Kendra Simon

2013-unit 1 paper 2
You are conducting research on violence and indiscipline in schools in your country discuss
the advantages and disadvantages of using each of the following qualitative research methods
as alternatives to quantitative research methods in your study:
 Unstructured interview
 participant observations
Quantitative data can be demonstrated in numerical form as percentages, tables, means and
medians, which is descriptive statistics. Data can be collected by using primary and
secondary sources in the form of questionnaires, structured interviews and other official
statistics. Whereas, qualitative data are used by the interpretivist and social science
approaches. It provides thick and rich data, more in-depth and detailed, data are collected
using primary and secondary sources for example unstructured interviews, participant
observation, and documents.
What are unstructured interviews? Unstructured interviews are interviews with open
questions where the interviewer would ask the question based on what was previous said by
the interviewee. Questions are rarely closed, and the interviewer can easily follow up on
inconsistencies. Some advantages of unstructured interviews are; it is very flexible whereby
the interviewer can ask a series of question in different ways or style, open – persons are able
to speak their mind or thoughts freely and lastly, unconstrained by interviewer’s pre-existing
mindset - it is not restricted or limited in any way. Let's discuss some disadvantages, some of
disadvantages of unstructured interviews are; it can be time consuming this is so because the
interviewer would have to sit down and take their time to interview the interviewee this can
be very long which will take up a lot of time, collects a large volume of data - a large amount
of data means a lot of analyzing and interpreting which can be both negative and positive but
negative in the way that persons will take a lot of time analyzing and interpreting and lastly,
lack of credibility/validity which means the information being received is not valid it's just an
opinion of what a person may think.
What is participant observation? This is where the researcher directly observes the
respondents in a study where it can be overt- meaning that the respondents are aware of the
researcher’s presence or covert meaning that the respondents are unaware of the researcher’s
presence. Some advantages of participant observation are; collects useful data about specific
groups - here the researcher/researchers are taking their time to observe a particular group of
people for some time, provides direct information -this means that the information is directly
collected by the researcher and has not been passed through from anyone else and lastly see
people in natural settings - this way the researcher can know a truth about a particular person
or group of persons. Now, some disadvantages are; can be harmful to the researchers
especially if covert - this meaning that if the researchers are investigating persons without
their permission and the person finds out the persons or person may take negative actions or
probably sue the researcher. If overt, the researchers may require diligent participants
meaning that the participants will have to be dedicated and show care and responsibility for
the researchers to collect valuable data and lastly it can be challenging to collect information
while participating this means that the researchers are most likely going to be in disguise so
they would have to act as the particular group that they're investigating while trying to collect
information on that same particular group.
In summary, while both unstructured interviews and participant observations offer valuable
insights into violence and indiscipline in schools, researchers must carefully consider the
advantages and disadvantages of each method and select the approach that best aligns with
their research goals, resources, and ethical considerations. Integrating multiple qualitative
methods or combining qualitative and quantitative approaches can further enhance the
comprehensiveness and validity of the research findings.