Structured Interviews in Social Research

Last Updated on October 7, 2026 by Karl Thompson

A structured interview is where an interviewer asks every respondent the same pre-written questions, in the same order and in the same way, usually ticking boxes from a fixed set of answers. In effect it is a questionnaire read out loud. Structured interviews are favoured by positivists, because standardisation makes the data reliable and easy to compare. HOWEVER, interpretivists argue they produce shallow, artificial data, and feminists criticise the unequal relationship between interviewer and respondent.

This post covers:

What structured interviews are, and who uses them
Their theoretical, practical and ethical strengths and limitations (the A-level summary)
How they compare to self-completion questionnaires
A contemporary example: the Crime Survey for England and Wales

In more depth: interviewer variability, telephone and computer-assisted interviews, how to conduct them, and the main problems with them, including Ann Oakley’s feminist critique
An exam practice question with a model answer

Structured interviews are part of the research methods module of A-level sociology. Research methods come up on Paper 3 (Crime and Deviance with Theory and Methods) and Paper 1 (Education with Theory and Methods).

tructured interviews in social research – A-level sociology research methods

Structured Interviews – Summary

Definition: an interview in which the interviewer follows an interview schedule: a fixed list of questions asked in the same order and the same way to every respondent. Answers are usually closed (pre-coded), and the interviewer simply ticks the right box.

Who uses them? Mainly positivists, and organisations running large-scale social surveys, such as government departments, polling companies and market researchers. Structured interviews are one of the two main ways of administering a social survey; the other is the self-completion questionnaire.

	Strengths	Limitations
Theoretical	Reliable – standardised questions make the research easy to repeat. Comparable – everyone answers the same questions, so differences in answers should be real differences between respondents. Quantifiable – pre-coded answers produce statistics, correlations and trends. Higher response rates than postal questionnaires make samples more representative	Low validity – fixed questions give little depth and impose the researcher’s categories (the imposition problem). Interviewer bias – the interviewer’s gender, ethnicity, age or manner can affect answers. Social desirability – respondents may give the answer they think sounds best to a stranger’s face. Shared meanings are assumed rather than checked
Practical	Interviewers can clarify questions and make sure every question is answered. Phone and computer-assisted interviewing make large samples manageable. Pre-coded answers are quick to process	Far more expensive and slower than self-completion questionnaires, because interviewers must be recruited, trained, paid and supervised. Phone interviews are hard to sustain beyond 20–25 minutes
Ethical	Informed consent is clear, and data can be anonymised at analysis	Less private than a self-completion questionnaire, so a poor choice for sensitive topics. Feminists argue the relationship is hierarchical and exploitative: the researcher takes information and gives nothing back

Structured Interviews vs Questionnaires

Structured interviews and self-completion questionnaires can use exactly the same questions. The difference is whether an interviewer is present, and that cuts both ways.

Having an interviewer present raises the response rate and means confusing questions can be explained, so fewer answers are missing or misunderstood. The interviewer can also check that the right person is answering. HOWEVER, the interviewer’s presence brings in interviewer bias and makes socially desirable answers more likely, and it makes the research far more expensive.

So in the exam, if a question asks why a researcher might choose a structured interview over a postal questionnaire, the answer is usually response rate and clarity. If it asks why they might choose the questionnaire, the answer is usually cost, privacy and the absence of interviewer bias.

A Contemporary Example: The Crime Survey for England and Wales

The Crime Survey for England and Wales is one of the best-known structured interview surveys in the UK. It asks a random sample of adults about their experience of crime in the previous year. Most of it is a face-to-face structured interview in the respondent’s home, with the interviewer reading questions from a laptop and keying in the answers. This is computer-assisted personal interviewing, covered further down.

The survey shows both the strengths and the limits of the method. HOWEVER, for the most sensitive questions – drug use, drinking, domestic abuse, sexual victimisation and stalking – the interviewer hands the laptop over and the respondent answers in a self-completion section. The survey designers are effectively admitting the main weakness of structured interviews: people are less likely to report sensitive experiences to an interviewer’s face.

During the pandemic, the survey switched to telephone interviews from May 2020. Face-to-face interviewing resumed in October 2021.

Structured Interviews in More Depth

The rest of this post goes into more depth than you need for most A-level questions, and it is useful if you are aiming for the top mark band or studying methods at university. It is adapted from Bryman (2016) Social Research Methods.

A structured interview is where interviewers ask pre-written questions to respondents in a standardised way, following an interview schedule. As far as possible the interviewer asks the same questions in the same order and the same way to all respondents.

(An exception to this is filter questions, in which case the interviewer may skip sub-questions if a negative response is provided.)

Answers to structured interviews are usually closed, or pre-coded, and the interviewer ticks the appropriate box according to the respondent’s answers. However, some structured interviews may be open-ended, in which case the interviewer writes in the answers for the respondent.

Social surveys are the main context in which researchers will conduct structured interviews.

The sections below cover:

the advantages of structured interviews
the different contexts in which they take place (phone and computer-assisted)
the stages of conducting them, from knowing the schedule to leaving
their limitations.

Advantages of Structured Interviews

The main advantage of structured interviews is that they promote standardisation in both the processes of asking questions and recording answers.

This reduces bias and error in the asking of questions and makes it easier to process respondents’ answers.

The two main advantages of structured interviews are thus:

Reducing error due to interviewer variability.
Increasing the accuracy and ease of data processing.

Reducing error due to interviewer variability

Structured interviews help to reduce the amount of error in data collection because they are standardised.

Variability, and thus error, can occur in two ways:

Intra-interviewer variability: when an interviewer is not consistent with the way they ask the questions or record the answers.

Inter-interviewer variability: when there are two or more interviewers who are not consistent with each other in the way they ask questions or record answers.

These two sources of variability can occur together and compound the problem of reduced validity.

The common sources of error in survey research include:

A poorly worded question.
The way the question is asked by the interviewer.
Misunderstanding on the part of the respondent being interviewed.
Memory problems on the part of the respondent.
The way the information is recorded by the interviewer.
The way the information is processed: coding of answers or data entry.

Because the asking of questions and recording of answers are standardised, any variation in answers from respondents should be due to true or real variation in the respondents’ answers, rather than variation arising because of differences in the interview context.

Accuracy and Ease of Data Processing

Structured interviews consist mainly of closed, pre-coded or fixed-choice questions.

With closed questions the respondent is given a limited choice of possible answers and is asked to select which response or responses apply to them.

The interviewer then simply ticks the appropriate box.

This limited box-ticking procedure limits the scope for interviewer bias to introduce error. There is no scope for the interviewer to omit or modify anything the respondent says, because they are not writing down their answer.

Another advantage of pre-coded data from the structured interview is that it allows for ‘automatic’ data processing.

If answers had been written down or transcribed from a recording, a researcher would have to examine this qualitative data, sort it and assign the various answers to categories.

For example, if a survey had produced qualitative data on what respondents thought about Brexit, the researcher might categorise the range of answers into ‘for Brexit’, ‘neutral’ and ‘against Brexit’.

This process of reducing more complex and varied data into fewer and simpler ‘higher level’ categories is known as coding data, or establishing a coding frame, and is necessary for quantitative analysis to take place.

Coding (whether done before or after a structured interview takes place) introduces another potential source of error. Answers may be categorised incorrectly by the researchers. The researchers may categorise answers differently to how the respondents themselves would have categorised their answers.

There are two sources of error in recording data:

Intra-rater variability: where the person applying the coding is inconsistent in the way they apply the rules of assigning answers to categories.
Inter-rater variability: where two different raters apply the rules of assigning answers to categories differently.

If either or both of the above occur, then variability in responses will be due to error rather than true variability in the responses.

The closed question survey or interview avoids the above problem because respondents assign themselves to categories, simply by picking an option and the interviewer ticking a box.

There is very little opportunity with pre-coded interviews for interviewers or analysts to misinterpret or misassign respondents’ answers to the wrong categories.

Structured Interview Contexts

Structured interviews tend to be done when there is only one respondent. Group interviews are usually more qualitative, because the dynamics of having two or more respondents present mean answers tend to be more complex, and so tick-box answers are not usually sufficient to get valid data.

Besides the face-to-face interview, there are two particular contexts which are common with structured interviewing: telephone interviewing and computer-assisted interviewing. (These are not mutually exclusive.)

Telephone interviewing

Telephone interviews are very common with market research companies and opinion polling companies such as YouGov. They are used less often by academic researchers, but an exception to this was during the Covid-19 pandemic, when many studies which would usually rely on in-person interviews had to be carried out over the phone.

The advantages of telephone interviews

Compared to face-to-face interviews, the advantages of telephone interviews are:

Telephone interviews are cheaper and quicker to administer, because there is no travel time or cost involved in reaching the respondents. The more dispersed the research sample is geographically, the larger the advantage.
Telephone interviews are easier to supervise than face-to-face interviews. You can have one supervisor in a room with several phone interviewers. Interviews can be recorded and monitored, although care has to be taken with GDPR.
Telephone interviews reduce bias due to the personal characteristics of the interviewers. It is much more difficult to tell what the class background or ethnicity of the interviewer is over the phone, for example.

The limitations of phone interviews

People without phones cannot be part of the sample.
Call screening with mobile phones has greatly reduced the response rate of phone surveys.
Respondents with hearing impairments will find phone interviews more difficult.
The length of a phone interview generally can’t be sustained beyond 20–25 minutes.

There is a general belief that telephone interviews achieve lower response rates than face-to-face interviews.
There is some evidence that phone interviews are less useful when dealing with sensitive topics, but the data is not clear-cut.
There may be validity problems, because telephone interviews do not allow for observation. For example, an interviewer cannot see if a respondent is confused by a question.

In cases where researchers need specific types of people, telephone interviews do not allow us to check that the correct types of people are actually the ones being interviewed.

Computer-assisted interviewing

With computer-assisted interviewing, questions are pre-written and appear on the computer screen. Interviewers follow the instructions, read out questions in order and key in the respondents’ answers, either as open or closed responses.

There are two main types of computer-assisted interviewing:

CAPI – Computer-Assisted Personal Interviewing.
CATI – Computer-Assisted Telephone Interviewing.

Most telephone interviews today are computer-assisted. There are several survey software packages that allow for the construction of effective surveys, with analytics tools for data analysis.

Computer-assisted interviewing is less common for personal interviews, but has been growing in popularity.

CATI and CAPI are more common among commercial survey organisations such as Ipsos, but are used less in academic research conducted by universities.

The advantages of computer-assisted interviewing

CAPI is very useful for filter questions, as the software can skip to the next question if the previous one isn’t relevant. This reduces the likelihood of the interviewer asking irrelevant questions or missing out questions.

It is also useful for prompt questions, as showcards can be generated on the screen and shown to the respondents as required. This should mean respondents are more likely to see the showcards in the same way, as there is no possibility of the researcher arranging them in a different order for different respondents, as might happen with physical cards.

Another advantage of computer-assisted interviewing is automatic storage on the computer or cloud upload, which means there is no need to scan paper interview sheets or enter the data manually at a later date.

Thus computer-assisted interviews should increase the level of standardisation and reduce the amount of variability error introduced by the interviewer.

The disadvantages of computer-assisted interviewing

They may create a sense of distance and disconnect between the interviewer and respondents.
Miskeying may result in the interviewer entering incorrect data, and they are less likely to realise this than with paper interviews.
Interviewers need to be comfortable with the technology.

Conducting Structured Interviews

The procedures involved in conducting an effective structured interview include:

Knowing the interview schedule
Gaining access
Introducing the research
Establishing rapport
Asking questions and recording answers
Leaving the interview.

The processes above relate specifically to structured interviews, but will also apply to semi-structured interviews.

The interview schedule

An interview schedule is the list of questions in order, with relevant instructions about how the questions are to be asked. Before conducting an interview, the interviewer should know the interview schedule inside out.

Interviews can be stressful, and pressure can cause interviewers not to follow standardised procedures. For example, interviewers may ask questions in the wrong order or miss questions out.

When several interviewers are involved in the research process, it is especially important that all of them know the interview schedule, to ensure questions are asked in a standardised way.

Gaining access

Interviewers are the interface between the research and the respondents, and are thus a crucial link in ensuring a good response rate. In order to gain access, interviewers need to:

Be prepared to keep calling back with telephone interviews, keeping in mind the times they are most likely to get a response.

Be self-assured and confident.
Reassure people that they are not a salesperson, but doing research for a deeper purpose.
Dress appropriately.
Be prepared to be flexible with time, finding a time that suits the respondent if first contact isn’t convenient.

Introducing the research

Respondents need to be provided with a rationale explaining the purposes of the research and why they are giving up their time to take part.

The introductory rationale may be written down or spoken. A written rationale may be sent out to prospective respondents in advance of the research taking place, as is the case with those selected to take part in the British Social Attitudes survey. A verbal rationale is used with street-based market research and cold-calling telephone surveys, and may also be repeated during house-to-house surveys.

An effective introductory statement can be crucial in getting respondents to take part.

What should an introductory statement for social research include?

Make clear the identity of the interviewer.
Identify the agency conducting the research, for example a university or business.

Include details of how the research is being funded.
Indicate the purpose of the research in broad terms: what are the overall aims?
Give an indication of the kind of data that will be collected.
Make it clear that participation is voluntary.
Make it clear that data will be anonymised and that the respondent will not be identified in any way, because data will be analysed at an aggregate level.

Provide reassurance about the confidentiality of information.
Give the respondent the opportunity to ask questions.

Establishing rapport in structured interviews

Rapport is what makes the respondent feel that they want to cooperate with the researcher and take part in the research. Without rapport, respondents may either not agree to take part or end the interview halfway through!

Rapport can be established through visual cues of friendliness, such as positive body language, listening and good eye contact.

However, with structured interviews, establishing rapport is a delicate balancing act, as it is crucial for interviewers to be as objective as possible and not get too close to the respondents.

Rapport can be achieved by being friendly with the interviewee, although interviewers shouldn’t take this too far. Too much friendliness can result in the interview taking too long and the interviewee getting bored.

Too much rapport can also result in the respondent providing socially desirable answers.

Asking questions and recording answers

With structured interviews it is important that researchers strive to ask the same questions in the same way to all respondents. They should ask questions exactly as written, in order to minimise error.

Experiments in question wording suggest that even minor variations in wording can influence replies.

Interviewers may be tempted to deviate from the schedule because they feel awkward asking some questions to particular people, but training can help with this and make it more likely that standardisation is kept in place.

Where recording answers is concerned, bias is far less likely with pre-coded answers.

Providing clear instructions

Interviewers need to follow clear instructions through the progress of the interview. This is important if an interview schedule includes filter questions.

Filter questions require the interviewer to ask some questions of some respondents but not others. Filter questions are usually indented on an interview schedule.

For example:

Did you vote in the last general election? YES / NO

1a. (To be asked if respondent answered yes to Q1.) Which of the following political parties did you vote for? Conservatives / Labour / Liberal Democrats / Green Party / Other.

The risk of not following instructions is that the respondent may be asked questions that are irrelevant to them, which may be irritating.

Question order

Researchers should stick to the question order on the schedule.

Leapfrogging questions may result in the skipped questions never being asked, because the researcher could forget to go back to them.

Changing the question order may also lead to variability in replies, because questions asked earlier may affect how respondents answer questions later on in the survey.

Three examples show why question order matters:

People are less likely to say that taxes should be lowered if they are asked questions about government spending beforehand.

In victim surveys, if people are asked about their attitudes to crime first, they are more likely to report that they have been a victim of crime in later questions.
One question in the 1988 British Crime Survey asked: ‘Taking everything into account, would you say the police in this area do a good job or a poor job?’

For all respondents this question appeared early on, but due to an administrative error the question appeared twice in some surveys. Of those who answered the question twice:

66% gave the same response
22% gave a more positive response
12% gave a less positive response.

The fact that only two thirds of respondents gave the same response twice clearly indicates that the effect of question order can be large.

One theory for the change is that the survey was about crime, and as respondents thought in more depth about crime as the interview progressed, 22% felt more favourable to the police and 12% less favourable. This would have varied with their own experiences.

Rules for ordering questions in social surveys

Early questions should be clearly related to the topic of the research, which the respondent has already been told about. This is so the respondent immediately feels that the questions are relevant.

Questions about age, ethnicity, gender and so on should not be asked at the beginning of the interview.
Sensitive questions should be left until later.
With a longer questionnaire, questions should be grouped into sections to break up the interview.
Within each section, general questions should come before specific ones.

Questions about opinions and attitudes should come before questions about behaviour and knowledge. Questions about the latter are less likely to be influenced by question order.
If a respondent has already answered a later question in the course of answering an earlier one, that later question should still be asked.

Probing questions in structured interviews

Probing may be required in structured interviews when:

respondents do not understand the question, and either ask for more information or clearly need it to provide an answer

the respondent does not provide a sufficient answer and needs to be probed for more information.

The problem with the interviewer asking additional probing questions is that they introduce researcher-led variability into the interview context.

Tactics for effective probing in structured interviews:

Use standardised probes. These work well when open-ended answers are required. Examples include ‘Could you say a little more about that?’ or ‘Are there any other reasons why you think that?’

If a response doesn’t fit any of the boxes in a closed-ended survey, the interviewer could repeat the available options.
If the question requires a number rather than something like ‘often’, the interviewer should just persist with asking the question. They shouldn’t try to second-guess a number!

Prompting

Prompting occurs when the interviewer suggests a possible answer to a question to the respondent. This is effectively what happens with a closed-question survey or interview: the options are the prompts. The important thing is that the prompts are the same for all respondents and given in the same way.

During face-to-face interviews there may be times when it is better for researchers to use showcards (or flashcards) to display the answers rather than say them.

Three situations in which showcards are better:

When there is a long list of possible answers. For example, if asking respondents which newspapers they read, it would be easier to show them a list than to read it out!
With Likert scales, ranked 1–5 for example, it is easier to have a showcard with 1–5 for the respondent to point to, rather than reading out ‘1, 2, 3, 4, 5’.

With sensitive details such as income, respondents might feel more comfortable if they are shown income bands with letters attached, so they can just say the letter. This means the respondent doesn’t have to state their income out loud.

Leaving the interview

On leaving the interview, thank the respondent for taking part.

Researchers should not engage in further discussion of the purpose of the research at this point, beyond the standard introductory statement. If they do, this respondent may pass the information on to other respondents who are yet to take part, possibly biasing their responses.

Problems with Structured Interviews

Four problems with structured interviews are:

the characteristics of the interviewer interfering with the results
response sets, which reduce validity (acquiescence and social desirability)
the problem of a lack of shared meaning
the feminist critique of the unequal power relationship between interviewer and respondent.

Interviewer characteristics

The characteristics of the interviewer, such as their gender or ethnicity, may affect the responses a respondent gives. For example, a respondent may be less likely to open up on sensitive issues with someone of a different gender.

Response sets

This is where respondents reply to a series of questions in a consistent way, but one that is irrelevant to the concept being measured.

This is a particular problem when respondents are answering several Likert scale questions in a row.

Two of the most prominent types of response set are acquiescence and social desirability bias.

Acquiescence

Acquiescence refers to a tendency of some respondents to consistently agree or disagree with a set of questions. They may do this because it is quicker for them to get through the interview. This is known as satisficing.

Satisficing is where respondents reduce the amount of effort required to answer a question. They settle for an answer that is satisfactory rather than making the effort to give the most accurate answer.

Examples of satisficing include:

Agreeing with statements, or ‘yea-saying’.
Opting for middle-point answers on scales.
Not considering the full range of answers to closed questions, for example always picking the first or last answer.

The opposite of satisficing is optimising. Optimising is where respondents put in the effort to arrive at the best and most appropriate answer to a question.

It is possible to weed out respondents who satisfice by making sure there is a mix of positively and negatively worded statements in a batch of Likert questions.

For example, you may have a batch of three questions designed to measure attitudes towards Rishi Sunak’s performance as Prime Minister.

If you have two scales where ‘5’ is positive and one where ‘5’ is negative, for example:

Rishi Sunak is an effective leader 1.2.3.4.5
Rishi Sunak has managed the economy well 1.2.3.4.5
Rishi Sunak is NOT to be trusted 1.2.3.4.5

If someone is acquiescing without thinking about their answers, they are likely to circle all 5s, which wouldn’t make sense. Hence we could disregard this response, and maybe even the entire survey from this individual.

Social desirability bias

Socially desirable behaviours and attitudes tend to be over-reported. This can especially be the case for sensitive questions.

Strategies for reducing social desirability bias

Use self-completion forms rather than interviewers. This is exactly what the Crime Survey for England and Wales does for its most sensitive questions.

Soften the question, for example: ‘Even the calmest of car drivers sometimes lose their temper when driving. Has this ever happened to you?’

The problem of meaning

Structured surveys and interviews assume that respondents share the same meanings for terms as the interviewers.

However, from an interpretivist perspective, interviewer and respondent may not share the same meanings. Respondents may be ticking boxes but mean different things to what the interviewer thinks they mean.

The issue of meaning is side-stepped in structured interviews.

The feminist critique of structured interviews

The structure of the interview epitomises the asymmetrical relationship between researcher and respondent. This is a critique made of all quantitative research.

The researcher extracts information from the respondent and gives little or nothing in return.

Interviewers are even advised not to get too familiar with respondents, as giving away too much information may bias the results.

Interviewers should refrain from expressing their opinions, presenting any personal information and engaging in off-topic chatter. All of this is very impersonal.

This means that structured interviews are probably not appropriate for very sensitive topics that need a more personal touch. For example, with domestic violence, unstructured interviews which aim to explore the nature of violence have revealed higher levels of violence than structured interviews such as the Crime Survey for England and Wales.

Ann Oakley: Interviewing Women

The best-known version of this critique comes from the feminist sociologist Ann Oakley, in her chapter ‘Interviewing Women: A Contradiction in Terms?’ (1981), published in Helen Roberts’ collection Doing Feminist Research.

Oakley based her argument on her own experience of interviewing women about becoming mothers, for her Becoming a Mother study in the 1970s. The methods textbooks of the time told interviewers to stay neutral and detached, treating the respondent as nothing more than a source of data. Oakley found that this simply didn’t work with women who were asking her questions back about pregnancy, birth and babies. Refusing to answer would have been both unhelpful and dishonest.

She argued that this ‘textbook’ interview is hierarchical and exploitative. The researcher holds the power and takes information without giving anything in return. For feminist research, she argued, the relationship should instead be non-hierarchical and reciprocal: the researcher should be willing to answer questions, share something of themselves and build a genuine relationship of trust. That is far closer to an unstructured interview than a structured one.

HOWEVER, Oakley herself later revisited the argument in ‘Interviewing Women Again’ (2016). She concluded that the relationship between researcher and researched is more complicated than a simple ‘feminist versus traditional’ split, and that friendship and the idea of research as a ‘gift’ deserve more attention.

Exam Practice: Structured Interviews

The question below could appear on Paper 3 or Paper 1 of the AQA A-level sociology exam, as a ‘pure’ research methods question with no item.

This is a practice question in the AQA format, not a question from a past paper. Try writing your own answer before reading mine – everything you need is in the summary table above.

There are no marks for evaluation on the no-item 10-mark questions. The marks go for knowledge and for developing each point, so spend your time developing two points rather than criticising them.

Question: Outline and Explain Two Problems of Using Structured Interviews in Social Research (10)

Model answer

Firstly, structured interviews are open to interviewer bias. The interviewer is physically present, or at least audible on the phone, so the respondent reacts to who they are and how they ask the questions, not just to the questions themselves. Characteristics such as the interviewer’s gender, ethnicity, age or accent may make respondents more or less willing to answer honestly. For example, a man may be reluctant to admit to a female interviewer that he does little housework. This means that differences in answers might reflect differences between interviewers rather than real differences between respondents, which undermines the validity of the data. If several interviewers are used, they may also ask questions or record answers in slightly different ways, which reduces reliability too.

Secondly, structured interviews can produce socially desirable answers. Because respondents are answering to another person’s face, they may give the answer they think makes them look good rather than the truthful one. They might over-report voting, recycling or giving to charity, and under-report drug use or offending. This is especially a problem for sensitive topics. Positivists value structured interviews because they are standardised, but standardisation can’t stop a respondent choosing to present themselves favourably. This is why large surveys such as the Crime Survey for England and Wales switch to a self-completion section for their most sensitive questions.

KT’s Commentary

This answer does what you need for a no-item 10-marker: two clearly separate problems, each opened with a bold point and then developed in three or four steps, with an example, a link to validity or reliability, and a link to a real survey. There is no evaluation, because there are no marks for it.

The commonest mistake I saw students make on this question was writing about structured interviews as if they were unstructured, or listing problems with all interviews. Make sure your problems come from the fact that the interview is structured, or that there is an interviewer present.

For more examples of theory and methods questions and answers, please see my exams page.

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Sources

Bryman, A. (2016) Social Research Methods (5th edition). Oxford University Press. The ‘in more depth’ sections of this post are adapted from Bryman.
Oakley, A. (1981) ‘Interviewing women: a contradiction in terms?’ In Roberts, H. (ed.) Doing Feminist Research. Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Oakley, A. (2016) ‘Interviewing Women Again: Power, Time and the Gift‘. Sociology, 50(1), pp. 195–213.
Office for National Statistics (2024) Crime Survey for England and Wales, presentation to the UK Data Service Crime Surveys User Conference; and the UK Data Service study descriptions for the CSEW.

Signposting and Related Posts

This post has been written primarily for students studying the research methods module, as part of the AQA’s A-level sociology course.

Structured interviews are one of the two main ways of administering a social survey. The other is the self-completion questionnaire, covered in Questionnaires in Sociology: Strengths and Weaknesses.

For the qualitative alternative, which interpretivists and feminists such as Oakley prefer, see Interviews in Social Research, which focuses mainly on unstructured interviews.

Positivists favour structured interviews. For more on why, see Positivism and Interpretivism in Sociology.

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