Open-Ended Interviews as a Qualitative Research Technique

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Seidman (2012) describes the root of in - depth interviewing as “an interest in understanding the lived experience of other people and the meaning they make of that experience.” The research method of interviewing has become a widely used technique for gathering different forms of methodical information about individuals in the social world. Interviews can be performed using one of two basic structures known as structured (closed questions) or unstructured (open questions). They can be framed in such a way by the researcher to retrieve the desired information from the respondent.
Open -ended Interviews is a qualitative research technique, which involves conducting interviews with either an individual or a small number of participants. The strategy is administered by the researcher to explore unique perspectives of participants on a particular topic area that is being investigated. For example, the researcher may ask participants about their experiences and expectations related to the topic area and their thoughts they have concerning the subject matter (Boyce and Neale 2006).
The appeal of this research method is that it can provide a detailed description from the respondent, whilst being cost effective for the researcher.

They allow individuals to communicate more than just standardised responses; it grants the researcher to see the true perspective of the interviewee and elicits more honest responses (Erickson & Kaplan 2000).
This is because open questions are phrased in a specific way that prevents simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answers. An example of an open question is;
“What do you think about modern consumer culture?”
The researcher should ensure that the questions given are not ‘leading’ or ‘directing’ a...

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