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The first part of a larger study into organisations’ use of structured interviewing techniques. Discusses reasons for continued popularity of interviewing in selection, despite its shortcomings. Considers the use of two structured interviewing techniques to improve selection: behavioural and situational questioning. Presents the findings of a large scale survey of UK organisations’ use of these techniques. The use of structured interviewing is rapidly increasing and is used by all sizes of organisation. Behavioural interviewing is being used more than situational interviewing, and many respondents use both techniques. Structured techniques are most commonly used for management posts. Discusses links with competency based HRM and roles of line managers and HR specialists in selection. Areas for further research are outlined.

Despite the growing pressure to encourage new ways of thinking about research methodology, only recently have interview methodologists begun to realize that “we cannot lift the results of interviewing out of the contexts in which they were gathered and claim them as objective data with no strings attached”. The purpose of this paper is to provide additional insight based on a critical reflection of the interview as a research method drawing upon Alvesson's discussion from the neopositivist, romanticist and localist interview perspectives. Specifically, the authors focus on critical reflections of three broad categories of a continuum of interview methods: structured, semi‐structured and unstructured interviews.

The authors adopt a critical and reflexive approach to understanding the literature on interviews to develop alternative insights about the use of interviews as a qualitative research method.

After examining the neopositivist (interview as a “tool”) and romanticist (interview as “human encounter”) perspectives on the use of the research interview, the authors adopt a localist perspective towards interviews and argue that the localist approach opens up alternative understanding of the interview process and the accounts produced provide additional insights. The insights are used to outline the skills researchers need to develop in applying the localist perspective to interviews.

The paper provides an alternative perspective on the practice of conducting interviews, recognizing interviews as complex social and organizational phenomena rather than just a research method.

In this chapter, we present semi-structured interviewing as an adaptable method useful in bioethics research to gather data for issues of concern to researchers in the field. We discuss the theory and practice behind developing the interview guide, the logistics of managing a semi-structured interview-based research project, developing and applying a codebook, and data analysis. Throughout the chapter we use examples from empirical bioethics literature.

Notes that many authors have supported the value of integrating qualitative and quantitative approaches within a research design to address research questions that aim both to develop or extend theory and test its application. Presents research which explores two alternative approaches to conducting qualitative interviews within an integrated research method. Aims to determine how those different approaches can enhance the design of the quantitative component of the research, and contribute to the interpretation of the quantitative data. Concludes that the findings indicate the importance of adopting both qualitative interview techniques within this combined approach, while completing a comprehensive review of the literature. Suggests that this will develop a theoretical framework and quantitative design, and assist in the interpretation of the quantitative data. The qualitative components of two outshopping studies, each study having a combined qualitative/quantitative research design, were selected to illustrate the nature of the data produced through each qualitative interviewing technique and the contribution of the data to the interpretation of the quantitative findings.

This study applied Job Descriptive Index (JDI) to measure job attitudes among approximately 80 employees of four different small businesses. Through a standardized procedure, each employee filled out the survey form, responded to a structured interview, and then completed the survey form again. Employees showed significant difference in job satisfaction before and after the structured interview. Medians from four dimensions – work, supervision, promotion, and co‐worker – were found to besimilar to norms but the medians of pay were much lower than the norm. Nevertheless, pay did not represent the lowest correlation with job satisfaction. Satisfaction at supervision did. Also employees reported work to have the highest correlation with job satisfaction. Demographic factors, such as age, work status, gender, and seniority did not show significant impact over job satisfaction.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how individual interviewers’ dispositional cognitive motivations may influence interview interactions and outcomes. More specifically, this study explores the influence of the need for cognition, need for cognitive closure, and accountability on the relationship between first impressions and selection decisions.

In total, 41 graduate students were assigned the role of interviewers and were tasked to interview 331 undergraduate students at a large Midwestern university. The selection interview was designed to recruit qualified undergraduate students to the MBA program of the university.

First impressions significantly influenced selection decisions, but did not influence interviewers’ behaviors. Moreover, multilevel analyses reveal that interviewers’ need for cognition and accountability moderate the relationship between first impression and selection decisions, albeit in different direction. Need for cognition strengthens, whereas accountability weakens the relationship between first impression and selection decision.

A potential interviewer bias is apparent, where interviewers high on need for cognition tend to weight first impressions more in the decision process. However, this bias was not directly observable, since interviewers’ behaviors during the interview were not affected by first impressions.

The present study goes beyond previous research on first impressions in the employment interview, finding that dispositional differences account for the tendency to weigh first impressions in the selection decision.

Data for research studies are often gathered by using questionnaires. These data will be enhanced by interviewing a sample of the respondents. Inexperienced thesis and dissertation writers can meet with difficulties which are beyond their competence in the interview stage. A solution to this problem is described. Relevant literature was perused in the hope that guidance would be found in dealing with lack of expertise in interviewing, and at the same time, encourage the beginner to undertake the task. The suggested solution, derived from the literature, was the use of semi‐structured interviews.

Two ideal types of data can be distinguished in housing research: structured and less-structured data. Questionnaires and official statistics are examples of structured data, while less-structured data arise for instance from open interviews and documents. Structured data are sometimes labelled quantitative, while less-structured data are called qualitative. In this paper structured and less-structured data are considered from the perspective of measurement and analysis. Structured data arise when the researcher has an a priori category system or measurement scale available for collecting the data. When such an a priori system or scale is not available the data are called less-structured. It will be argued that these less-structured observations can only be used for any further analysis when they contain some minimum level of structure called a category system, which is equivalent to a nominal measurement scale. Once this becomes evident, one realizes that through the necessary process of categorization less-structured data can be analyzed in much the same way as structured data, and that the difference between the two types of data is one of degree and not of kind. In the second part of the paper these ideas are illustrated with examples from my own research on the meaning of preferences for dwelling features in which the concept of a meaning structure plays a central part. Until now these meaning structures have been determined by means of semi-structured interviews which, even with small samples, result in large amounts of less-structured data.