What is an unstructured interview?
Where a researcher will ask a participant questions, but without an interview schedule. They will have an idea about what they want to find out, but will improvise and adapt the questions as the interview goes on
KEY STUDY: Dobash & Dobash (1979)
Carried out 8-hour long unstructured interviews with victims of domestic violence. They argue that marriage legitimates violence against women by giving men power and authority over their wives
KEY STUDY: Dean & Taylor-Gooby (1992)
Carried out 90 minute interviews with 85 participants to investigate experiences of unemployment
What are some practical strengths of unstructured interviews?
- Easy to build rapport, encouraging interviewees to give more detailed answers
- Researcher and interviewee can both check that they understand the questions/answers
- Highly flexible; researchers can change the interview as they go
- Useful for researching topics that the researcher doesn’t know much about as the interviewee leads the conversation
What are some practical weaknesses of unstructured interviews?
- Time consuming
- This can mean that fewer interviews can be carried out
- Training; the researcher needs to be able to come up with questions on the spot, and needs sociological knowledge so they can identify when something important is said
- Interpersonal skills; the researcher needs to be able to build rapport
What are some ethical strengths of unstructured interviews?
- Building rapport can make it easier and more comfortable to investigate sensitive topics
- Interviewees do not have to reveal anything they don’t want to (privacy)
- Informed consent is gained, as interviewees do not have to participate if they don’t want to
What are some ethical weaknesses of unstructured interviews?
- Interviewees could be uncomfortable discussing sensitive issues face to face
- Psychological harm may occur when participants recall negative experiences
What are some theoretical strengths of unstructured interviews?
- Interpretivists like them as it gives greater freedom than sticking to a script
- Verstehen can be gained through building rapport
- The flexibility of the questions, and the fact they are mostly open-ended, increases validity
What are some theoretical weaknesses of unstructured interviews?
- Positivists dislike them as they are unstandardised and unique, making them impossible to repeat (low reliability)
- Hawthorne Effect; interviewees may lie or exaggerate answers
- Leading questions & interviewer bias; tone of voice, body language, and the questions created could reduce validity
- Smaller sample sizes as they take longer, reducing representativeness
