Assess the strengths and limitations of using unstructured interviews as a means of investigating the public’s perceptions of crime and fear of crime. (15 marks)

Unstructured interviews give the freedom to vary the interview. There are no questions prepared beforehand, the interviewers asks questions from the flow of the answers given by interviewees. This type of research method produces qualitative data, that is rich and in detail piece of research. Data gained from unstructured interviews are recorded by looking for categories from the answers given from interviewees and tallying each time the category occurs.

Investigating public’s perception of crime is a difficult sample to investigate using unstructured interviews. In the investigation the researcher must ensure that the findings from the sample will be able to generalise and being able to have access too such sample could be very difficult for the researcher. During the interview it is essential that the interviewer has the skills and techniques required to be able to build the rapport with the interviewee.Therefore before the research is conducted the interviewer must go through training to learn the essential tips regarding the method of research they have chosen. However, training could be expensive and this may be a problem for the researcher. Age is not an issue during this research as the target audience is the public, therefore all age groups are targeted. However, children would not be able to participate in an interview due to the topic of research. Although, when studying young adolescents attitude to crime and fear of crime individuals must consider the language used because if the vocabulary is elaborated some may find it difficult to comprehend the questions.

Gender is also not so important during this research because it is the public’s perceptions of crime.
However, if the interviewer and the interviewee are the opposite gender this could impact their behaviour and their approach to fear of crime because they may try to show themselves in a positive light. Ethnicity of the interviewee and interviewer is also very significant. If the researcher believes that the interviewer is being racist due to their ethnicity they may answer questions with an attitude.
Unstructured interviews are very time consuming. This is because the answers are not pre-set, they are asked as the interview is conducted. Also, the answer given by the participant is not limited to multiple choice answers. The interviewer must listen and record every little detail and answer given by the interviewee.

Before any research, the interviewer must be gain informed consent from the participant. The participant must be informed about the procedure and the purpose of the research.
Confidentiality is important during this research.The interviewed participants names and personal details must be kept confidential, no information regarding the participant should be published into the public because this could put them in danger.
With unstructured interviews as a method of researching crime, protection of participants and research is one issue that must be addressed. The participants may give the interviewer guilty knowledge regarding criminal acts, therefore this could potentially put the interviewee in trouble and danger. Additionally, the sociological research would be cancelled and the data gathered would not be published to the general public.
When interviewer is researching young adolescents they must take into account that they are vulnerable group of individuals, therefore psychological consequences of the research must be considered and no harm should be placed on the interviewer. Females are also regarded as a vulnerable group, this is especially true for the case of fear of crime. Therefore, researchers must be able to understand the meanings and definitions the females give to their thoughts and beliefs.
The research is overt and therefore the participants are not deceived during the research.

Unstructured interviews are not seen as being reliable because they do not use standardised methods. Every interview conducted by an individual is unique, and the questions are relevant to that specific individual and their answers. The questions have not been made up and so different questions are asked to each interviewee. This makes it difficult for the researcher to repeat the interview, making results unreliable.

Unstructured interviews are regarded as valid because the informality of the interviewer allows them to develop a rapport with the public and as a result this would ease and encourage them to open up and get a valid image of people’s perception of criminal activity. Unstructured interviews make it so much easier for the interviewee and the interviewer to check they have understood each other’s meanings. For example, if an individual explains their fears and the interviewer perceives their explanation differently, the interviewee can easily explain and express their thoughts. Furthermore, the interviewer is not restricted to a fixed set of questions, but can explore whatever seems interesting. This is an advantage because if the interviewees describe their thoughts in a different way to what the interviewer had predicted in the beginning, they can change their hypothesis from what their new findings are about the public’s fear of crime.

For example Ditton et al (2000) used qualitative interviews with open ended questions to explore people’s feelings about crime. They argue that previous attempts to measure ‘fear of crime’ using quantitative methods were imposing the researchers own concerns on the respondents.
The results of the interviews suggested that anger rather than fear was the main concern people had about crime. Qualitative or unstructured interviews can produce valid data through exploring people feelings and meanings, but they generally involve small samples making it difficult for representativeness. For this reason, Ditton et al constructed a questionnaire that they distributed to 1600 Scottish households to test their findings.

Unstructured interviews are not representative. This is because due to the time consuming method, the sample used in unstructured interviews tends to be very small. Therefore, the findings are not generalisable to the general public because the researcher has not selected a sample size and sample frame necessarily will demonstrate the publics views on crime and fear of crime.

Feminists favour unstructured interviews as the questions are not pre-planned such as by the government where they have a patriarchal system. The questions that are asked by them are usually oppressing women therefore not suitable, however due to the interviewers being females this minimises this issue. Furthermore, feminists such as Oakley and Graham argue that sociologists should use methods that allow the researcher to understand women’s experience and viewpoint. They favour unstructured methods, as they think women should only be studied by other women because they can be empathetic towards each other and so to avoid male gaze.
Positivist such as Durkheim regards sociology as a science. They argue human behaviour is patterned because groups of people have very similar actions. They don’t favour unstructured interviews as they don’t produce correlations and cannot look at cause and effect. Due to unstructured interviews not being able to be look for cause and effect patterns, they also cannot be testable which they prefer.
Interpretivists on the other hand, disagree with positivists as they argue that human behaviour is not the result of society or social facts but people make their own choices based on free will.
According to Interpretivists, when we interact we are constantly interpreting our own behaviour and that of others. Interpretivists such as Douglas, look for meanings to actions. Interpretivists therefore favour unstructured interviews as they produce qualitative and rich meaningful data.
Realist favour triangulation which involves both quantitative and qualitative data, and combines them together. The strength of one is the weakness of the other. Therefore in order to balance the method used, they combine both research. However, triangulation can be expensive and could be time consuming from the large amounts of data obtained.
Post-modernists such as Usher believe that no such research is effective enough to study society as its fragmented. They criticise all the perspectives who claim they have the truth and able to offer solutions. Each perspective has one version of the truth but cannot be absolute truth. All perspective is seen as being meta-narratives and meta-narratives are now dead. However, postmodernists are also meta-narratives. Therefore by dismissing other perspectives they also dismiss themselves.