An advantage to small group interviews (focus groups) is that they are quick and easy to use, therefore is more time effective, than one to one interviews, and as it is a group the social communication between group members can allow participants to give more free and complex answers, which they might of not felt comfortable doing in a one to one interview, also they may feel that they have social support, to take about certain topics.
Also as the interview is done as a group, it can allow for the answers for the questions to go off into a discussion, which it may not of gone in, in an one on one interview, however this could be a disadvantage, if the interviewers wants to go in one direction, but the group wants to go in another direction.A disadvantage to focus groups would be that it requires a skilled moderator, which could potentially be expensive.
Furthermore it could potentially be difficult to assemble a group, as the group would be either needed to be randomly selected. Also it would ideally need to have people that don’t have an authoritarian personality, as this personality type could potentially control group the dynamic throughout the interview.Another advantage of a focus group would be that their have high face validity, which is key in an interview study. Also as it has high face validity, the interview’s findings will have a higher rate of validity.
Another disadvantage would be that some psychologists would argue that focus group don’t represent a large population, therefore the findings of focus group cannot be generalised to other large population.
An advantage of one on one interview is that, the give better qualitative data, than focus groups, as the participants are by themselves, so may not feel that they have to look of informational social norms, or meet any social norm, as they may not feel they are being judged one on one, as they may feel they are in a group.
A disadvantage of one on one interviews is that it can be a relatively slow process, and more expensive than alternative methods like questionnaires and surveys. An overall disadvantage of interviews would be that they are an expensive method to use to conduct research, however one on one interviews are more expensive and time consuming than group interviews, as each participant has to be interviews individually, which would take up a lot of time. However an advantage would be that interviews provide excellent qualitative that questionnaires and surveys don’t, and this qualitative data, can provide and insight into who the participant may have been feeling.
