1. Starter
What are the strengths/weaknesses of questionnaires in sociological research?
Recap your knowledge using page 7 of your booklet.

3. PERVERT Practical Quick and cheap
Easier than asking parents to attend interviews
Hard to stop parents discussing issues
Hard to overcome problems if parent’s don’t understand
Low response rate can cause issues
Ethical
+ useful for sensitive issues e.g maternal deprivation because parents/students are more likely to be truthful than in an interview
Ethical issues with students taking part
Sensitive topic – could cause distress to parents and students
Confidentiality needs to be kept
Reliability
+ easy to repeat due to standardised questions
+ differences in answers mean real differences between respondents
+ questionnaires remove risk of researcher influencing questions
Open questions are harder to standardise

4. Validity
+ may be more truthful than face to face, especially due to the nature of the topic
Doesn’t produce a valid picture
Social desirability bias
Closed questions don’t enable respondents to clarify
Lie/exaggerate
Evidence
Rutter – questionnaires to collect large amounts of data from 12 inner city London schools, able to correlate achievement which wouldn’t be possible using other research methods
Ciroucel = interpretivism doesn’t give a true picture we need to get close to the subject
Representativeness
+ can collect from a large number
+ easy and cheap way to collect from a large sample
May not represent all groups
Untypical parents/students

9. MIC Lesson 3 Interviews Objectives:
To recap on the strengths and limitations of Interviews
To apply this knowledge to the study of education
To plan an answer to a MIC question

19. TASK pg
In your booklet on page 13 complete your knowledge of interviews to education.

20. Interviews – Practical Issues
Young interviewees may:
Be less articulate or reluctant to talk
Not understand long, complex, questions or some abstract ideas
Limited vocab and use words incorrectly e.g slang
Have a shorter attention span and memory retrieval than adults
Read body language differently from adults

21. Practical issues linguistic and intellectual skills of the pupils
Can lead to misunderstandings and incorrect or incomplete answers – leading to problems with validity of the data
Unstructured interviews may be more suitable than structured ones, since they allow the interviewer to clear up any misunderstandings
Unstructured interviews can cause problems though, especially with students and keeping to the point
Interview may be better though, than a questionnaire as children tend to have better verbal skills

22. Practical issues linguistic and intellectual skills of the pupils
Location can also be an issue…
On school premises, could affect how comfortable the pupil or parent feels
Classrooms and schools often feel like they are a place of higher authority which could be off-putting for some parents or students
Teachers may also be put off with colleagues or students hearing the interview if it is conducted at a school

23. What are the problems with unstructured interviews?
Refer to your booklet if you need to…
Hints…
Training:
Interpersonal skills:
Time and sample size:

24. Access and response rate…
Problems with gaining permission (students = parents) (teachers = head teacher)
Schools may be reluctant to allow sociologists to conduct interviews during lesson time due to disruption or the topic chosen
Problems conducting interviews after school hours either at home or school
Problems gaining parental permission e.g sensitive topics
- field’s (1987) study of pupils experience of sex and health education in schools had a high refusal rate of 29% due to parental consent

25. Problems with status and hierarchy…
You seem like you could be a teacher in disguise….
‘I’m not telling the truth, I might exaggerate or hide information”
Does this question the validity or reliability of the research?

26. Improving the validity of interviews
Greene & Hogan (2005)…
Use open-ended rather than close-ended questions
Not interrupt children’s answers
Tolerate long pauses to allow children to think about what they want to say
Recognise that children are more suggestible therefore it is important to avoid asking leading questions
Avoid repeating questions, this makes children change their first answer because they think it was wrong

27. Group interviews
What are the strengths/limitations of conducting group interviews?

28. Group interviews
Young people are strongly influenced by peer pressure reducing the validity of the data gathered
E.g very difficult to interview peer groups in a group!
Impossible to standardise, reducing reliability
Safe peer environment and reproduce the small group settings that young people are familiar with in classrooms
Peer support reduces the imbalance between adult interviewer and young interviewee found in interviews
Can reveal interactions between pupils

29. Planning a question!
Step 1: read and highlight the item Which group in education are we researching? Step 2: fill in the table – you may want to start at the beginning of the booklet (page 5) to look at generic issues with using parents. Step 3: work through each step for strengths and weaknesses.