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Interviews are considered to be "the most common method of gathering data for qualitative research"; further, they "are an integral part of most research traditions." [ 16 ] Interviews may be structured, semi-structured, or unstructured. [ 16 ]
A structured interview (also known as a standardized interview or a researcher-administered survey) is a quantitative research method commonly employed in survey research. The aim of this approach is to ensure that each interview is presented with exactly the same questions in the same order. This ensures that answers can be reliably aggregated ...
Research interviews are an important method of data collection in qualitative research. An interviewer is usually a professional or paid researcher, sometimes trained, who poses questions to the interviewee, in an alternating series of usually brief questions and answers, to elicit information.
In IPA, researchers gather qualitative data from research participants using techniques such as interview, diaries, or focus group. Typically, these are approached from a position of flexible and open-ended inquiry, and the interviewer adopts a stance that is curious and facilitative (rather than, say, challenging and interrogative).
Interviews can be structured whereby there is a predetermined set of questions or unstructured whereby no questions are decided in advance. The main strength of self-report methods are that they are allowing participants to describe their own experiences rather than inferring this from observing participants.
Used in qualitative research, the interviews involve a group of people who are asked about their perceptions, attitudes, opinions, beliefs, and views regarding many different topics (e.g., abortion, political candidates or issues, a shared event, needs assessment). Group members are often free to talk and interact with each other.
Since a semi-structured interview is a combination of an unstructured interview and a structured interview, it has the advantages of both. The interviewees can express their opinions and ask questions to the interviewers during the interview, which encourages them to give more useful information, such as their opinions toward sensitive issues, to the qualitative research.
Qualitative research methodologies are oriented towards developing an understanding of the meaning and experience dimensions of human lives and their social worlds. Good qualitative research is characterized by congruence between the perspective that informs the research questions and the research methods used. [2]