Unstructured interview
[5] One of the potential drawbacks is the loss of reliability, thereby making it more difficult to draw patterns among interviewees' responses in comparison to structured interviews.
Open-ended questions have no prepared response choices which enables and empower the interviewee to shift the direction of the interview and to bring in unanticipated information.
This way, the interviewee is able to freely discuss the topic given or their work from their own point of view, typically something the researcher hopes for in their search for information.
The non-directive interview originated in psychotherapy, intending to neutrally probe the respondent's deepest and most subjective feelings".
[4] These acknowledgments such as "yeah," "right," "great," "okay," and "mhm" show response or influence from the interviewee's answers can have on interviewer, not through contributions to the development of the topic but through minimal feedback.
[13] During more organized and highly structured interviews, questions are given and answered one after another, typically transcribed with little or no silences evident in between the responses.
[3][13] Silences are profoundly meaningful as they can signify a withholding or resistance, can reflect a cultural mode of self-representation, or may represent a topic or idea as unthinkable.
For this reason they are often considered to be a better methodology for researching sensitive subjects, such as domestic violence, whereas structured interviews are often considered intimidating due to their formality and can often make the interviewee subject to social desirability bias, a tendency for participants to answer questions inaccurately to suit response that can be viewed favorably by others.
[19] According to Gorden, more valid responses may be created by letting the respondent follow what he calls "the natural paths of free association".
[3] Rather than focusing on the interview as a method of data retrieval, it is the interviewee's unique account which is being sought and highly valued.
[citation needed][4][6] As a result, the unstructured interview is sometimes expensive and only feasible with small samples, affecting the data's generalizability and representativeness.
Newell and Rice suggest that many of the problems involved with predictive validity during interviews are due to interpersonal perception, the interpretation of the interviewee's personality or social identity.
[27] Race, gender, class, religion, [and forms of disabilities] are all aspects of society that feed into the development of our social identity, however these can also be factors which bias people's interpretations in an interview.
[28] The outcome of unstructured interviews results in diverse types of information collected from interviewees who are asking different questions.
[34] Oakley argues that interviews need to be conducted as equal relationships so that the research can lead to a retrieval of more fruitful and significant data.
[37] "Feminists have argued that the production of atomistic 'facts' and figures fracture people's lives" and letting others speak for themselves allows work to be produced which challenges stereotypes, oppression, and exploitation.
[38][39][40][41] Only one small part of experience is abstracted typically from structured interviews and questionnaires as the focus for attention as it is only "a simple matrix of standardized variables which is unable to convey an in-depth understanding of, feeling of, the people under the study".
It can be seen that the principle belief of feminist research "must begin with an open-ended exploration of women's experiences, since only from that vantage point is it possible to see how their world is organized and the extent to which it differs from that of men".
[6] Distinguished British sociologist, feminist, and writer, Ann Oakley has written numerous academic works focusing on the lives and roles of women in society.
Oakley as well used the unstructured interview approach to study women's experiences of both house work and maternity care.
[44] Both unstructured interview studies "were aimed at raising awareness of women's experiences and of promoting policy changes - for example, Oakley called for domestic work to be recognized as 'work' and to be given an appropriate status in relation to paid employment".
