Semistructured Interview

Logic and Underpinnings of Semistructured Interviewing

Semistructured interviewing is most closely associated with interpretivist, interactionist, constructionist, feminist, psychoanalytic, and oral or life history traditions in the social sciences. It reflects an ontological position that is concerned with people's knowledge, understandings, interpretations, experiences, and interactions. Elements of the different traditions can be identified in contemporary semistructured interviewing practice, which Jennifer Mason suggests is broadly characterized by the interactional exchange of dialogue; a relatively informal style; a thematic, topic-centered, biographical, or narrative approach; and the belief that knowledge is situated and contextual, and that therefore the role of the interview is to ensure that relevant contexts are brought into focus so that situated knowledge can be produced (Mason, 2002, p. 62).

Most commentators agree that the logic of semistructured interviewing is to generate data interactively, and Steinar Kvale has described qualitative research interviews as “a construction site of knowledge” (Kvale, 1996, p. 2). This means that the interviewer, and not just the interviewee, is seen to have an active, reflexive, and constitutive role in the process of knowledge construction. Data are thus seen to be derived from the interaction between interviewer and interviewee, and it is that interaction, rather than simply the “answers” given by the interviewee, that should be analyzed.

The relatively open, flexible, and interactive approach to interview structure is generally intended to generate interviewees' accounts of their own perspectives, perceptions, experiences, understandings, interpretations, and interactions. A more standardized and structured approach might overly impose the researcher's own framework of meaning and understanding onto the consequent data. It might also risk overlooking events and experiences that are important from the interviewees' point of view, that are relevant to the research but have not been anticipated, or that are particular to interviewees' own biographies or ways of perceiving. However, some form of aide memoire or interview guide is usually used by the interviewer to ensure that the interview addresses themes identified in advance as relevant to the research.

Semistructured interviewing sometimes implies a particular approach to research ethics, whereby the power relationship between interviewer and interviewee is equalized as much as possible, and where the interviewee gets plenty of opportunity to tell his or her story in his or her own way. Although this might make semistructured interviewing appear to be more ethical than standardized and structured methods, it is also recognized that the data generated can be very personal and sensitive, especially where they have emerged in a relationship of trust and close rapport between interviewer and interviewee. Therefore, questions of confidentiality and ethics are not straight forward in this context.

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