AS Sociology Unstructured interviews and material deprivation on educational achievments

Use Material from item B and elsewhere assess the strengths and limitations of one of the following methods for investigating the effect of material deprivation on education achievement An unstructured interview in which questions are usually not pre­arranged allowing the interview to be spontaneous. Unstructured interviews usually records qualitative data because in an unstructured interview the interviewer has the freedom to get to know the participant on a personal level to allow asking sensitive questions and receiving truthful answers making this method a very valid method, this method also gains subjective information. So this method is typically favoured by interpretivists and criticised by positivists as it typically collects qualitative data. A theoretical strength of the use of an unstructured interview is that it is high in validity, as in an unstructured interview you can get to know the student/parent on a personal level meaning you could achieve more truthful research; asking the participant about low income and poor living standards can be a very sensitive subject, unstructured interviews can make asking sensitive questions acceptable.Unstructured interviews also allows rapport to be built up between the interviewer and the , however positivists would argue that a theoretical weakness to using unstructured interviews is that they’re low on reliability, this is because each interview is unique and spontaneous meaning that it’s impossible to replicate the interviews and compare the findings with other interviews disallowing general objective statements to be made. A positivist would usually use a questionnaire allowing them to compare their findings as a questionnaire is standardised meaning each question is the same making comparison and objective general statements easy to make. An ethical strength of unstructured interviews is that these types of interviews are generally a lot more relaxed compare to structured interviews;