structured

Question 1

practical

Answer 1

cheap and quick methods, limited training needed

high response rate, face to face, researchers presence allowed purpose and importance to be explained

limited interviewer effect

sensitive issues, can be off putting and not useful as a rapport may be needed

artificiality doubtful whether truthful answers can be obtained

Question 2

Ethics

Answer 2

✓ Relatively few problems: Limited issues with consent, deception & protection from harm.

× Some pressure to answer questions: As the interview is a social interaction, the interviewee may feel under some pressure to answer questions. Researcher’s should gain interviewees’ informed consent, guarantee anonymity & make it clear that they have a right not to answer any of the questions that they do not wish to.

Question 3

Reliability

Answer 3

✓ High in reliability: Due to the use of a fixed list of pre-set questions, with pre-coded response categories, structured interviews produce easily quantifiable data. As every interviewee’s response is measured the same way, these interviews are a form of standardised (set) measuring instrument. This means that the data from the different interviews is directly comparable. Using the same fixed list of questions & possible answers also means that the structured interview is replicable & can be used to verify the results of earlier interviews or to identify changes over time.

× Interviewer effect: This may reduce reliability because, although the same questions may be asked, interviewers are going to have different social characteristics (age, gender, ethnicity, social class, etc.) & also the research setting will vary. Therefore the interview will not be exactly replicable.

Question 4

validity

Answer 4

✓ Less chance of interviewer bias: As the questions are decided in advance under close examination, the possibility of asking ‘leading’ questions is much less than for unstructured interviews which may help to increase the validity of responses.

× Social desirability effect: Less of an issue than with an unstructured format, but interviewees may still be on their best behaviour & give answers that show them in a favourable light.

× Lack flexibility: Interviewees are unable to expand on responses. Fixed-response questions may prevent the interviewee from saying what they really think – they have to force their responses to fit the researcher’s categories. This inflexibility limits how the interviewee responds & reduces the validity of the data generated.

× Difficult to check for truthful answers: This is problem with all interviews, but particularly so with structured interviews since the researcher cannot move away from the fixed interview schedule to check or clarify the answers they are given.

× Interview effect: Not completely free from this as the interviewee may interpret the interviewer’s social characteristics – their age, gender, class, etc. – in ways that may influence their responses. There are also issues of status & power where any inequalities between interviewer & interviewee may affect honesty or the willingness to answer.

Question 5

example

Answer 5

• Young & Willmott (1962): Sample of 933 people while researching the extended family in east London. Did not conduct the structured interviews themselves due to the size of the sample, but this mattered much less than it would have with an unstructured interview due to the formal & standardised questions asked.

Question 6

representativeness

Answer 6

✓ Likely to be more representative: Compared with unstructured interviews, structured interviews are relatively quick to conduct. This means that a larger sample can be interviewed, which is likely to produce more representative results, allowing the researcher to make generalisations. They have a higher response rate than mailed questionnaires due to direct researcher contact with the respondent & this also helps with representativeness.

🗶 However, unstructured interviews still cannot match the potentially huge numbers reached by postal questionnaires.

Question 7

theory

Answer 7

✓ Favoured by positivists: Start from the assumption that there is a measurable objective social reality. They take a scientific approach using standardised (set) methods such as structured interviews to obtain quantitative data. As these interviews use fixed lists of closed-ended questions, answers can by classified, counted & quantified. This allows the researcher to identify patterns & produce generalisations & cause-&-effect statements. This type of interview is reliable (easily replicated by other researchers) & can produce fairly large-scale, representative data. A particularly useful method when a researcher wants to obtain basic factual information or gain some idea of general patterns of attitudes & behaviour.

× Rejected by interpretivists: Reject the use of this type of interview because they lack validity. (See ‘validity’ box above for the details!)