Essay: Life after prison-Semi-structured interviews

Sample Essay

The decision to use semi-structured interviews was cultivated by the fact that these kind of interviews ‘allow both respondent and the interviewer to engage in a formal dialogue which is more effective in extracting data’ (Silverman, 2004, p.14). Developing an interview guide is well embraced by this method therefore ensuring all topics targeted by this research are addressed in the interview questions. Diversion from the real topic refreshes the respondents and therefore eliminating any probability of making the interview boring.

3.1 Descriptive question

Just as its name implies, this method of questioning relies of a description given to a respondent who is also expected to participate by describing a situation. This method also provides room for ‘exhaustive data collection especially when there is little time for interview’ (Denzin & Lincoln, 2003, p. 104). In case one is doing it solo, it gives the same advantage by allowing the researcher visit several respondents within a short period. Descriptive questions gave the opportunity to understand the topic better as observation, unstructured, and informal interviewing preceded it. The provision by this method to Descriptive question helped much in deriving better methods of approaching the exercise and correcting any forms of diversions that went astray from the research topic.

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