Unstructured Interview

Question 1

What is an Unstructured Interview?

Answer 1

An interview where the focus is decided by the researcher, but the participant can talk about their opinions on a particular subject and explain their answers - preferred by Interpretivists, qualitative data.

The objective is to understand the individual’s point of view through open-ended questions.

Question 2

Example of an Unstructured Interview:

Answer 2

Dobash and Dobash ‘Violence Against Wives’: conducted a pilot study to understand domestic violence and its causes.

Question 3

Advantages of an Unstructured Interview:

Answer 3

It is easier to build a rapport if researcher has the same characteristics as respondent, appropriate for sensitive topics, can get informed consent, data collected is high in validity, verstehen.

Question 4

Disadvantages of an Unstructured Interview:

Answer 4

Costly, time-consuming, requires a highly-skilled researcher, may be difficult to access certain respondents depending on topic choice, unreliable, cannot generalise, risk of interviewer bias, sensitive topics.