strengths and limitations of interviews

By analysing the interview of the south Asian women we can see that there are many limitations and strengths to an in depth interview. However we can see that overall strengths of an interview outweigh the limitations portraying to us that carrying out an interview is advantageous for the interviewer as well as the interviewee.
Firstly we can see that the interview of the South Asian women was qualitative data. This is a strength as it provides us with a detailed picture as to why Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi women have all increased their participation in higher education more rapidly than white women. Another strength of an interview is that the interviewee is able to produce a detailed answer for the interviewer which will help them with their studies, this can also help the interviewer gain extra information and knowledge about what they are aiming to find out. Also an interviewer is able to talk more freely and ask more questions if needed, they can allow their speech to flow whereas this wouldn’t be possible if they were carrying out a questionnaire so it means they are able to collect more research for their studies if needed. We can see from the south Asian women interview that there were 114 young women used in this study, because of the large number of women being interviewed it is important that the interviewer is the interviewees same gender, age or ethnicity. This helps the findings of the interview as the women are more likely to feel comfortable around the interviewer which leads to more truthful answers as they can act more natural in their surroundings. For example if a Bangladeshi women was being interviewed she is more likely to be less open to someone who does not relate to her in any way however if she was speaking to an interviewer who was also Bengali and a female she would feel some relation between her and the interviewer, which would lead to her being more open and upfront about her answers as well as producing more detailed answers as well.
However we can see that even though there are many strengths to an interview there are also a few limitations. The first one is interviewer bias, this is when the interviewer constructs their speech in a certain way to influence the respondents outcome. However this would not occur in a questionnaire as there is no verbal conversation between the interviewer and the respondent. Another limitation of carrying out an interview is called social desirability, this is when the interviewee responds with an answer they believe will be favoured by many others. We can see that as an overall perspective through the minds of the people from the western culture, south Asian women are more restricted when it comes to freedom of speech depending on their cultural background, therefore they might have given an answer that they thought was best in general rather than giving their own truthful opinions. Furthermore to this another restriction that occurs during an interview is called right answerism, this is when the respondent might not be frank with their answer or they might have forgotten what they were originally going to say. This affects the outcome of the interview as the results may alter which means that the actual findings will change which leads to unreliable research findings.
Overall we can see that carrying out an interview as a source of research has its advantages as well as its disadvantages to it. However all data collection strategies also have pros and cons to them but some are better to use than others.