AQA Psychology – Research Methods Practice Test 2026 - Free Psychology Practice Questions and Study Guide

The key idea is that structured interviews combine an interviewer with a fixed, pre-set set of questions delivered in the same way for every participant. This face-to-face interaction keeps the interviewer present to administer the questions directly and ensure consistent administration, while the questions themselves are standardized so everyone receives them in the same order and wording. That consistency is what makes the data more reliable and comparable across participants.

Self-administered questionnaires lack an interviewer, which is why they’re distinct from structured interviews. Unpredictable questions would arise in more informal or unstructured interviews, not in a structured format where the questions are predetermined. Open-ended prompts are characteristic of less structured methods, whereas structured interviews rely on closed or fixed-response items to maintain uniformity.