Assess the strengths and weaknesses of using structured interviews to investigate the real rate of street crime.

its simplest form, a structured interview involves one person(interviewer) asking another person(interviewee) a list of predetermined questions about a carefully-selected topic.The use of structured interviews to investigate street crime has several advantages. Firstly it enables  the researcher to examine the level of understanding a respondent has about a particular topic - usually in slightly more depth than with a postal questionnaire. This is through facial expressions or the way in which the interviewee responds.Secondly, because all respondents are asked the same questions in the same way, it makes it easier to replicate. This provides more reliable data.The researcher is able to contact large numbers of people quickly, easily and efficiently. This makes it more representative of the wider population and as a result the data obtained can be generalized. It can be used as a powerful form of formative assessment. That is, it can be used to explore how a respondent feels about a particular topic( in this case street crime) before using a second method (such as observation or in-depth interviewing) to gather a greater depth of information. Structured interviews can also be used to identify respondents whose views you may want to explore in more detail (through the use of focused interviews, for example).Structured interviews however have several disadvantages when studying street crime. The quality and usefulness of the information is highly dependent upon the quality of the questions asked. The interviewer cannot add or subtract questions. The format of questionnaire design makes it difficult for the researcher to examine complex issues and opinions. Even where open-ended questions are used, the depth of answers the respondent can provide tend to be more-limited than with almost any other method.There is limited scope for the respondent to answer questions in any detail or depth. This makes the data provide less of a valid picture that in actual fact of what is truly happening. Training maybe required for the interviewer, which could be costly and take up a large amount of time.To conclude, Structured interviews have various advantages and disadvantages when investigating street crime. They may provide more reliable data and representative. However the main issue being lack of depth, and control, makes it lack validity to a certain extent.