Asses the strengths and limitations of unstructured interviews for the study of boys underachievement at school

Unstructured interviews have advantages and disadvantages and as a qualitative method they are expressed through words and relay people’s thoughts, feelings and motivations. Unstructured interviews are interviews that don’t have certain questions meaning it’s more free and relaxed. They give us a deep understanding of the interviewee’s world because we can use the answers they give to shape our questions so that they are appropriate and relevant. However, using unstructured interviews can also cause problems, for example they take a long time to conduct. When looking at the advantages and disadvantages we need to look at how this effects what we are trying to research boys underachievement at school as this will affect whether the advantages and limitations are relevant to the study.

A few advantages of using unstructured interviews when studying the underachievement of boys are that the informality of the interview allows the interviewer to gain the trust of the interviewee which is important in this example. Boys at school will not feel comfortable explaining their time at school and why they do/don’t enjoy school if the interviewer is very formal and makes them feel intimidated whereas by using an unstructured interview it allows the boys being interviewed and the interviewee feel more comfortable around each other meaning the boys will be more open and truthful allowing the researcher to gain more and to collect more accurate and in depth data. Another advantage of using this method when researching boys underachievement at school is that because there are no set questions the interviewer can ask questions that they feel are important and will get the most valuable and informative answers which means the data collected will be more valuable. It