Structured interviews
Same questions, controlled delivery
Structured interviews use a predetermined question order, wording and response protocol to improve comparability across respondents. Answers may be closed categories or open text scored against a rubric. Standardisation can concern delivery, probing and scoring separately. Employment selection interviews offer useful design lessons, but a hiring instrument is not automatically a valid research questionnaire.
Choose this when comparable responses are central and the concepts and response options are already sufficiently clear. Plan interviewer training and pilot whether participants interpret the questions consistently.
Strengths
- Comparable prompts reduce avoidable interviewer variation
- Standardised scoring can support systematic comparison
Limitations
- Fixed prompts can miss unexpected meanings
- Uniform wording does not guarantee uniform interpretation
Know the boundary
A structured interview is a collection format, not a sampling strategy or guarantee of unbiased answers.