The informality of the unstructured interview
allows the interviewer develop a rapport with
the interviewee. Which puts the interviewee as
ease and encourages them to open up.
EXAMPLE: The work of William Labov
(1973) proves this as an advantage
Unstructured interviews are useful for researching sensitive topics. E.G.
Dobash and Dobash used them to study domestic violence. Empathy and
encouragement would help the interviewee to feel comfortable with
discussing difficult or personal subjects
Interviewee's view
no set questions = unstructured interviews give the
interviewee more opportunity to speak about those things
that are important to them
Compared to structured interviews, the answers
produced are limited, however, giving them greater
freedom, more valid data is produced
Checking and understanding
It is easy to check if both the interviewer and
interviewee understand each others meanings.
If the interviewee doesn't understand
the question, it can be explained
In the same way, if the interviewer doesn't
understand the interviewee's answer or what
it means, follow up questions can be asked
Flexibility
Highly flexible
Interviewer is not restricted to a fixed
set of questions in advance, and can
explore whatever seems relevant.
Researcher can come up with new ideas
and hypotheses and test them as they
arise during the interview
No follow up interview is needed
Exploring unfamiliar topics
Researcher needs to have knowledge of the topic/subject and a
clear hypothesis before they start interviewing; otherwise, they
won't know what questions to ask - STRUCTURED INTERVIEWS
When a researcher doesn't know what the subject is
about, this makes it ideal and useful as they are
open-ended and exploratory
Most researchers use unstructured interviews to gain
a rough idea about a subject or topic and then use
structured questionnaires or interviews to follow up
Disadvantage
Practical problems
Unstructured interviews can take a long time to conduct - several hours, thus the
sample size will be very small, in compaison to the larger numbers that can be studied
by using structured interviews or questionnaires
Training needs to be thorough more than structured interviews.
Interviewer should have a background in sociology as an
interviewer may make a sociologically important point and can
further probe to appropriate line of questioning
Interviewers need good interpersonal skills so that they
are able to establish the rapport that is essential if
interviewees are to answer fully and honestly.
Representativeness
Smaller numbers = more likely to be less representative,
which means it will be harder to make valid
generalisations based on the findings of the interview
Reliability
Cannot be replicated as, an unstructured interview means many
different and follow up questions can be asked and every
interview is unique and different.
Quantification
Lack of quantitative data makes unstructured interviews less useful for
establishing cause and effect relationships and hypothesis testing that
positivists prefer
Validity
Unstructured interviews produce valid data, however, critics debate
that the fact that theres involvement between interviewer and
interviewee, that information obtained can be misrepresented.