Confronta i metodi

	Intervista Semistrutturata	Etnografia
Campo	Qualitativo	Qualitativo
Famiglia	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Anno di origine	1946 (Merton & Kendall); codified as a standard method through the 1980s–1990s	c. 1922 (Malinowski's Argonauts of the Western Pacific)
Ideatore	Robert K. Merton and Patricia Kendall (focused interview, 1946); further systematised by Steinar Kvale	Bronisław Malinowski (modern ethnography); rooted in 19th-century anthropology
Tipo	Qualitative research method	Qualitative fieldwork tradition
Fonte seminale	Kvale, S., & Brinkmann, S. (2009). InterViews: Learning the Craft of Qualitative Research Interviewing (2nd ed.). Sage. ISBN: 978-0761925422	Hammersley, M. & Atkinson, P. (2019). Ethnography: Principles in Practice (4th ed.). Routledge. ISBN: 978-1138504462
Alias	guided interview, semi-standardized interview, focused interview, SSI	Etnografi, participant observation, fieldwork, ethnographic research
Correlati	6	5
Sintesi	The semi-structured interview is a qualitative data-collection method in which the researcher prepares a set of key questions or topic areas in advance but remains free to probe, follow up, and reorder as the conversation evolves. Unlike structured interviews — which fix every question and sequence — or unstructured interviews — which are entirely open — the semi-structured format balances comparability across participants with the flexibility needed to capture the depth and nuance of individual perspectives. It is the most widely used interview format in social science, health, and education research.	Ethnography is a qualitative research tradition in which a researcher immerses themselves in a social group or community over an extended period — typically three to six months or longer — to study its culture, values, and behaviours in their natural setting. Originating in social and cultural anthropology, and consolidated as a rigorous method by Bronisław Malinowski in the early twentieth century, ethnography produces rich, contextualised accounts of how people live, work, and make meaning together.