Interviews

Question 1

What are the four types of interviews?

Answer 1

Structured, unstructured, group and semi-structured

Question 2

What are the advantages of group interviews?

Answer 2

• More people = participants are more comfortable in sharing ideas (validity)
• People sharing ideas can stimulate people’s brains into sharing more ideas (representativeness)
• Researcher can observe group dynamics (validity)

Question 3

What are the disadvantages of group interviews?

Answer 3

• One or two people can dominate the conversation (low representativeness)
• Ideas may be too complex to analyse (low in reliability)
• Peer pressure may stop participants from saying how they truly feel

Question 4

What is an example of group interviews?

Answer 4

Willis - Learning to Labour

Question 5

What are semi-structured interviews?

Answer 5

Interviews that have base questions, but can diverge from them e.g. Cicourel and Kitsuse (1963) following up their questions with ‘How do you feel?’

Question 6

What are the advantages of structured interviews?

Answer 6

Ethical issues - Informed consent and right to withdraw

Reliability - Objective; standardised tone and body language; same questions for every participant; patterns and cause and effect relationships

Representative

Theoretical - Positivists prefer it since they produce objective and quantifiable data

Question 7

What are the disadvantages of structural interviews?

Answer 7

Practical - time-consuming and expensive to train interviewers

Validity - Close ended questions - doesn’t represent the participant’s views; can’t ask follow up questions or clarify anything; interviewee can lie or exaggerate things; inflexible

Theoretical issues: Feminists: Graham (1983) - male interviewer is in control of the interview, reflecting women’s subordination in society; treats women as isolated individuals rather than in the wider power structure; impose researcher’s categories onto women, making it hard for them to express their experiences

Question 8

What are the advantages of unstructured interviews?

Answer 8

Validity - can ask follow up questions, can have more honest answers by building a rapport with the participant; less socially desirable answers;

Theoretical issues: Interpretivists prefer it as it achieves their aim of validity as the researcher can be flexible

Question 9

What are the disadvantages of unstructured interviews?

Answer 9

Practical: Requires more training and can be time-consuming depending on the length of the interview

Low reliability: No standardised questions; subjective

Low in representativeness

Theoretical: Postitivists hate unstructured interviews as they do not have generalisable, objective data

Question 10

What can threaten the validity of interviews?

Answer 10

Interviewer bias, artificiality, status and power inequalities, cultural differences, social desirability; ethical issues