Home | Business News | Browse by Publication | I | International Journal of Market Research

Investigator-based interviews.

Article Excerpt
This paper examines a method of interviewing that combines elements of qualitative research with disciplined data recording and discusses its suitability for the more sensitive subject areas of social research.

Introduction

As all trainee researchers know, one key dimension on which research interviews vary is their degree of structure. At one end of the spectrum lies the structured interview, commonly used in large-scale surveys, where question wording and ordering are closely specified, and response formats predetermined. The advantages of this approach for quantitative studies are well-known: researchers can feel confident that the same 'stimulus' has been presented to all study participants, interviewer effects are minimised, and, provided the questions are well-worded, good reliability should be relatively easy to achieve. At the opposite end--and typically designed for quite different purposes--is the unstructured interview. Here the prime emphasis is on understanding the meaning of events or experiences to the respondent, rather than assuming that they are known in advance; to achieve this, questioning is open-ended and flexible, and the interview will characteristically unfold in quite different ways in different contexts.

Investigator-based interviews:...

View this article FREE - Now for a Limited Time, try Goliath Business News
Free for 3 Days!