60 • allow for ‘insider’ experience, thoughts and feelings to be understood, • Structured: the interviewer asks a set of predetermined questions • Semi-structured interviews that combine components of each. • Unstructured: discussion led by the participants with the interviewer taking a facilitation role to ensure discussion stays on topic. Interviews: Interviews can be: Interviews; structured, semistructured or unstructured • can prevent interviewer bias. • can produce unexpected and useful information, Unstructured interviews: • make it easy to collate and analyse data. • are time efficient, • create data that can be controlled and compared across interviews, Structured interviews: • provide an opportunity to ask follow-up questions. • are often not resource heavy (unless travel is involved), especially if conducted virtually or by phone, • Data is presented in participants’ own words through letters, emails etc. • Provides a wide range of high-level data on a topic. • Past information can show changes over time. • Cost effective. • Less time-consuming than some other data collection methods. • Easier to access. Involves gathering information from secondary sources (such as newspapers, reports, databases, published statistics etc.) and primary sources (such as letters, emails, journals). Desk research and document review Advantages Description Method • may take more time to conduct and analyse. • produce data that can be more difficult to generalise, Unstructured interviews: • may cause bias, due to the potential for interviewer’s objectives and perspectives to influence the outcomes. • do not allow for unexpected responses and spontaneity, Structured interviews: • questions can be ‘distorted’ according to how comfortable the interviewer and interviewee are or by the interviewer’s own bias. • can be time consuming, Interviews: • Information from third-party sources may be skewed or biased. • Data found may not be directly applicable or suitable to your MEAL activity. • Information may be difficult to find or have insufficient detail, particularly on the methods used to collect the original data. • Documents may not be accurate or out of date. • Information may be protected and not for public use. • Not useful for evaluating people’s thoughts or responses. Disadvantages Example: You interview complainants about sexual harassment and discrimination in the workplace Useful when there is a need to collect in-depth information on people’s opinions, thoughts, experiences, and perspectives. Example: To complement focus groups discussions and a survey, desk research consisted of reviewing an analysis by UN Women on the impact of COVID-19 on women and girls and various other UN and NGO reports. Useful when suitable data already exists to cross-check existing data against. When to use this method Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning | A Guide for NHRIs in the Asia Pacific Module 3: Developing your MEAL Plan