Structured and Unstructured Interview Questions

Theory 5
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Theory 5
Interview Questions
Interview questions are applied as a data collection tool. They involve verbal communication in which the researcher asks the participants questions to gather relevant information (Gray & Grove, 2021). There are three types of interview questions as follows:
Structured
Structured interviews involve following a predetermined, standardized set of questions (Boswell & Cannon, 2020). Every participant is asked the same set of questions, and the researcher is not allowed to deviate from the predetermined questions. Examples of structured interview questions are:
1 Can you remember a time you experienced fatigue? If yes, was the fatigue highly intense, moderately intense, or lowly intense?
2 Do you think it is important to address nurse fatigue? Yes/No
3 How do you address nurse fatigue? Choose a response from the ones printed out on the card.
These questions are structured interview questions because the participants’ responses are limited. Structured interview questions leave little room for response variation and only provide the participants with a limited range of potential responses (Gray & Grove, 2021; Boswell & Cannon, 2020). In the first part of the question, the participant can only answer yes or no, and if their answer is yes, they can only proceed to describe the intensity in three specific responses. Question 2 also requires a yes or no response, while question 3 asks the participant to choose a response from the ones printed on the card. According to Gray and Grove (2021), using a structured interview format, the researcher provides printed responses when the potential responses are complicated or lengthy. The questions are close-ended.
Semi-structured
In semi-structured interviews, the researcher asks a few predetermined questions and is allowed to ask more questions that were not planned for before the interview (Boswell & Cannon, 2020). This allows the researcher to ask broader questions than when using structured interviews. The researcher usually has a less strict interview guide. Examples of semi-structured questions include:
1 Describe a time you experience nurse work-related fatigue in nursing. What were the consequences?
2 How important do you think it is to address nurse fatigue and why?
3 Give me examples of how you address nurse fatigue.
Each of the questions above is a semi-structured interview question because they all provide the researcher with room to ask follow-up questions. They also allow the participant more room to explain their responses since there are no restrictions on the range of responses that they can give (Boswell & Cannon, 2020). Also, the researcher can ask some unplanned questions to gain clarity on the responses.
Unstructured
In unstructured interviews, the researcher asks open-ended questions that are not predetermined. The questions are informal and allow the researcher to ask broad questions (Gray & Grove, 2021). Examples include:
1 Can you tell me something about nurse fatigue?
2 Why do you think nurse fatigue is such a serious issue in nursing?
3 You said that nurse fatigue should be addressed by both nurses and ...