QUALITATIVE methods UNSTRUCTURED INTERVEIWS

QUALITATIVE methods UNSTRUCTURED INTERVEIWS

1. practical issues

   • allows interviewer to set up a rapport (relationship of trust and understanding). training needs to be more thorough then for structured interviews (needs to have a background in sociology). they take a long time (several hours) produce large amounts of data (pre-coded answers). easier to check each others meanings. very flexible. allows interviewee to talk about what they think is important

2. theoretical issues : interpretivism

   • validity through involvement
     • can see what the interviewee is really concerned about
   • grounded theory
     • Glaser and Strauss (1968) - good to approach with an open mind - the idea that you can build up and modify our hypothesis during the actual course of research itself
   • the interviewees view
     • gives interviewees freedom to raise issues and discuss what is important to them. they can use their own words to express themselves instead of choosing from pre set answers. .

3. theoretical issues - positivism

   • reliability
     • positivists NOT reliable because not a standardised measuring instrument because each interview is unique - virtually impossible to replicate
   • quantification
     • as open- ended questions, answers cannot easily be categorised and quantified
   • representativeness
     • cannot generalise about the wider population based on the findings of the interveiws
   • lack of validity
     • the success of the untrusted interviews often relies on the establishing rapport, there is danger of this distorting the information obtained.
       • becker (1971) used aggression, disbelief and 'playing dumb' to get teachers to reveal how they calssified pupils in stereotypical ways

4. feminism

   • Oakley - is value committed: takes womens side and aims to give a voice to their experiences and free them from patricidal oppression. requires research involvement with, rather then detachment from, the lives of the women she studies. aims for equality and collaboration between researcher and researched, rather then hierarchy and control by the researcher
   • she conducted 178 unstructed intrviews with women about becoming mothers. on average she spent over nina hours interviewing each women and even attended saome of the births. argued that developing more of an equal and intimate relationship inproved quality of her research by allowing her to get closer to the womens experiences and point of view.
   • EVALUTATION OF OAKLEY - Ray Pawson (1992) there is nothing particularly feminised about Oakley approach it is basically the same as the interpretivism