Unstructured Interviews- Favored by interpretivists
Positives for the use of unstructured interviews
• Allows the interviewer to build a rapport with the interviewee which allows more information to
be unveiled as they see the interviewer as trustworthy and safe
• Useful for researching sensitive issues e.g., Dobash and Dobash used unstructured interviews to
study Domestic Violence. The empathy and encouragement from the interviewer helped the
interviewee feel comfortable unveiling information
• The interviewee's view - allows the interviewee to talk about what they think is important
• Checking understanding - If the interviewee does not understand the question, it can be
explained
• Checking understanding - If the interviewer is unsure what an answer means they can ask, follow
up questions for clarification which increases the validity
• Flexibility – unstructured interviews allow the interviewer to not be stuck with a fixed set of
questions allowing them to explore whatever seems relevant or to gain more information
• Exploring Unfamiliar topics – allows them to investigate topics that they know little about or into
topics which they have not been able to previously access
Negatives for the use of Unstructured interviews
• The data gathered is not easily quantified, which brings issues as the answers cannot be pre-
coded which makes it less useful for establishing cause-and-effect relationships and hypothesis
testing
• It is very time consuming as they take a long time to carry out which impacts sample size making
smaller compared to structured interviews
• The interviewer must have good impersonal skills to ask the right questions
• There is a lot of training required to conduct unstructured interviews which adds to the cost
• The lack of structure and specific questions makes it impossible to replicate by other sociologists
making it lack reliability as it is also difficult to compare findings
• Lacks repetitiveness as the samples are smaller which makes it harder to generalize on the wider
population group with the findings of the interviews
• As there is an interaction between interviewer and interviewee it impacts the validity
• It's an artificial conversation where one side takes initiative and asks questions which causes
doubt whether the answers obtained are honest
Structured Interviews – favored by positivists
Positives for using Structured Interviews
• Training the interviewer is straightforward and inexpensive as they must only follow a set of
instructions. However, this is more costly compared to mailing out or emailing a set of
questionnaires
• Cover a large sample size with limited resources because they are quick and cheap to administer
which increases the representativeness of the study
• They are useful to gain information such as a person's age or job
Positives for the use of unstructured interviews
• Allows the interviewer to build a rapport with the interviewee which allows more information to
be unveiled as they see the interviewer as trustworthy and safe
• Useful for researching sensitive issues e.g., Dobash and Dobash used unstructured interviews to
study Domestic Violence. The empathy and encouragement from the interviewer helped the
interviewee feel comfortable unveiling information
• The interviewee's view - allows the interviewee to talk about what they think is important
• Checking understanding - If the interviewee does not understand the question, it can be
explained
• Checking understanding - If the interviewer is unsure what an answer means they can ask, follow
up questions for clarification which increases the validity
• Flexibility – unstructured interviews allow the interviewer to not be stuck with a fixed set of
questions allowing them to explore whatever seems relevant or to gain more information
• Exploring Unfamiliar topics – allows them to investigate topics that they know little about or into
topics which they have not been able to previously access
Negatives for the use of Unstructured interviews
• The data gathered is not easily quantified, which brings issues as the answers cannot be pre-
coded which makes it less useful for establishing cause-and-effect relationships and hypothesis
testing
• It is very time consuming as they take a long time to carry out which impacts sample size making
smaller compared to structured interviews
• The interviewer must have good impersonal skills to ask the right questions
• There is a lot of training required to conduct unstructured interviews which adds to the cost
• The lack of structure and specific questions makes it impossible to replicate by other sociologists
making it lack reliability as it is also difficult to compare findings
• Lacks repetitiveness as the samples are smaller which makes it harder to generalize on the wider
population group with the findings of the interviews
• As there is an interaction between interviewer and interviewee it impacts the validity
• It's an artificial conversation where one side takes initiative and asks questions which causes
doubt whether the answers obtained are honest
Structured Interviews – favored by positivists
Positives for using Structured Interviews
• Training the interviewer is straightforward and inexpensive as they must only follow a set of
instructions. However, this is more costly compared to mailing out or emailing a set of
questionnaires
• Cover a large sample size with limited resources because they are quick and cheap to administer
which increases the representativeness of the study
• They are useful to gain information such as a person's age or job
