Interviews

Interviews

Involve a face to face interaction between an interviewee and an interviewer

Structured

Made up of pre determined set of questions that are asked in a fixed order

Like a questionnaire but conducted face to face

Unstructured

No set questions

There is a general aim that a certain topic will be discussed and then interactions tend to be free flowing

Interviewee is encouraged to expand and elaborate their answers

Semi structured

List of questions that have been worked out in advance but interviewers are free to ask follow up questions based on previous answers

Like a conversation

Structured evaluation

Straight forward to replicate due to standardised format - format also reduces differences between interviewers

Requires less interviewing skill and can be done by non professional interviewers

Easier to analyse as the answers are more predictable

It is not possible however for interviewers to deviate from the topic or explain the questions as this will limit the richness of the data collected as well as limit unexpected information
The answers participants give may be restricted by the questions

Unstructured evaluation

Much more flexibility in an unstructured interview than in a structured interview

Interviewer can follow up points as they arise and is much more likely to gain insight into the view of the interviewee

However this may lead to an increased risk of interviewer bias

Analysis of data from unstructured interview is not straight forward