They plough a path between the two other types of interview - structured and unstructured.
With a semi-structured interview, the interviewer and the interviewee are equal partners.
Basically, the interviewer knows the areas he or she wants to cover with the interviewee, but allows the interviewee the options to take different paths and explore different thoughts, feelings, etc.
The interviewer, however, can then bring the interviewee back to the subject under discussion by the means of prompt questions, before allowing the interviewee to explore that particular aspect of the research problem, and so on - it is very much a two-way dialogue.
At the same time, however, it is important to maintain a balance between flexibility and control.
A semi-structured interview will involve many open-ended questions, although they may also contain some closed questions (i.e. yes-no answers).
In addition, there will be probes and prompts to tease out from the interviewee various strands of their narrative to complete the story.
Advantages
• the best way to capture how a person thinks or feels on a particular topic, for me I can let the interviewee speak with more than just their words but with facial and bodily expression too. Also, it allows the interviewee to go into as much depth as they feel they want to, whereas other interview types wouldn’t allow this type of freedom.
• semi-structure method allows me to ask questions that haven’t been written down if I feel appropriate.
• Large amount of detail generated.
• Fairly flexible and sensitive.
• Fairly reliable and easy to analyse.
Disadvantages
• it is so time-consuming ,not just the collecting of the data, but the transcribing and analysis of the data.
• Also, it is very easy to digress and become sidetracked with anecdotes and generally inappropriate information
• Can't guarantee honesty of participants.
• Cause and effect cannot be inferred.
• Flexibility of interview may lessen reliability.
• Open-ended questions are difficult to analyse.
• Difficult to compare answers.
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