Structured & unstructured interviews

Question 1

Labor (the interviewer effect)

Answer 1

• White guy in a suit behind a desk and black man in casual clothes sat on floor.
• More comfortable with the more casual man.

Question 2

Ann Oakley (unstructured interviews)

Answer 2

• Unstructured interview on 40 women, 20M/C and 20W/C.
• Found that women do most of the housework and childcare.
• 15% of husbands had a high level of participation in housework.
• 25% of husbands had a high participation in childcare.

Question 3

Willis (group interviews - unstructured)

Answer 3

• From the perspective of this subculture, children who the school viewed positively were the “ear’oles” (“swots”).
• The last thing you wanted was praise from a teacher.
• Instead, children could get praise within the group for truancy, bad behaviour and discriminatory attitudes (there was a lot of racism, sexism and homophobia within the group).
• They thought school was boring and pointless and was something they had to endure until they could go to work.
• They had a similar attitude to work, and got through it using similar techniques: “messing about” and “having a laff”.

Question 4

Dobash & Dobash (unstructured interviews)

Answer 4

• Good for studying sensitive topics.
• With women who experienced domestic violence - men felt entitled to this because of marriage.

Question 5

Young and Wilmott (the extended family - structured interviews)

Answer 5

• Young and Willmott used structured interviews to research the nature, extent and importance of the extended family in the area of London.
• Time restrictions had to be placed on the interviews and a structured approach was taken to ensure high generalisability with a large sample size.
• Wilmott and Young suggested that while female relatives bonded, men were excluded from the home and spent time in the pub instead

Question 6

Becker

Answer 6

• Don’t have to be bland & polite.
• Interviewers can have an active approach.
• E.g. Stacey Dooley
• Louis Theroux