What an interview is
Definition
Interview
A self-report method that collects data by asking people spoken questions, so answers can be followed up.
- An interview collects data by asking someone questions out loud, usually face to face.
- It is a self-report method, so the data is whatever the participant chooses to tell you about their own thoughts, feelings and behaviour.
- Because you are both there in real time, you can rephrase a question or follow an answer up on the spot.
Structured interviews
- Every participant is asked the same questions, in the same words and the same order.
- Answers therefore line up neatly across participants and often come back as quantitative data.
Semi-structured interviews
- You prepare a core list of questions but stay free to follow up whenever an answer is worth chasing.
- Everyone is asked those core questions, so a fair amount of comparison is still possible.
Unstructured interviews
- There are no fixed questions, only a topic and a free-flowing conversation that you steer.
- Each interview goes somewhere different, so the answers are rich but awkward to compare.
- The data is qualitative, recorded in the participant's own words.
Example
- Suppose you want to find out how Year 11 pupils cope with the run-up to their mocks.
- A structured interview asks every pupil how many evenings a week revision stopped them sleeping, which you can tally across the whole year group.
- An unstructured interview lets one pupil describe what that week actually felt like, and you follow wherever they take you.
Strengths
- You can clear up misunderstandings on the spot, so the answer you record is genuinely an answer to the question you meant to ask.
- Looser interviews reach a depth no tick box can, because probing an unexpected answer often uncovers a reason you would never have thought to ask about.
Weaknesses
Definition
Social desirability bias
The tendency for people to answer in a way that makes them look good, rather than giving an honest response.
- Answers can be shaped by wanting to look good, because sitting opposite a real person makes social desirability bias more likely than filling in a form alone.
- Interviews are slow to run and to make sense of, so your sample stays small and may not represent the target population.
Common Mistake
- Do not describe an interview as a written set of questions, because written questions make it a questionnaire.
- Do not treat semi-structured as a vague middle option, because its whole point is a fixed core with room to probe.
Choosing the right type
- Choose a structured interview when you want answers you can count and compare across a lot of people.
- Choose an unstructured interview when the aim is to understand one person's experience in depth and their own words matter most.
- Choose a semi-structured interview when you need both a common core to compare and the freedom to chase something up.
Turning this into marks
- Give the defining feature of the type and then a consequence of it for the data.
- Tie any justification to the aim in the scenario rather than to a general preference.
- The mark most often lost comes from naming the type and stopping there.
Self review
- What makes an interview different from a questionnaire?
- Describe the difference between a structured and a semi-structured interview.
- Explain one weakness of unstructured interviews.
- A researcher wants to understand how one pupil experienced moving school, so which type would you advise and why?
