Types of interviews

Interviews are a good way of getting rich, detailed qualitative data. They are a self-report method but differ from questionnaires because researchers have the opportunity to be face to face with the person they are speaking with. The self-report method is useful to researchers because it gives them a chance to access information that cannot be gained by observation alone.

In an interview, the researcher will get information by asking questions directly of the interviewee, which are often open so that the person is able to give more in-depth answers than they would be able to on a questionnaire.

An interview can be conducted in one of three main ways:

• Structured interviews: in this type of interview, the questions will be pre-determined and the interviewer should not waiver from them. This way, everyone who is interviewed will be asked exactly the same questions
• Unstructured interviews: this type of interview does not have pre-determined questions. The interviewer will ask an initial question but will base all further questions on the person’s responses. This type of interview feels more natural, as it runs like a conversation
• Semi-structured interviews: here the interviewer will have some questions that they want to ask but will be happy to ask others based on the person’s responses if one of them is particularly interesting or pertinent to what is being explored

Strengths of interviews include:

• They offer researchers the opportunity to find out what people are thinking and why they act in certain ways
• The information that is being asked for in a question can be checked, as the interviewer is present and able to give further clarification if needed
• Interviews are easy to replicate but only if they are structured

Weaknesses of interviews include:

• There is no way of determining if the people being interviewed are being honest. They may lie or exaggerate or simply answer in a way that they think the interviewer wants them to
• Some people cannot explain why they feel something or why they behave in a certain way because they do not have enough self-understanding to do so
• Interviewing is a skill and it can be expensive and time consuming to train someone to carry them out and to analyse the data that they produce in a non-biased way

Questionnaires

Another method of self-report is the questionnaire, which is something that most people will have completed at one time or another about various subjects. They are used to gain different types of data, which can be elicited by asking either open-ended questions, closed-ended questions or a combination of the two. Questions in this kind of research are all the same for everyone who takes part.

Closed-ended questions are those which can only have fixed answers and the person completing the questionnaire has to pick which one they think fits best for them (multiple-choice) or they can rate their answer on a numerical scale. For example:

• 1. How do you rate your happiness today on a scale of 1-5?
  2. Would you say that you are optimistic?
  3. Have you ever been to Canada?
  4. Do you use sun cream? Never, sometimes, all the time.
  5. When was the last time you visited the cinema?

As you can see from these questions, answers are restricted and therefore do not offer the participant the chance to explain why they never use sun cream or why they feel very happy today, for example.

Closed questions provide a lot of quantitative data and this can be categorised in terms of what the researcher is trying to find out.

Strengths of closed-ended questions include:

• Data can be gained and quantified very quickly
• Research is cheap to carry out and can be gathered from a lot of people
• As questions are all the same, answers from questionnaires should be reliable

Weaknesses of closed-ended questions include:

• People can lie or exaggerate or give socially desirable responses
• They lack detail and people do not have the chance to explain their answers

Open-ended questions are those in which people can choose their own answers and/or give more detail about the answer they have chosen from a multiple-choice set. This type of question can be answered in depth and is very useful for questions which are more complex, such as “why do you feel that the country should react more strongly to criminal activity?”

This type of question was used by Kohlberg when trying to find out how children would react to a moral dilemma. As we saw in a previous unit, Kohlberg was not so much interested in finding out what children would do but why they would do it, and open-ended questions gave Kohlberg a chance to find this information out.

Strengths of open-ended questions include:

• The data collected is more in depth, giving a much better insight into people’s feelings and motivations for their behaviour

Weaknesses of open-ended questions include:

• Data can be time consuming to collect and analyse
• People may not be self-aware enough to communicate their feelings
• People may not be able to understand some of the more complex questions and cannot ask for further information, as the questionnaire is likely to be written only