The Interview in Sociology and Journalism

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses in detail the methodology by which the interview is used to collect precise data. The author believes that, both in sociology and in journalism, the dynamics of interviewing should be properly understood to improve the effectiveness of data gathering. The author states that a key difference is that, in a sociological interview, the question should not be either loaded or biased; whereas, in journalism, it can be biased for a provocation of response. The author concludes that the journalist has much to learn from the sociologist.

From the Paper:

"Each type of an interview is designed with a particular task in mind. The non-standardized type is most suitably used in exploratory studies where little is known about the topic. This way a small group may be interviewed quite informally with an intention of gaining useful guidance for the construction of more profound interviews. But there is a limit to which such interviews can be used with larger samples, since they may consume much time and money. Therefore, where large samples are necessary in sociology, the structured interviews provide a number of advantages, as they are cheaper in money and time and easier to process. The potentially quantitative form of standardized interviews makes them useful in hypothesis testing, (that is, checking the validity of initial assumptions in journalism)."

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