Methods - Interviews Flashcards
What are the four kinds of interviews?
- Structured or formal: set questions with no opportunity to change or elaborate
- Unstructured, informal, or ‘discovery’: No set questions with the ability to elaborate or pursue any line of questioning
- Semi-structured: set questions but the opportunity to elabprate
- Group: any type of interview with more than one interviewee (focus groups are a type of group interview where the group itself is asked to dicuss certain topics without direction)
What are the practical advantages and disadvantages of structured interviews?
+ Training interviewers is relatively easy
+ Easily quantifiable answers if pre-coded
+ High response rate due to face-to-face
- Those willing to be interviewed may be untypical
What are the ethical advantages and disadvantages of structured interviews?
+ No obligation to answer
+ Have to gain informed consent first
- Reinharz (1983): reflects patriarchal power inequalities, calls it ‘research as rape’
- May feel pressured to answer due to strict statuses
- Little care can be taken after harm due to scripted nature, inhibiting sensitive topics
What are the theoretical advantages and disadvantages of structured interviews?
+ Positivists: easily repeatable due to standardisation, allows for reproduction and representativeness and makes them reliable
+ Set questions inhibit any ‘leading questions’, reducing interviewer bias
- Interpretivists: no freedom to clarify or explain, exacerbated by cultural differences
- Power inequalities exacerbate social desirability bias
What are the practical advantages and disadvantages of unstructured interviews?
+ Easier to explore unfamiliar topics, to the researcher or the field
- More training (Background in sociology) needed to recognise what to explore
- Necessity of interpersonal skills
- Difficult to quantify due to qualitative answers
What are the ethical advantages and disadvantages of unstructured interviews?
+ Ability to build up rapport to more comfortably explore sensitive topics
+ Feminism: Oakley: equality between interviewer and interviewee
- Can’t fully gain informed consent due to neither interviewer nor interveiwee fully knowing where the conversation will go
What are the theoretical advantages of unstructured interviews?
+ Interpretivists: rapport may provide more truthful answers, necessary for sensitive subjects
+ Allows us to understand the meanings and experiences ofthe interviewee
+ Allows us to check understanding of questions and answers
- Positivists: not reliable due to non-standardised questions, and often small samples means unrepresentative
- Interviewer bias greater due to control over questions
- Social desirability effect exacerbated by actually getting to know eachother
What are the theoretical disadvantages of unstructured interviews?
- Positivists: not reliable due to non-standardised questions, and often small samples means unrepresentative
- Interviewer bias greater due to control over questions
- Social desirability effect exacerbated by actually getting to know eachother
What are the practical advantages and disadvantages of group interviews?
+ Easier to explore unfamiliar topics, to the researcher or the field
+ Little training required as discussion goes on in the group
- Some training required to keep group on topic
- Data is more complex and difficult to analyse
What are the ethical advantages and disadvantages of group interviews?
+ More sensitive topic may require support from group of peers
- Possible that other participants will cause harm due to lack of training
- Lack of confidentiality and privacy
What are the theoretical advantages and disadvantages of group interviews?
+ Interpretivists: interviewee more likely to open up to peers
+ Positivists: can use standardised question
- Positivists: often to qualitative
- One or two individuals may dominate, skewing data
- Social desirability bias and confomity exacerbated by being around actual peers
