Unstructured interviews

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Unstructured interviews

Advantages

  • Rapport - able to study sensitive topics and gain a greater depth of detail.
  • Interviewee’s view - able to speak about what they believe is important and/or relevant to the study
  • Checking understanding - understanding can be checked, questions simplified or modified as they are not set.
  • Flexible - questions can be changed and new avenues of discussion can be explored as the questions are not fixed.

Disadvantages

  • Practical issues - can only use a small sample as method is time consuming, interviewers need training, good interpersonal skills are required.
  • Lack representativeness due to small sample
  • Lack reliability as they are not standardised procedures.
  • Cannot quantify answers
  • Validity - data may be valid, but could also be distorted by presence of interviewer

Evaluation

Unstructured interviewers are an interpretivist method of study. They use open ended questions that can change depending on the participant. They tend to be valid but are not reliable, cannot quantifiable and not representative of the general population. 

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