Structured Interviews - Advantages and Disadvantages Flashcards
Why can structured interviews cover quite large numbers of people? (Practical advantage)
Because they are quick and fairly cheap to administer
What are structured interviews suitable for gathering? (Practical advantage)
Straightforward factual information such as a person’s age, job or religion
Why is training interviewers relatively straightforward and cheap? (Practical advantage)
Because they simply have to read questions out loud and record answers
Why are results of structured interviews easy to quantify? (Practical advantage)
Because they use closed ended questions with pre coded answers
Why do structured interviews generally have higher response rates than for questionnaires? (Practical advantage)
Because people find it harder to turn down a face to face request
Why are structured interviews inflexible? (Practical disadvantage)
Because the questions are drawn up in advance and the researcher must stick to them
Why are structured interviews unsuitable for unfamiliar testing? (Practical disadvantage)
Because the questions are drawn up in advance using the researcher’s knowledge of the subject
Why do structured interviews fail to capture the dynamic of social life? (Practical disadvantage)
Because they are only snapshots in time
Which sociologists both agree with the ethical considerations regarding structured interviews?
Interpretivists and positivists
Ethical considerations regarding structured interviews (4)
Informed consent
Privacy and confidentiality
Right to withdraw
Avoids deception
Which sociologists favour structured interviews for the theoretical advantages?
Positivists
What do positivists look for when choosing a research method?
A reliable method that helps them achieve goal of being scientific and objective and gives them opportunity to produce quantitative data
What do structured interviews allow sociologists to establish? What does this allow to be made? (Theoretical advantage)
Correlations between variables which allows generalisations to be made
Why are structured interviews seen as reliable? (Theoretical advantage)
Because other sociologists can use the same method and get the same results as they are easy to standardise and control
Why are structured interviews likely to give sociologists representative data? (Theoretical advantage)
Because they are relatively cheap, quick and easy to be administered so large numbers of people can be surveyed
Benefit of representative data (Theoretical advantage)
Allows generalisations to be made and cause-and-effect relationships to be found about the wider population
What do Interpretivists look for when choosing a research method?
A method which will provide them with expiations for social factors and give them a true picture of what society is like
What do Interpretivists see structured interviews and restrictive? (Theoretical disadvantage)
Because they force people to answer closed questions which limits the choice to answer questions as they wish to
Why are structured interviews negative for people who don’t understand the questions for reasons such as not being able to speak English very well, or having learning difficulties? (Theoretical disadvantage)
Because the interviewer cannot explain or clarify questions as they must stick to their script
What can people do when answering questions in a structured interview? (Theoretical disadvantage)
They can lie or exaggerate
Disadvantage of questions of structured interviews being drawn up in advance (Theoretical disadvantage)
Researcher has already decided what is important which may not relate to what the respondents see as important
Why do many feminists reject survey methods such as structured interviews? (Theoretical disadvantage)
Because they believe the relationship between the researcher and the researched reflects the exploitative nature of gender relationships in patriarchal society
What does Anne Oakley (feminist) argue about structured interviews? (Theoretical disadvantage)
Argues they are a masculine method which places high value on objectivity, detachment and hierarchy and regards science as more important than the people it researches
