Investigator Effects/self-report Interviews/content Analysis And Thematic Analysis

Question 1

What are structured interviews?

Answer 1

• When the questions are decided in advance.

Question 2

What are the strengths of structured interviews?

Answer 2

• Can be easily repeated - standardised questions.
• Requires less skill then unstructured interviews.
• Easier to analyse then unstructured interviews.

Question 3

What are the weaknesses of structured interviews?

Answer 3

• Interviewer bias may still occur.
• Social desirability may still occur.
• Data collected be restricted by a pre-determined set of questions.

Question 4

What are unstructured interviews?

Answer 4

• the interview starts with some general aims and questions and then lets the interviewee’s answers guide subsequent questions.

Question 5

What are the strengths of unstructured interviews?

Answer 5

• Detailed and in-depth info obtained.
• Deep insights into thought and feelings.
• You can tailor questions to specific responses.
• Access info that may not be revealed from pre-determined questions.

Question 6

What are the weaknesses of unstructured interviews?

Answer 6

• More affected by interviewer bias than structured interviews.
• Requires well-trained interviewers.
• Low-reliability: interviewer may behave differently or ask different questions.
• Hard to analyse answers.

Question 7

What are investigator effects?

Answer 7

• Any effect of the investigator’s behaviour (conscious or unconscious) on the research outcome.
• Coolican (2006) ‘expecting effects and unconscious cues’.

Question 8

What is content analysis?

Answer 8

• Qualitative data.
• Data analysed as typologies, quotations and summarises. Hypotheses are grounded in the data.

Question 9

What is the process involved in content analysis?

Answer 9

1. Representatives sample is 1st collected.
2. Coding units identified to analyse the data. E.g. act of violence, use of gender stereotypes, given valid operationalised definitions, e.g. a definition of ‘act of violence’.
3. Qualitative data analysed to see how often each coding unit occurs.
4. Statistical analysis can then be carried out.

Question 10

What are the strengths of content analysis?

Answer 10

• A clear summary of patterns in data may be established.
• Once a coding system has been set up, replication is easy.
• This in turn, improves reliability.

Question 11

What are the weaknesses of content analysis?

Answer 11

• Can be subjective.
• Reducing the data to coding units removes detail.

Question 12

What is thematic analysis?

Answer 12

• Involves making summaries of data and identifying key themes and categories.
  1. Researcher becomes familiar with the data.
  2. Looks for different themes, reviews the themes, defines and names themes and writes a report.
• Can give the bases for hypotheses -> grounded in the data.

Question 13

What are the strengths of thematic analysis?

Answer 13

• Qualitative analysis preserves details in the data.
• Creating the hypotheses during analysis allows for new insights to develop.
• Some objectivity can be established by using triangulation.

Question 14

What are the weaknesses of thematic analysis?

Answer 14

• How do you decide which categories to use and whether something fits a category?
• Unclear how you decide what to leave out of the summary.
• Subjective decisions.