview and have a greater chance to express their own viewpoints, increasing the validity of the data
- participants are more likely to open up and say what they actually mean
What are some theoretical weaknesses of unstructured interviews?
- low reliability as you cannot guarantee the same responses with a different interviewer
- social desirability effect can cause less valid data
What educational studies have used unstructured interviews?
- Diane Reay = Spice Girls, Nice Girls, Girlies and Tomboys interviewed schoolgirls finding they believed that boys were better even though they underachieved
What kind of approach do longitudinal studies take?
a mixed methods one
What are some practical strengths of longitudinal studies?
- can study change over time and provide detail on the changes that occur
What are some practical weaknesses of longitudinal studies?
- very time consuming and costly
- funding agencies who pay for research may be unwilling to commit to an expensive project whose results will be unknown for many years
- maintaining the sample size may be difficult as people may drop out of the research by choice/lose contact with the researcher
What are some ethical strengths of longitudinal studies?
- the right to withdraw at any time
What are some theoretical strengths of longitudinal studies?
- highly comparable data which can identify social trends
- researcher builds a rapport with participants
- correlations can be identified which positivists prefer
What are some theoretical weaknesses of longitudinal studies?
- low representativeness if people drop out of the study
- Hawthorne effect = people are aware that they are being studied over the years and may change their behaviour accordingly
What educational study is a longitudinal study?
- Stephen Ball = a sample from a mixed comprehensive school and a pupil referral unit, the same students were interviewed over several years
Who prefers to use questionnaires?
- closed question questionnaires are preferred by positivists because it produces quantitative data
- open question questionnaires are preferred by interpretivists because it produces qualitative data