Each of the three interview instruments (i.e. unstructured, critical incident, and semi-structure) have their own strengths. An unstructured interview allows for the discovery of topics that the interviewer might not conceive of on their own. For example I asked about online video viewing habits but had not thought about the primary language of the video shaping the choice of website. I found that this technique was the easiest for me to keep the interviewee talking for the allotted time. A factor that allows this to occur is that the specifics of the topic are controlled by the interviewee. This makes sense since the interviewee is most likely not to choose a direction that is of little interest to themselves.
I found the example driven element of the critical incident interview to be helpful in discovering details. This instrument provides a storytelling aspect that brings the topic to a more concrete example that encourages talking about behaviors in a situation rather than a more conceptual approach on how someone looks for videos. For example, I found that someone watched the same video 4 times in a row. This aspect of watching a video multiple consecutive times did not occur to me even though I engage in this very behavior myself.
The semi-structure interview was the most difficult. My troubles started with the formulating of the questions. I found that I am most comfortable with quantitative question forms. These are the type of questions that illicit yes/no, a category, or some point on a Likert scale. Thankfully I was provided an example, this allowed me to imitate the form and insert my chosen topic. Even with the more open-ended form I found it hard to keep the interviewee talking. My question writing is probably not to blame since it was the last interview round. My interviewee and I were showing signs of fatigue and starting to mentally move towards the next part of class.
In general, I found this activity gave me a taste of what is involved in interviewing that I would not necessarily understand from reading a chapter in a book. Many sources stress the need to take notes immediately after the interview. As demonstrated in class, many of us did not want to take the time for note taking and jumped into the next interview.