Interviews

Question 1

What are the 5 types of interviews?

Answer 1

1) The structured interview
2) instructed interview
3) semi structured interview
4) group interview
5) focus group interview

Question 2

What does a structured interview involve?

Answer 2

The research reading out a list of closed questions from an interview schedule
-interviewer isn’t allowed to deviate questions

Question 3

How are the responses to structured interviews usually presented?

Answer 3

Converted into quantitative form - LIKED BY POSITIVISTS

Question 4

What are the strengths of structured interviews?

Answer 4

• closed questions generate large amounts of quantitative factual data
• can be conducted quickly and they follow a pre-set range of questions
• have a better response rate than questionnaires as they interviewers can return of respondent isn’t home
• increase reliability as a later researcher will categorise responses in the same way as the original researcher

Question 5

What are the weaknesses of structured interviews?

Answer 5

• not generalisable so people may give little detail and be passive with their responses
• inflexible
• people may interpret the questions differently
• suffer from ‘imposition problem’ meaning that they measure what the sociologists think is important rather than what the interviewee experiences

Question 6

What are unstructured interviews?

Answer 6

More like a guided conversation where the talk is informal but the researcher plays an active told on that he or she manages the questions to ensure that the participant keeps to the subject research

Question 7

What are the strengths of unstructured interviews?

Answer 7

• liked by interpretists as they allow the researcher to establish a ‘rapport’ meaning the interviewee is more likely to say what they truly mean
• allow the research to her inside th head of people they are researching
• more likely to discuss sensitive subjects
• very flexible
• confidentiality is stressed which means more valid response
• highly valid data as richer material

Question 8

What are the weaknesses of unstructured interviews?

Answer 8

Positivits criticise them for being unscientific as they lack reliability

• lack objectivity
• published research may be biased as so much data is produced that it has to be carefully selected
• uses fewer participants so less representative
• time consuming

Question 9

What are semi structured interviews?

Answer 9

These interviews contain lots of closed questions in order to generate facts but also contain a few open questions

Question 10

What are focus group interviews?

Answer 10

Where participants are encouraged to talk to each other

Question 11

What is interviewer bias?

Answer 11

When the interviewer inflicted the responses given by the interviewee in some way

Question 12

What issues can be created by interview bias?

Answer 12

Respondents may react negatively in an interview due to social characteristics of the interview and therefore it may be hard to form a rapport
-demand characteristics effect validity as the interviewee may change their behaviour & also may unconsciously ask leading questions or hints

Question 13

Why are pilot interviews useful?

Answer 13

You can check that the questions

• are clear
• if they upset/participants
• if the sampling technique is useful
• if the data collected is what’s wanted