Social Approach: How science works 2009

Describe the use of the interview as a research method in psychology (6)

Interviews involve the gathering data face-to-face with the participants, through asking questions related to a specific research question, and the participants responses either through taking notes or by making an audio recording.

The stages of the interview involve establishing rapport, describing the project, obtaining informed consent and sharing the interview schedule, conducting the interview, making process notes, transcribing the interview word for word, analysing the qualitative data using techniques such as grounded theory and discourse analysis, sharing the full transcript and analysis with the interviewees.

In an interview questions can be elaborated and expanded upon unlike with the questionnaire and answers can be explored in more detail, and interview schedule (the ordered set of questions) can be modified to suit the participant and his or responses.

Interviews usually provide in-depth information about a particular research issue or question and the qualitative data collected tends to forms a story or narrative about a certain topic.

Researchers who use interviews use what is called the "hermeneutic method", they try to interpret the relationships between the statements that are made. They search for contradictions and consistencies and try to identify themes within the data, relating individual statements to these themes.

Interviewing can be defined as is the art and science of exploring the subjective knowledge, opinions, and beliefs of an individual. The knowledge, opinions, and beliefs of that person ae a "system." The purpose of the interview is to explore that system and all of its elements.

Interviewers use interview schedules in order to keep on track and ensure that the research objective is kept in kind throughout the interview. Interviewers have to follow ethical guidelines and include the participants in the planning of the interview schedule.

Interviewers record the content of the interview (what is said) as well as the process of the interview (how things are said). Process observations may confirm, enrich, and sometimes even contradict the content of what the person says.

Explain what is meant by a structured interview (3)

A structured interview involves asking a set of pre-determined questions in a fixed order. The order does not vary and there is no opportunity to follow up interesting responses. It is similar to gathering questionnaire data but it is done face-to-face and orally.

Explain what is meant by a semi-structured interview (3)

A semi-structured interview is slightly more flexible than a structured interview. Here there is a pre-determined set of questions which make up an interview schedule; however the schedule can be modified somewhat in line with the participant’s answers, i.e. the order might be changed slightly or

Social Approach: How science works 2009

the interviewer may choose to explore an answer given in a little more detail by prompting and encouraging the participant to give more information.

Explain what is meant by a unstructured interview (3)

An unstructured interview will have a clear research objective and a list of starter questions but there is no fixed order. It is more conversational and less rigid than a structured interview. The interviewer is free to create new follow up questions which follow on from what the interviewee has just said , (this is also called the clinical interview). The interviewer needs to be far more skilled than in a structured interview in order to keep the interview on track and achieve the research objective and also to elicit relevant information from the participant without asking leading questions, which can be more difficult when there is no ‘script’.

Give two strengths of interviews as a research method (2+2)

Strength 1: The interview could be said to have higher validity than a questionnaire, as questions can be elaborated and expanded upon to ensure that the participant fully understand the question and therefore gives an answer which is appropriate and relevant to the research objective. However, this can only be done in semi-structured and unstructured interviews.

Strength 2: Interviews can provide a rich and detailed source of information which is in the participants own words and therefore it can be seen as highly credible source of information. The analysis comes directly from transcripts of what the participants actually said rather than from observations of behaviour where it may not be possible to access the participant’s intentions and feelings about what they were doing.

Give two weaknesses of interviews as a research method (2+2)

Weakness 1: Since interviews are conducted face-to-face, the data collected can be affected by the relationship between the interviewer and the interviewee (participant reactivity) . The interviewee may attempt to provide data which he or she thinks the interviewer wants to hear (demand characteristics) or may not fail to reveal information which is less socially acceptable as there is not the same sense of anonymity as is achieved in a questionnaire. The data can be subject to interviewer bias and this too has the effect of lowering the validity of that data. Interviewer bias can occur if the interviewer asks leading questions or more subtly through body language, whereby closed body language, including folded arms or direct use of gaze may indicate disagreement or whereby or lack of eye contact or slumped posture could indicate lack of interest, both could affect the data provided by the participant.

Weakness 2: Conclusions drawn from interview data may be seen as subjective and thus unscientific since the process of identifying categories and themes is highly open to the interpretation of the researcher. The process involves selection of statements which support emergent themes and this is a subjective process. This said there are ways in which this process can become more objective such as keeping full transcript which are checked by the participants to ensure that the researcher has not been selective in what was originally recorded. Also, independent researchers can be used to code and categorise the data, who are unaware of the research aim/hypothesis.