Give one strength and one weakness of a semi-structured interview.

Semi-structured interviews combine comparable core questions with the freedom to explore interesting answers. Interviews differ between people, making them harder to compare and replicate.

What is an unstructured interview?

An unstructured interview is like a conversation with no fixed questions. The interviewer follows the participant's answers from a general starting topic.

Give one strength and one weakness of an unstructured interview.

Unstructured interviews produce rich, detailed qualitative data from the participant's own point of view. Unstructured interviews are hard to replicate and analyse, and interviewer bias is more likely.

Edexcel GCSE Psychology 1PS0

Development

Topic overview Early brain development Piaget's theory of cognitive development Dweck's mindset theory and Willingham's learning theory The three mountains task and Gunderson's praise study The development of morality

Memory

Topic overview Information processing, duration and capacity Retrograde and anterograde amnesia Bartlett's theory of reconstructive memory The multi-store model, reductionism and holism War of the Ghosts and the Peterson and Peterson study

Psychological Problems

Topic overview Symptoms of depression and addiction Incidence and effects of mental health problems Explaining depression Explaining addiction Treating depression and addiction Key studies and the nature–nurture debate

The Brain and Neuropsychology

Topic overview Lobes of the brain and the effects of damage Lateralisation and Sperry's split-brain study Neurons, synapses and the central nervous system Phineas Gage and how brain research has changed

Social Influence

Topic overview Conformity to majority influence Obedience to authority Bystander intervention Crowd behaviour, society and culture Piliavin's subway study and the Stanford prison study

Criminal PsychologyOptional topic

Topic overview Operant conditioning and social learning explanations of crime Eysenck's criminal personality theory Punishment, recidivism and rehabilitation Bandura's Bobo doll study and Charlton's St Helena study

The SelfOptional topic

Topic overview Self-concept and influences on self-esteem Erikson's identity stages and belief in free will Rogers' and Maslow's humanistic theory Measuring personality and trait theory Vohs and Schooler's cheating study and Van Houtte and Jarvis's pet study

PerceptionOptional topic

Topic overview Depth cues, visual illusions and constancies Gibson's direct theory and Gregory's constructivist theory Perceptual set The Haber and Levin and Carmichael studies

Sleep and DreamingOptional topic

Topic overview Sleep stages and the sleep cycle Influences on sleep and sleep disorders Freud's theory of dreaming and activation synthesis theory Freud's Little Hans and Siffre's cave study

Language, Thought and CommunicationOptional topic

Topic overview Piaget and Vygotsky on language and thought Linguistic relativism and determinism Human and animal communication Non-verbal communication and Darwin's evolutionary theory The Yuki and Boroditsky studies

Research Methods

Topic overview Variables, hypotheses and controls Sampling methods Experiments and experimental designs Interviews, questionnaires and types of data Correlations, case studies and observations Ethical issues in psychological research Evaluating studies and the core areas of psychology Averages, calculations and graphs

Research Methods

Interviews, questionnaires and types of data

3 things to know
Papers 1 and 2

Overview

Structured, semi-structured and unstructured interviews, open and closed questions, quantitative and qualitative data, and primary and secondary data.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Your recallNot started

Key term

What is a structured interview?

Evaluation

Give one strength and one weakness of a structured interview.

Key term

What is a semi-structured interview?

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1
What is a structured interview?
Model answer
A structured interview uses a fixed set of pre-written questions asked in the same order to everyone. The interviewer does not add or change questions.
2
Give one strength and one weakness of a structured interview.
Model answer
Structured interviews are easy to repeat and compare, so they are highly reliable. Answers cannot be followed up, so useful detail may be lost.
3
What is a semi-structured interview?
Model answer
A semi-structured interview has some set questions, but the interviewer can add follow-up questions depending on the answers.
4
Give one strength and one weakness of a semi-structured interview.
Model answer
Semi-structured interviews combine comparable core questions with the freedom to explore interesting answers. Interviews differ between people, making them harder to compare and replicate.
5
What is an unstructured interview?
Model answer
An unstructured interview is like a conversation with no fixed questions. The interviewer follows the participant's answers from a general starting topic.
6
Give one strength and one weakness of an unstructured interview.
Model answer
Unstructured interviews produce rich, detailed qualitative data from the participant's own point of view. Unstructured interviews are hard to replicate and analyse, and interviewer bias is more likely.

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Development

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Psychological Problems

The Brain and Neuropsychology

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