Interviewing can take the form of questionnaires, in which case the interviews are structured. The questionnaire will remain the same for all respondents, so each person is asked the same questions in the same format. Another form of interviewing is the semi-structured interview, where there are set questions but there is also some freedom for the interviewer to explore issues in order to extend answers. When an interviewer is free to explore areas without set questions, this is known as an unstructured interview. In spite of its unstructured format it will still have a schedule and areas for the interviewer to cover.
The interviewer will find out about the personal data required for the study, such as gender, age, marital status and other relevant details. The interviewer will use some standard instructions at the start of the interview so that the respondent is aware of ethical issues such as confidentiality and the right to withdraw. The respondent will also be told something about the interview and what the purpose is.
Evaluation of interviews
| Strengths | Weaknesses |
| ·Unstructured interviews are useful for obtaining qualitative data because there can be exploration of the issues and the respondent is able to use their own words and ideas. The qualitative data offered by interviews give more depth and detail that quantitative data.
·Data tend to be more valid in interviews than questionnaires because the respondent can use their own words and issues can be explored. |
·The interviewer may affect the findings because of the way the questions are asked, the way he or she is dressed or other characteristics. This is known as interviewer bias.
·There might be subjectivity involved in analysing interviews. When categories and themes have to be identified from in-depth and detailed data, probably involving a transcript, the researcher may allow personal judgments and experiences to affect the analysis. Objectivity is required to build a body of knowledge, so subjectivity is to be avoided where possible in research. |
Study using interviews: Goldstein (1988)
Goldstein’s study used both secondary and primary data from interviews. Secondary data were used when looking at case histories of patients diagnosed with schizophrenia to see if the diagnosis was reliable. Goldstein used trained interviewers to gather data about the symptoms of the patients and she used questionnaires administered by an interviewer to gather information about their past histories, family structure and previous experiences.
Aims: To see if females with schizophrenia experience a less severe course of the illness than males. She also wanted to see if a diagnosis using DSM-III was different from a previous diagnosis that used DMS-II. Her aim was to look at other factors affecting the course of schizophrenia, including subtypes of the illness, premorbid history and social functioning.
Procedures: Goldstein and others re-diagnosed 90 patients from a New York psychiatric hospital to see if the schizophrenia diagnosis (and subtypes) remained the same. In general, she found some differences in diagnosis between the two DSM systems but it was interesting that she found reliability in diagnosis between herself and the others carrying out the diagnoses with here, even though the others were blind to her hypothesis. She used trained interviewers to go through symptoms to check them to aid the diagnosis, as well as the hospital’s case histories.
Goldstein also wanted to know about the past experiences and other data such as age, class, ethnicity, gender, etc. She used questionnaires to gather this data. Secondary data and records were used to find out two important features of the course of the illness of each patient: the number of re-hospitalisations and the lengths of each stay in hospital.
Results and analysis: The main part of the study was to look at gender differences. Goldstein looked at gender and the number of re-hospitalisations, gender and lengths of stay in hospital each time, and them gender against these two features of the course of the illness and other features, such as premorbid factors and social functioning. She carried out complex analyses and separate these different features and to study their effects on one another.
She found that women with schizophrenia did have a less severe course for the illness than did men. Women had fewer re-hospitalisations and shorter lengths of stay. Premorbid factors affected the re-hospitalisations more than they affected the length of a stay. Social functioning affected lengths of stay more than the numbers of re-hospitalisations.
Conclusions: Goldstein concluded that her study reinforced the findings of many other studies. She also concluded that DSM-III was a reliable tool for diagnosis, though between DSM-II and DSM-III there were some differences. She found that premorbid functioning and social functioning were both important features of the illness.
Evaluation:
| Strengths | Weaknesses |
| • Used secondary data which were already available and factual, so the data were objective and needed no interpretation.
• She asked two experts to check her own diagnoses using DSM-III and was, therefore, able to show that her diagnoses were reliable. • She used interviewing to gather information about symptoms, so she was able to explore issues. This is necessary when studying patients with a mental health disorder, where issues such as symptoms may not be easy to describe or record. |
• Goldstein did not include patients over 45 and it has been shown that 9% of women who are diagnosed with schizophrenia are over 45, where this is not the case for men. Women over 45 have a more severe form of the illness.
• Her sample was relatively small and mainly white middle class American patients in New York, all of which may have meant that the findings were difficult to generalize. • The interviewers may have affected the data by the way they asked questions about factors such a symptoms, etc. |