Semi-Structured Interviews
Semi-structured interviews usually confirm theoretical research findings and apply hypothetical and academic results (in economics, business, medicine, etc.) to a specific group of people, institution, or company. In the content of such interviews, it is usually easy to include a theoretical basis to ask a broad question to the interviewee. However, such discussions require serious preparation from the interviewer in advance because a “Qualitative semi-structured interview guide contributes to the objectivity and trustworthiness of studies and makes the results more plausible” (Kallio et al., 2016, p. 2963). The researcher should bring any printed or electronic material to the interview to help you navigate the conversation and cover all the required topics. In addition, you should prepare yourself for specific difficulties caused by people of different cultures and backgrounds who may express their thoughts in different ways. Semi-structured interview questions give you complete freedom to express your complaints or compliments. Perhaps sometimes such interviews take too long for the interviewer and are exhausting.
Sometimes a semi-structured interview can take place on the job. Usually the number of managers in stores is such that it is convenient to conduct a semi-structured interview with them, and some researches (Teller et al., 2018, Martinez et al., 2018) are based on this. As buyers can describe their feelings, managers can also describe their unique experiences in interviews.
For qualitative research, such interviews are beneficial because they focus on the content rather than the number of respondents. Research coverage for these interviews is essential but not paramount. Semi-structured interviews allow you to see the chain of thought of the interviewee and what worries him about the topic under discussion since the interviewer only sets the initial tone of the conversation and corrects it later. Some researchers believe that semi-structured interviews are good, especially in medicine, psychiatry, and psychology, because they allow the interviewee to highlight the issue under discussion independently.
Open-Ended Questionnaires
Open-ended questionnaires allow learning information from the interviewee in the style he wants to submit it. The questions are not abbreviated, not too specific, and cover a wide range of issues. For example, people in business or shopkeepers can share their unique experiences with the COVID-19 pandemic. They can describe problems with suppliers, customers, their frustrations, and hopes. In addition, open-ended questionnaires provide them all an opportunity to be creative and create something of their own (review, description, etc.) (De Marsico et al., 2017, p. 1092). It is an excellent opportunity for the respondents to “give them an opportunity to tell us what’s on their mind with respect to the topic under discussion” (Singer & Couper, 2017, p. 127). Questions in open questionnaires sound exciting and make respondents think that their opinion is interested.
In general, each family and individual has a unique experience of testing COVID-19, so it is better to use open questionnaires for this. It especially applies to the psycho-emotional state of every person employed in a particular industry (Hadar et al., 2020, pp. 282-283). Different countries, having their economic potential and government, experienced the pandemic in different ways and their businesses. Given that the specifics of the study are related to SMEs, the family and interpersonal aspects are especially important here. SMEs are often built within large or small families and involve friendships.
In addition, through open-ended questionnaires, the researcher can find out information that was not assumed and was not taken into account in the study and the questionnaire. Sometimes, what more than one person says can give the research new meaning. However, processing the results and answers to open questionnaires requires a lot of time from the researcher. Closed questionnaires are easier to process because, despite the often broad coverage of the respondents, these questionnaires are prepared according to the same type. It can be a significant disadvantage for research, especially if the number of respondents is inferior to conventional qualitative research.
References
De Marsico, M., Sciarrone, F., Sterbini, A., & Temperini, M. (2017). Supporting mediated peer-evaluation to grade answers to open-ended questions. EURASIA Journal of Mathematics, Science and Technology Education, 13(4), 1085-1106.
Hadar, L. L., Ergas, O., Alpert, B., & Ariav, T. (2020). Rethinking teacher education in a VUCA world: student teachers’ social-emotional competencies during the Covid-19 crisis. European Journal of Teacher Education, 43(4), 573-586.
Kallio, H., Pietilä, A. M., Johnson, M., & Kangasniemi, M. (2016). Systematic methodological review: Developing a framework for a qualitative semi‐structured interview guide. Journal of advanced nursing, 72(12), 2954-2965.
Martinez, O., Rodriguez, N., Mercurio, A., Bragg, M., & Elbel, B. (2018). Supermarket retailers’ perspectives on healthy food retail strategies: In-depth interviews. BMC Public Health, 18(1), 1-16.
Singer, E., & Couper, M. P. (2017). Some methodological uses of responses to open questions and other verbatim comments in quantitative surveys. Methods, data, analyses: A journal for quantitative methods and survey methodology (mda), 11(2), 115-134.
Teller, C., Holweg, C., Reiner, G., & Kotzab, H. (2018). Retail store operations and food waste. Journal of Cleaner Production, 185, 981-997.