Assess the strengths and limitations of using an unstructured interview for investigating Ethnic differences in the use of health care services.
One of the big limitations of using an unstructured interview in to investigating ethnic differences in the use of health care services is the language barrier that may arise from the interviewee’s being of an ethnic background. This is due to the possibility of English not being their first language so they might not be able to understand the question or they might not understand English at all, and in that case then the only way to get over this problem is by using a translator to translate the questions and what the candidate is saying.
Another problem that could arise from using an unstructured interview is that the interviewee might not understand the question. This could be a problem as they might not understand what you’re trying to ask them, and then give you an answer for something different. You could get around this problem by re-phrasing the question, this could also be seen as a strength of an unstructured interview, as in a structured interview you can’t really change the question; you have set questions to ask the interviewee, with little flexibility of the questions.
Another limitation of an unstructured interview is that the interview might have strong feelings about the topic or about the person they are interviewing. This would allow the interviewer to reveal his own prejudice through the questions, which could make the interviewee feel uncomfortable and make them answer the questions differently. On the other hand if they were using a structured interview it wouldn’t affect the interview as the questions are the same for each candidate.
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