Paper 1: Social Psychology (AJW)



Methods: Interviews

Aims:

You need to be able to…

• Describe the use of interviews a research method in psychology

• Identify, describe and apply unstructured, structured and semi-structured

interviews, including open and closed questions

• Describe issues around the design of interview schedules

• Describe and compare, including strengths and weaknesses, the difference between qualitative and quantitative data

• Evaluate the interview as a research method, including strengths and weaknesses, and the issues of reliability, validity and subjectivity

The task: To demonstrate your understanding, please complete the following tasks. You will need to read from your textbook as you go along.

1. In groups of 3-4, decide on a specific aim and hypothesis that you are interested in exploring. This must relate ‘experiences relating to authority and obedience’, you could interview pupils, teachers, your parents, friends from other colleges and schools.

2. You must not interview anyone under 16.

3. Decide whether your interview will be structured, semi-structured or unstructured

4. As a group, develop a set of questions which meet your aim and hypotheses and check these with AJW before creating a final interview schedule. The interviews should be scheduled to last no longer than 3 minutes as you will end up with far too much data to transcribe. Make sure you include some closed and some open questions in order to collect both quantitative and qualitative data

5. Now decide on a standardised script which you are going to use to obtain informed consent and ensure that this contains information that the person must have in advance of giving their consent

6. Create a short guide to interviewing with tips to increase objectivity and reduce interviewer bias and promote active listening (research this on the internet)

7. Ensure that all group members have a copy of the interview schedule and standardised instructions, a voice recorder app to record the interview

8. Each arrange a suitable time and conduct your interviews; you will then need to transcribe the whole interview (that is, write out what was said, line by line; this should be typed and double lined spaced, laid out like a script using initials for each person; this takes a long time so keep the interviews short!)

9. The final aspect we will do in class; this is where you compare your transcripts and generate themes which have arisen from the 3-4 people interviewed about your topic.

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