Qualitative: Unstructured Interviews (Primary)

Question 1

What does unstructured interviews (UI) consist of?

Answer 1

• Open ended questions.
• Open and explorative.
• Interviewers can vary questions, wording and order.
• Can produce rich, detailed qualitative data.
• Interviewer bias.

Question 2

P.E.T.
What practical issues are there with UI?

Answer 2

• Interviewer can develop a rapport (relationship).
• More thorough training.
• Long time.
• High cost.
• Large amounts of data, which is good but will take a long time to transcribe. Analysis and categorisation can be difficult and time consuming.
• Interviewers can check meanings and explain questions.
• Flexible. New hypotheses can be formulated and tested as and when.
• Learn as you go along - open and explorative.
• Allows interviewees to speak about the things they think are important.

Question 3

What ethical issues are there?

Answer 3

The same as structured interviews.

Question 4

Theoretical Issues: How is interpretivism applied?

Answer 4

• Validity can only be obtained by getting close to people’s experiences and meanings - having an empathetic approach.
• Can see the world through the interviewee’s eyes.

Question 5

Theoretical Issues: What is the Grounded Theory?

Answer 5

• Interpretivists reject the idea that research begins with a fixed hypothesis.
• Important to research with an open mind.
• Grounded theory - build up and modify our hypothesis during the course of the research itself, based on the facts that we discover.
• This makes unstructured interviews an ideal research tool.

Question 6

Theoretical Issues: What is the interviewee’s view in UI?

Answer 6

• Absence of pre-set fixed questions enables the interviewee to raise issues and discuss what is important to them.
• Probing and encouragement can help to formulate ideas/thoughts more clearly.
• Open ended questions allow interviewees to express themselves in their own words.

Question 7

Theoretical Issues: How is positivism applied to UI?

Answer 7

• Positivists argue these are unreliable because they aren’t standardised and aren’t replicable.
• Answers cannot be easily quantified and categorised.
• Less likely to produce representative data as sample sizes are often smaller (more time consuming).
• Interaction between interviewer and interviewee undermines reliability.

Question 8

How is feminism applied to UI through Oakley?

Answer 8

Oakley argues that unstructured interviews…
- Are value committed → takes women’s side and aims to give a voice to their experience and to free them from patriarchal oppression.
- Requires researcher’s involvement with, rather than detachment from the lives of the women she studied.
- Aims for equality and collaboration.

In her study, she interviewed 178 women about becoming mothers, on average spending 9 hours with each woman. Helped them with housework, childcare and even attended some births. She argued this developed a more equal and intimate relationship, which improved the quality of her research.

Question 9

What is an evaluation of Oakley?

Answer 9

• Pawson - nothing distinctly feminist or original about Oakley’s approach. Her approach is basically an interpretivist one.
• Feminists argue because of her direct involvement in the women’s lives outside the interview situation it produced better results. It reflects the value-committed nature of feminist research.