evaluate unstructured interviews (20)

Question 1

intro

Answer 1

unstructured interviews give the interviewer complete freedom to vary the questions for each respondent’s thoughts and ideas.
they tend to gather qualitative data, providing rich and in-depth findings allowing verstahen and increasing validity

Question 2

practical (weakness)

Answer 2

-the practicality of a research method refers to how easy it is to conduct, looking at access to location, funding, time, and ppts
-unstructured interviews are not very practical as they are very costly and time consuming to conduct
-the interviewers must be trained
-they also collect qualitative data which is time consuming to analyse

Question 3

ethics (strength)

Answer 3

-the BSA issued a “statement of ethical conduct” which encourages researchers to consider ethical issues such as harm, deception, privacy and confidentiality of the ppts
-ethical research must consider the impact the study may have on both the ppts and the researcher themselves
-unstructured interviews are highly ethical as face to face allows for support and comfort to be offered. the interviewer can skip any questions that may cause discomfort
-Sue Lees 1994 “Sugar and Spice” was highly ethical -the interviewees were welcome to bring a friend to the interview to make sensitive topics easier to discuss

Question 4

theory (strength)

Answer 4

-Interpretivism is an approach to social research that emphasises the need to understand people’s beliefs, attitudes, and motives towards their actions to better understand society
-Interpretivists believe that human behaviour is complex and cannot be reduced to simple cause and effect relationships, therefore preferring qualitative methods of research, like unstructured interviews

Question 5

reliability (weakness)

Answer 5

-reliability refers to how repeatable a study is, for example if a study were to be repeated t would produce the same results
-unstructured interviews are highly unreliable as there’s no standardised procedure, so they cannot be easily replicated as every ppt will have different responses

Question 6

representativeness (weakness)

Answer 6

-representativeness is the extent to which a sample mirrors a researcher’s target population and reflects it’s characteristics
-unstructured interviews are generally not very representative as they usually have quite a small sample size due to interviews being quite time consuming
-an example study is Ann Oakley’s 1974 study “The Sociology of Housework”, which had a very small sample of 40 ppts

Question 7

validity (strength)

Answer 7

-the validity of a research method refers to how detailed and accurate the findings of the study are
-unstructured interviews collect qualitative data, which is highly valid as it allows for verstahen, which is when research findings provide an in-depth insight and empathetic understanding to the beliefs of a group