Assess the strengths and limitations of using interviews for the study of educational achievement and material deprivation

In terms of practicality, it will be very time-consuming. As item B suggests, Harker (2006) ‘reviewed evidence commissioned by the housing charity Shelter to look at the links.’ This is very time-consuming, especially after interviews as the researcher will have to analyse data at home which will mean they have to make new conclusions however if they had used official statistics, it could have been easier to see the trends and therefore make a conclusion. However it will be quite a cheap process. This is because the researcher will incur no costs in producing the questions for the interview, and since the researcher is doing the research first-hand, there are no costs that maybe official statistics may have.

In terms of ethics though, it could have a problem. The researcher is essentially invading someone’s privacy. This is because if the researcher is asking sensitive questions to culturally deprived students about their interactions at school and at home for their bad results at school, it could make students upset about their failure. From item B, the issue of debt was mentioned by Callender and Jackson, and clearly debt and a lack of money is a very personal issue for working class students who are materially deprived. Therefore the researcher needs to build a rapport with the participants in order to make the participants feel more comforted, or perhaps use group interviews for the same effect. Furthermore, since they are children, there are gate keepers such as teachers, the governing body and parents who have to give consent for the research. This can potentially make or break the research as it could mean that research won’t even take place in the beginning.

This form of research should provide valid data. This is because if group interviews or unstructured interviews take place providing that the researcher is building rapport, then the students who are materially deprived should express their personal feelings from school and at home more expressively, and trying to give their researcher more reasons for their underachievement since they feel more comfortable. However the Hawthorne effect can take place, since these students can make themselves look more favourable in the researcher’s eyes by revealing false aspects of their lives and perhaps making themselves sound better than what they actually are i.e. a materially deprived, underachieving student. Furthermore validity could be affected since researchers are generally adults and since most materially deprived and ethnic minority students from anti-school subcultures, they could be hesitant in revealing information to an authoritative-like figure. Furthermore, since interviews will tend to be done in one school, the sample size will generally be small which will reduce representativeness.  

Overall it can be said that interviews are a good way of finding out about material deprivation affecting education. It will mostly produce qualitative data which will benefit interpretivists.