'Advantages for sociologists in using structured interviews Essay\r'

'The unified interview, to a fault cognise as the formal or questionnaire interview, involves a hardiness-to-face or alternatively an over-the-phone delivery of a questionnaire. structure interviews spend a pre-set list of questions designed by the searcher and asked to all interviewees in the same way, this is fill in as an interview schedule. Interviewees then choose from a list of set answers, al execrableing incorporate interviews to be comparatively quick. Structured interviews give birth various advantages, in that locationfore, some(a) sociologists, mainly Positivist sociologists, choose to use structured interviews when conducting research.\r\nPositivists go by the assumption that there is a mensural objective social reality. They take a scientific approach development methods such as structured interviews to obtain decimal data. Positivists atomic number 18 mainly implicated in research methods that achieve their main goals of dependability, generalisabilit y and representativeness, for this reason, they opt structured interviews as they achieve these goals. This is because structured interviews energize close-ended questions and answers that are standardised, counted and quantified; they are reliable because they female genitalia be therefore replicated. Positivist sociologists also prefer to use structured interviews when conducting research because the pre-coded responses mean that produce quantitative data, can allow cause-and- exercise relationships can be established. Thus, structured interviews are preferred by positivists.\r\nAlso, structured interviews are representative and can therefore be generalised, because of the incident that they are often large-scale. There are also practical advantages to exploitation structured interviews. For an example, training interviewers is relatively easy and inexpensive as no specializer skills have to be taught as the questions tend to be very straightforward as they often close-end ed, and do not require too much thought. out-of-pocket to the situation that skills taught are minimal, the process of training interviewers depart not cost too much. This brings a ample practical advantage for sociologists of structured interviews being low cost.\r\nAnother practical advantage is that structured interviews are relatively cheap, quick and easy to administer. This enables sociologists to use a larger sample in the interview process, allowing more representative results to be produced. Therefore, the researcher can fox generalisations. No only this, but structured interviews have a higher(prenominal) response rate, than mailed questionnaires for example, upgrade improving and reinforcing the representative advantage of structured interviews.\r\nFurthermore, face to face interviews ensure a much higher response rate than mailed questionnaires for example, out-of-pocket to the fact that the researcher’s presence means that the research purpose and importa nce can be explained to likely interviewees, allowing them to understand how valuable it is that their response is correct and true, so increasing validity- an important advantage for sociologists.\r\nFinally interviewer effect occurs when the interviewer’s presence affects the interviewee’s responses, in rhythm reducing validity. However, the advantage with structured interviews is that the interviewer effect with be much less than with unstructured, open-ended unstructured interviews. This is due to the fact that in structured interviews contact is limit to asking and responding fixed list of questions and close-ended answers.\r\nAll points considered there are a number of advantages for sociologists in using structured interviews in their research. However, in saying this, it can also be argued that there are a also number of disadvantages. For example, it can be give tongue to that there is a neediness of validity as the researcher decides the questions in adv ance, a lack of reliability as interviewer effect may influence answers, a cost issue due to training and ignorance towards metier issues as deadpan manner may be quite off-putting and there is a lack of rapport.\r\nIn my opinion, it all depends on whether you are a positivist or an interpretivist. Yes, there are some disadvantages, but I believe that these disadvantages are super outweighed by number of advantages that exist for sociologists in using structured interviews in their research.\r\n'