Interviews in child

Question 1

AO1/Description

Answer 1

• Interviews are most commonly face to face conversations with a researcher asking questions about the children and their experiences
• The interviewer is likely to use an unstructured interview so they can find out how participants respond in a variety of situations
• The interviews can be in the form of open questions
• They can be in the form of closed questions
• Can use different types of questions, from highly structured (surveys) to unstructured
• They could use structured interviews. Set format of standardised questions. They’re the same for every participant. These can be face to face or over the phone
• Interviews can be unstructured where the psychologist decides what questions to ask based on the child’s previous answers.
• Interviews can be semi structured where the psychologist has a set of questions that have to be asked, but they can add questions to follow what they see as important themes.

Question 2

AO3: Strengths

Answer 2

• Open questions allow the child to express how they are feeling fully which can lead to further insight into their problems.
• If the interviews are recoded, then others can play back those recording to check the interpretation of the results so increasing reliability.
• Structured interviews are more reliable as you are asking the same questions to everyone
• Structured interviews are also more able to compare results against one another since everyone has the same questions
• Rich qualitative data
• Unstructured interviews allow you the freedom to pursue lines of information which you haven’t wrote questions about- ask follow ups

Question 3

AO3: Weaknesses

Answer 3

• If the questions are open then psychologist may need to decide on important themes and this can be subjective.
• If an unstructured interview is used there is a lack of reliability as no child will have exactly the same questions.
• In a face to face interview people may be more concerned about how they are perceived by the interviewer rather than telling the truth
• Structured interviews don’t allow you the freedom to pursue lines of information which you haven’t wrote questions about- as you can’t ask follow ups which make it less valid/detailed
• Unstructured interviews are less reliable as you are not asking the same questions to everyone
• Unstructured interviews are also less able to compare results against one another