Educational Research Methods
A site to support teaching and learning...
Semi-structured interviews
“...are generally organised around a set of predetermined open-ended questions, with other questions emerging from the dialogue between interviewer and interviewee ⁄ s. Semi-structured in-depth interviews are the most widely used interviewing format for qualitative research and can occur either with an individual or in groups. Most commonly they are only conducted once for an individual or group and take between 30 minutes to several hours to complete.” (DiCicco-Bloom & Crabtree, 2006: 315.)
DiCicco-Bloom, B., & Crabtree, B. F. (2006). The qualitative research interview. Medical Education, 40, 314-321.
Interviews are sometimes classed as structured, unstructured or semi-structured.
Many student theses simply report “I carried out semi-structured interviews...”
This sometimes seems to mean anything from a very rigid interview schedule with a tiny amount of discretion for the interviewer, to entering the interview with a few vague topics in mind!
‘Semi-’ is a dishonest descriptor here - by itself it offers a lazy and limited description!
It is important to offer sufficient detail of the level of structure used in the interviews:
See example: Shifting sands: a case study of conceptual development as competition between alternative conceptions
This is a personal site of Keith S. Taber to support teaching of educational research methods.
(Dr Keith Taber is Professor of Science Education at the University of Cambridge.)
