Interviews

Question 1

What is a structured interview ?

Answer 1

An interview that follows a pre-she list of questions. They are usually done over the phone or face to face. Consists of close end questions and produces quantitative data.

Question 2

What are the strengths of structured interviews ?

Answer 2

They are reliable because they are fixed set of questions , so it can be repeated by another sociologists (theoretical)
They are relatively quick to conduct , which means the interviewer can get a larger sample (practical+theoretical)
They are the cheapest form of interviews (practical)

Question 3

What are the weaknesses of structured interviews ?

Answer 3

They lack validity since the questions are already predetermined so they may not fit what the interviewee thinks (theoretical)
Employing interviewers incurs costs (practical)
Not useful for many situations e.g. sensitive topics (ethical)

Question 4

What are unstructured interviews ?

Answer 4

An interview that uses open ended question and they are not pre-set. They produce qualitative data

Question 5

What are the strengths of unstructured interviews ?

Answer 5

Because they are informal participants are more likely to open up (t)
Because questions are less fixed, ideas are less likely to be imposed (t)
Interviewers can be taken further (p)

Question 6

What are the weaknesses of unstructured interviewers ?

Answer 6

Not reliable (t)
Too much data (p)
Not always relevant (t)
Employing interviewers can be expensive (p)
Close relationships can make answers less valid (t)