Читать книгу Essentials of Sociology - George Ritzer - Страница 75

The questions asked in an interview may be preselected and prestructured so that respondents must choose from sets of preselected answers such as agree and disagree. Or an interview may be more spontaneous, unstructured, and completely open-ended. The latter form is used by those who do observational research. An unstructured interview offers no preset answers; respondents are free to say anything they want.

Prestructured interviews are attractive when the researcher wants to avoid any unanticipated reactions or responses from those being studied. In a prestructured interview, the interviewer attempts to

 Behave in the same way in each interview

 Ask the same questions, using the same exact words, and in the same sequence

 Ask closed-ended questions that the participant must answer by choosing from a set of preselected responses

 Offer the same explanations when they are requested by respondents

 Not show any kind of reaction to the answers, no matter what they might be

Interviews conducted in this way often yield information that, like data obtained from questionnaires, can be coded numerically and then analyzed statistically.

There are problems associated with prestructured interviews. First, interviewers often find it difficult to live up to the guidelines for such interviews:

 They are frequently unable to avoid reacting to answers (especially unexpected or outrageous ones).

 They may use different intonation from one interview to another.

 They may change the wording, and even the order, of the questions asked (which can affect respondents’ answers).

Another problem is that respondents may not respond accurately or truthfully. For example, they may want to conceal things or give answers they believe the interviewer wants to hear. Finally, and most importantly, closed-ended questions limit the responses, possibly cutting off useful unanticipated information that might be provided in a more free-flowing interview.

The last problem is solved by the use of open-ended or unstructured interviews. The interviewer begins with only a general idea of the topics to be covered and the direction to be taken in the interview. The answers in unstructured interviews offer a good understanding of the respondents and what the issues under study mean to them. Such understandings and meanings are generally not obtained through structured interviews. However, unstructured interviews create problems of their own. For example, they may yield so much diverse information that it is hard to offer a coherent summary and interpretation of the results.