What is a potential drawback of using interviews as a primary research method?

Using interviews as a primary research method can indeed be time-consuming. This is primarily due to the nature of conducting interviews, which often involves several steps such as designing the questions, recruiting participants, scheduling and conducting the interviews, and then analyzing the qualitative data collected. Each of these steps requires considerable time and effort.

Additionally, interviews often yield in-depth responses, which means that the data can be rich and complex, leading to an extensive analysis process. Compared to other methods, such as surveys, which can gather responses from many participants quickly, interviews focus on a smaller number of subjects and require more detailed consideration and interpretation of the responses. This inherent time investment is a critical drawback for researchers who may have limited timelines or resources.