An unstructured interview can be viewed more as an informal chat. This approach can be used to determine questions for a more structured interview or to find out general views of the interviewee on a particular subject. Unstructured interviews are widely used by people carrying out ethnographic research, where they want to understand the lifestyle and thoughts of particular groups. The data collected from interviews such as these would be used in qualitative research. Semi-structured interviews, on the other hand, have some characteristics of a structured and unstructured interview and would tend to consist of pre-determined initial questions, which are aimed to find out the interviewee’s thoughts and opinions. The answers may determine a follow up question. The data collected from this type of interview is useful for research projects that take a mixed qualitative and quantitative approach. That is where research data is represented not only in numerical and statistical form (quantitative), but comments made by interviewees are analysed and used to understand their experiences and thoughts and convey these in the research findings (qualitative). The range and flexibility of interview types means an interview can be used for a lot of differing types of research. One of the advantages of the interview approach is that it can be used in qualitative and quantitative research.
For data collected by an interview or survey to be meaningful it must be accurate and the researcher has a number of challenges to achieve this. Two pieces of research which demonstrate the strengths and weaknesses of survey and interview approaches are ‘Children’s Experiences of Short-term Accommodation’ by Aldgate and Bradley (2004), and ‘Multiple Risk Behaviour and Injury: An International Analysis of Young People’ by Pickett et al (2004). In the former, a semi-structured interview approach was taken. The research team interviewed parents, their children and social workers to understand the experiences of families who used this facility. In this survey, 60 families were interviewed before, but whilst accommodation was being arranged, and after using the service. As the aim of the research was to assess how successful the Children’s Act of 1989 had been in that parents and children must be consulted over short-term accommodation and that children’s wishes and feelings must be considered when planning for it. In the latter, a structured survey approach was taken, using the data from the World Health Organisation internal survey. The data used covered twelve different countries. The aim was to assess whether incidences of multiple risk taking behaviour resulted in greater injury incidents in children of 11, 13 and 15.
In an interview situation there is the need to establish the trust of and a rapport with the interviewee and their questionings must be clear and not lead the interviewee into a particular answer. In Audio Band 4 Aldgate stresses the importance of asking open questions. She states:
“So I wouldn’t say to the children ‘Do you think
your parent ought to visit you in foster care?’ I
would say, ‘What do you think about parents coming
to visit their children in foster care?’”
(Audio Band 4 pp 07:49 – 08:27)
In Aldgate and Bradley’s research, it was important to understand the feelings of the children and they took the approach to have a set of questions they wanted answered, but which they could then explore in more detail and therefore a survey approach would not have been suitable. It is also true in a survey that the questions should not be written as to lead the recipient to answer in a particular way. There is the danger that an interviewee may mislead the interviewer, either intentionally or unintentionally. They may give an answer they think the interviewer wants, particularly if they feel in awe of the interviewer or if they perceive a power imbalance. If the culture or language differs there may also be misunderstandings as to what is being asked. This is also true in a survey. Thus interviewing requires skill to recognise such situations and offer or seek clarification. This would not be possible in a survey. In Audio Band 4 Pickett tells how in his research, all the survey questions were written in English and then translated into the language of all the participating countries. This did result in some slight change in meanings. He also points out that with a large number of countries taking part you are potentially dealing with hundreds of different cultures, rather than, in his research, 12 different countries. For these reasons, in both surveys and interviews, it is important to pilot the questions to be asked so they can be refined and questions rephrased to prevent misunderstandings and offence.
Additionally, how the data collection is recorded has to be carefully considered in the interview situation. Whereas in survey, where a highly structured approach is taken, it can be enough to tick the answers to the pre-determined and pre-coded question. For less structured interviews, the interviewer has a number of options; note taking, tape recording or videoing. Each have their own advantages and disadvantages. In note taking the interviewer has to be able to take notes whilst listening to the interviewee. If the interview is recorded or videoed, whilst the interviewer is free to concentrate on the interview, the issue of transcribing can be very time consuming and problematic. This can be particularly true in a group situation, determining who said what, what is audible and how the approach is perceived by the interviewee. . In order to analyse the data, the researcher not only needs to transcribe the information but categorise it into themes or topics. In all cases there are ethical issues to consider and where interviews are used as research covering children, the issue of establishing trust and rapport is not just with the children, but with their parents. In Aldgate and Bradley’s research they addressed this by showing the interview questions to the parents first to ensure they were happy with them. They also gave the parents the opportunity to be present whilst their children were being interviewed. Additionally, they used the fact that they recorded interviews to enable those being interviewed to have more control over the interview by stating that they could stop the recording at any time and also they could play back the recording and have deleted anything they were not happy with.
However, the amount of work in interviewing and transcribing video or tape recording would make it very difficult to expand Bradley and Aldgate’s research to cover a much wider range of participants. Although to widen participation a survey approach could be taken with a smaller sample having follow up interviews. However, the fact that the research included interviews with young children, would mean that developing a survey that they were mature enough to understand would be difficult and likely to lead to children not being able to participant or misleading answers. In Pickett et al’s research, using the survey approach included around 50,000 children. It would have been very expensive and time consuming to interview that number of children. A further advantage in using the survey approach is that Pickett was able to use data already collected as part of a larger survey. Although, this in itself meant that he had to get permission from the various countries involved not only to use the data, but that they were happy with his approach to analysing it, and that the survey data available did not always cover the areas he was interested in as some countries had not recorded it.
The most important part of determining a data collection approach what the research aims are and how they are to be presented. A key element of Bradley and Aldgate’s research was to find out how the children felt about going into foster care and this would be very difficult, if not impossible, to assess from a survey. In order to present the anxieties felt by children and their parents it was also important to include actual comments made as well as grouping similar comments to show statistical evidence. There is also an onus on the researchers to ensure that comments are representative of the research and not biased to any particular view they may have. In Pickett et al’s research they were able to use the survey data to see if there was any correlation between types of risk behaviour and increased injuries via statistical evidence.
In conclusion, interviews and surveys are valuable methods of data collection in research. A survey enables a large number of people to participate in the research but the level of depth is limited as further probing is not possible. Surveys are useful for research looking at correlations between causes and effects and reporting quantitative research. Interviews can be useful for both quantitative and qualitative research. Semi-structured interviews enable further probing into the participants’ experiences and unstructured interviews can draw out initial topics for further research. Both interviews and surveys have strengths and weaknesses and the choice of which to use should be driven by the aims of research project and how it is to be reported.
(Words: 1985)
References
Aldgate, J. Bradley, M. (2004) ‘Children’s Experiences of Short-term Accommodation’ in V. Lewis, M. Kellett, C. Robinson, S. Fraser, and S. Ding (eds) The Reality of Research with Children and Young People, London: Sage in association with the Open University.
Fontana, A. and Frey, J.H. (1994) ‘Interviewing: the art of science’ in Punch, K. F. (1998) An Introduction to Social Research: Quantitative and Qualitative Approaches, London:Sage
Pickett, W. Schmid, H. Boyce, W. Simpson, K. Scheldt, P. Mazur, J. Olcho, M. King, M. Godeau, E. Overpeck, M. Aszmmann, A. Szabo, M. and Harel, Y. ‘Multiple Risk Behaviour and Injury: An International Analysis of Young People in V. Lewis, M. Kellett, C. Robinson, S. Fraser, and S. Ding (eds) The Reality of Research with Children and Young People, London: Sage in association with the Open University.
