Tasks---Interviews and Questionnaires

  How are interviews and questionnaires  used in research?

   1. what is interview?

• An interview is a conversation between two or more people where questions are asked by the interviewer to elicit facts or statements from the interviewee. Interviews are a standard part of journalism and medium reporting, but are also employed in many other situations, including  qualitative research. (Resource from Wikipedia)
• Interviews with a specific purpose and a set of scientific design, preparation and implementation of the principle .

    2. what is questionnaires?

• A questionnaire is a research instrument consisting of a series of questions and other prompts for the purpose of gathering information from respondents. (Resource from Wikipedia)

   3. How are interviews and questionnaires used in research?

• The first question is whom should we interview and questionnaires? As in all surveys, using either questionnaire or interview as the means of data collection, we should attempt to involve as many participants as possible. And interviews and questionnaires are a time-intensive research instrument, so we must chosen for particular interest which is according to our research purpose and theme. (For example, we would like evaluate some school equipment, we could find people who are students or staffs. And people who usually use or attention to the school equipment and so on.) 

• The second one is how will we get access?  In advance of thinking your study to allow potential participants time to consider whether or not they wish to be involved. Thinking about some situation will happen, for example people may refuse or reluctantly interviews, write questionnaires or online questionnaires. The places, times and persons are important elements.

• And What questions should we ask?  Every interview and questionnaires must have a purpose, it must draw from some underlying expectations about what is the important information you are seeking.

• How should I phrase we questions?  On the one hand you will want to avoid bias, to be careful not to ask questions in such a way that you lead respondents into providing confirmation of your own views rather than eliciting theirs. At least some of your questions should be designed so as to promote thought and give more choices.

• What techniques should we use to get the best quality answers?    For interviews, there are a number of techniques researchers use in the natural course of the conversation to aid clarity, depth and validity. And the researcher engages in 'active' listening, which shows the interviewee that close attention is being paid to what they say, and also tries to keep the interviewee focused on the subject.      For questionnaires, these are used when you want to measure something that is latent (not directly observable, e.g. to measure an attitude.) You scale the answers like this. When designing a questionnaire you will typically utilize closed questions rather than open ones. With open questions they can respond how they want by writing their answer in the space provided.

• How do we decide on what form of interview to use? To develop empathy with interviewees and win their confidence,and in order not to impose one's own influence on the interviewee.

     (Sources from: http://www.edu.plymouth.ac.uk/resined/interviews/inthome.htm)


   4. What kinds of data/information can be gathered using these techniques?

•  For questionnaires, we would assign each questionnaire a number too, and then add the data from each questionnaire in number form to a programme such as Excel, SPSS or Access, thus giving you the chance to generate charts and graphs to better illustrate your answers.  For interviews, you may be able to give the data collected in one more particularly significant interview in your appendices so that the reader has a chance of checking your interpretations and selections against their source. 

      (source from : http://www2.open.ac.uk/students/skillsforstudy/using-a-questionnaire.php)

   5.Questionnaires and interviews as primary and secondary research data

• There are a range of resources available for secondary research: the most well-known are: published statistics: census, housing and social security data, published texts: theoretical work, secondary analyses by ‘experts’ and reports,media: documentaries for example, as a source of information,personal documents: diaries and so on.
• Advantages about secondary research are:cheap and accessible - especially a University Library, often the only resource,  for example historical documents.
• Disadvantages about secondary research are:lack of consistency of perspective, biases and inaccuracies can not be checked, the concern over whether any data can be totally separated from the context of its collection.
• There are a range of resources available for primary research :social surveys, questionnaire surveys and interviews: informal or structured.
• Advantages about primary research are:quick and cheap if the sample is small, computer could  quick analysis and repetition data, allows generalization to a larger population, verifiable by replication and re-questioning of interviewees/respondents.
• Disadvantages about secondary research are:over-reliance on computed (statistical) analysis loses individual meanings and case study data, closed questions may constrain the data, respondents may interpret the questions differently, researchers can bias the data by concept definition and question framing, response rate may be low and selection non-random.

      (source from: http://www4.caes.hku.hk/acadgrammar/report/resproc/research.htm)