Interviews

Interviews are a useful method for collecting in-depth info from a few experts. Interviews help you convince your reader that credible people agree with your claims OR simply what credible people on the specific issue believe. The trick to interviewing is to gather pertinent information from your sources. To do this, you must carefully develop your list of questions that will motivate the interviewee to respond in-depth with information you can use.

I want to talk about the type and structure of effective questions as well as the interview procedure.

2 types of questions: open-ended and closed-ended

closed-ended questions are questions that can be answered by yes, no, or a definite fact. For example, what is your grade point average, how long have you been working at the university, do you listen to MU’s radio station, do you use Dreamweaver

advantages

Easier to interviewees to understand

Easier for researchers to interpret and analyze

Easier to compare answers across multiple interviews (only limited number of answers possible)

Disadvantages

Interviewers can bias the information they get

Doesn’t allow interviewee to offer information that interviewer might not have considered

open-ended questions are questions that questions that require more discussion to answer: What are your thoughts on using Dreamweaver to create websites, what do you think of the newest version of Dreamweaver, Tell me what you use Dreamweaver for, How has Dreamweaver changed the way you develop websites?

Advantages

Provides researcher with more data/encourages interviewee to talk more

Allows interviewee to interprete the question in a new perspective

Is non-threatening

Dis

Responses not quantifiable (not easy to compare )

May get off topic

Surveys

Surveys are a useful method for collecting information on a particular topic from a large group of people. While interviews focus on gathering in-depth information from a few people, surveys focus on gathering short answer information on a particular topic from a large group of people. Surveys are then useful for convincing your reader that a large part of their targeted audience believes a particular way. Unlike interviews that focus on open-ended questions, surveys usually limit open-ended questions to one or two and emphasize closed-ended questions. Surveys use closed-ended questions for two reasons:

  1. Questions with obvious, finite answers are often easier to understand.
  2. Questions with finite answers are easier to compare.

If you want to be able to compare data statistically, consider surveys, if you want to gather in-depth information about a particular topic (often from an expert or targeted audience) use interviews.

interviews / surveys
Focus on in-depth info from few considered experts or witnesses / Focus on short answer info from many
Utilize primarily open-ended questions to encourage discussion / Utilize primarily closed-ended questions to encourage comparison
Difficult to compare information gathered / Easy to compare information gathered
Information gathered in person or on phone / Information may be gathered in person, on phone, via email, through mail

Constructing survey questions

Construction the questions of a survey requires addressing the content, structure, format, and sequence of the question.

Question Content

While survey questions address facts, opinions, attitudes, respondent’s motivation, and their level of familiarity with a subject, most questions are either questions about facts or questions about subjective experiences (Nachmias et al.).Factual questions elicit objective information about respondents’ background, environment, habits, likes. Questions about subjective experience ask about respondents beliefs, attitudes, and opinions.

Types of Questions

Closed-ended questions allow you to compare data across respondents, but they may bias the answers you receive because they only allow the respondent to answer in a way you have decided (not in a way that may not have occurred to you). If you wish to learn how the respondent arrived to a particular point of view, an open-ended question is more appropriate.

Question Format

Generally in a survey you present all possible answers and have the respondent check or circle the appropriate answer. You should always provide specific instructions for how you want the respondents to complete the survey.

Rating format provides a level of degree to which the respondent agrees for each question.

The 313 technical communication course is my favorite course this semester.

  1. Strongly agree
  2. agree
  3. neither agree nor disagree
  4. disagree
  5. strongly disagree

Matrix format is a way to organize large sets of questions that have the same possible responses

Strongly agree agree it depends disagree strongly disagree
  1. The 313 class is my favorite class this semester.
/ [ ][ ][ ][ ][ ]
  1. The 313 class is my favorite class ever
/ [ ][ ][ ][ ][ ]
  1. My team members in the 313 class are now my best friends
/ [ ][ ][ ][ ][ ]
  1. I look forward to Tuesdays because I get to go to 313
/ [ ][ ][ ][ ][ ]

Ranking format is used to obtain the degree of importance of an issue

I would like you to tell me what goals are most important to you. Please examine the goals and rank them in order of importance with 1 being most important and 4 being least important

Rank
  1. learn strategies for communicating effectively in the workplace
/ 1234
  1. learn to work collaboratively
/ 1234
  1. get an A in the class
/ 1234
  1. learn to analyze and interpret complex information into a persuasive report
/ 1234

Question Sequence

For surveys it is typically easier for readers to comprehend questions if you start at a general question and construct each subsequent question to narrow the focus—that is each successive question is related to the previous question and has a progressively more narrow scope.

  1. What do you think are some of the most important problems facing the nation?
  2. Of all the problems you just mentioned, which do you think is the most important?
  3. Where have you obtained most of your information about this problem?
  4. Do you read the Washington Post?

HOWEVER

If you think the topic of the survey may not be of interest to your respondents, consider starting with the most narrow question.