Unstructured Interviews

1 Unstructured Interviews by Yan Zhang and Barbara M. Wildemuth There is no such thing as a worthless conversation, provided you know what to listen for. And questions are the breath of life for a conversation. --James Nathan Miller, 1965 Ideal conversation must be an exchange of thought, and not, as many of those who worry most about their shortcomings believe, an eloquent exhibition of wit or oratory. --Emily Post, 1922 Introduction Interviews are a widely used tool to access people s experiences and their inner perceptions, attitudes, and feelings of reality. Based on the degree of structuring, Interviews can be divided into three categories: structured Interviews , semi- structured Interviews , and Unstructured Interviews (Fontana & Frey, 2005). A structured interview is an interview that has a set of predefined questions and the questions would be asked in the same order for all respondents.

collection approaches, “from a macro-approach, studying large groups via questionnaires or structured interviews, to a micro-approach, studying small groups via observation or unstructured interviews” (Ellis, 1997, p.384-385). If Ellis is correct, we will see an increasing use of unstructured interviews in information behavior research.

Loading..

Tags:

  Questionnaire, Interview, Observation, Structured, Structured interview, Unstructured, Unstructured interviews

Information

Related search queries