Available under Creative Commons-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Conducting an interview in person is certainly the preferred method for communicators, whether they are interviewing for a news story or conducting focus groups.
Advantages of face-to-face interviews:
- Picking up clues about the person, beyond what they say (tone of voice, body language)
- Holding the interview in the interviewee’s “space” allows you to observe their environment, giving clues about the person and providing “color” for the story
- Interviewee can be recorded
- Longer, more complex question strategy can be used
- Interviewee can respond to visual images or objects
- Non-verbal responses to questions or displayed objects can be part of the information gathered
- Interviews can be edited but still maintain the feel of a live interview
Disadvantages:
- Labor and transportation costs for the interviewers’ training and travel to and from the respondents’ locations can be high
- Interviewees can be reluctant to allow strangers into their homes or offices
- Interviewer’s appearance, age, race, sex, dress, or nonverbal behavior may affect respondents’ answers to survey questions
- 841 reads
