Data Collection Pros
o Rich, detailed data
o Interviews o Flexible
o Focus groups o Requires smaller samples
o Qualitative Surveys o Good for sensitive topics
o Story Completion Tasks o Researcher has control over data
o Vignettes
o Diaries, letters, photos, other personal
documents Cons
o Official documents; policies o Time consuming for researchers and
o Mass media texts and documents participants
o Lack of breadth
o Virtual
o Lack of anonymity
o Creative methods: Drawing, mapping,
o Not ‘empowering’ for participants –
taking photographs, etc
they have less control over the data
Interviews
Types of Interviews
Provide a detailed insight into the
experiences and perspectives of Distinction between:
individuals (or couples/pairs of people) structured
semi-structured
90% of social science research uses unstructured
interviews (Briggs, 1986)
Psychologists are ‘wedded’ to Can also be telephone, online or via email
interviews (Wetherell, 2001)
The goal of an interview is to get Interview guides/schedules
participants to speak about
Producing a schedule beforehand forces
their thoughts and feelings you to think explicitly about what you
their experience of the world think/hope the interview might cover
how they account for and explain
particular phenomena o Enables you to think of difficulties that
might be encountered
‘a conversation with a purpose’ o Consider question wording or sensitive
(Briggs, 1986) areas
o Give some thought to how these
‘professional conversation’ difficulties might be handled
(Kvale, 1996) o Funnelling – move from the general to
the specific
Think about the order of
sensitive/hard/difficult
questions in particular
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