Importance Of Semi-Structured Interview

In order to enrich research results and provide more insights on specific formative assessment principles, a semi-structured interview was used in this research. The semi-structured interview enabled the researcher to obtain in-depth statements of preferences, opinions and experience about formative assessment. Drever (1997) described the term semi-structured interview as “a general structure by deciding in advance what ground is to be covered and what main questions are to be asked. This leaves the detailed structure to be worked out during the interview.” (p. 1). Using semi-structured interviews can lead the researchers directly to the particular values and beliefs that teachers attach to particular techniques of formative assessment. In

Do you think formative assessment is useful for the teaching and learning process?

Do you think you have changed your teaching method somehow after using formative assessment in your classroom? One more important thing is that selection of interviewees may be an important factor in either minimizing or introducing bias to interview data. Asking people to volunteer for interviews may ensure that you have co-operative participants (Drever, 1997). However such volunteers may not be truly representative of the case study population. They may be individuals who are enthusiastic about the intended research. Therefore, the data collected could be unreliable. Drever (1997) also suggested that random sampling of interviewees could be undertaken to overcome this potential bias. In this research, pilot interviews were volunteers while other interviewees were selected randomly from the sample. In this research, the interview was conducted with 6 randomly selected teachers (out of 50) who completed the questionnaire and agreed to be interviewed about their ideas and practices of formative

According to Robson (1997), the length of the semi-structured interview may have some effect upon the reliability of the data collected. He suggested that “anything under half an hour is unlikely to be valuable” (p.229). In other words, a shorter interview of less than thirty minutes is not likely to provide enough in-depth information since time is limited while a long interview may result in busy interviewees becoming disheartened. Therefore, the pilot interviews enabled the researcher to determine the approximate length of the interview. As a result, all the interviews including pilot interviews lasted over half an hour, but not more than one hour. A copy of the interview schedule and questions can be analyzed in Appendix