Interviews Flashcards
Practical considerations of structured interviews
interviews need specialist skills to be able to ask questions in exactly the same order, wording and manner each time
Takes time but is cheap
Teachers will have to be interviewed outside of school hours due to time constraints
will need a DBS to research in a school
may be too formal for pupils
Ethical considerations of stuctured interviews
Replicates power inequalities of the classroom meaning children may be too scared to say what they really think
gatekeepers may prevent access to students
No deception involved
Participants are vulnerable (if they are pupils)
Bell
Pupils may see interviewer as a teacher in disguise
Positivist view of structured interviews
Favour structured interviews
Quantitative data
Reliable and systematic
Objective
Positivists can test hypothesis
Interpretivist view of structured interviews
Reject structured interviews as they are not valid as participants cannot elaborate on their answers and researcher cant ask them to
less insight
GOPERVERT qualities of structured interviews
Objective
Reliable
Practical considerations of unstructured interviews
cheap
time consuming
no specialist skills or knowledge needed
DBS needed
Build rapport with participants
Ethical considerations of unstructured interviews
Pose less ethical problems than structured interviews
researcher needs to ensure that they have collected informed consent
Powney and Watts
Young children tend to be more literal minded and often pay attention to unexpected details in questions so the researcher needs to be able to repeat the question in a way that the pupil would understand.
Di Bentley
began each interview by showing a jokey picture of her fooling around with her daughter. This personalised interviewing style was maintained throughout the interview by nodding, smiling and making eye contact.
Howard Becker
Interviews with 60 chicago school teachers
Used aggression and ‘playing dumb’ as ways of extracting sensitive information from them that they might not otherwise have revealed, about how they classified pupils in terms of their social class and ethnic background.
However, the success of such tactics requires the researcher to have special skills
For this reason, the approach proves difficult to replicate.
Positivist view of unstructured interviews
positivists reject unstructured interviews as they are not reliable or objective.
Interpretivist view of unstructured interviews
favour unstructured interviews as they are valid and gains the researcher valuable insight/ verstehein. It also produces qualitative data.
GOPERVERT qualities of unstructured interviews
Ethical
Practical
Valid
Practical considerations of group interviews
not as time consuming as other methods of interview
Cheap
No specialist skills needed
can gain rapport with the participants
need a DBS to research in schools
