Where are surveys considered to be appropriate? Give types of interview
Where are surveys considered to be appropriate? Give types of interview
Ans.
Surveys are usually appropriate in case of social and behavioural sciences (because many types of behaviour that interest the researcher cannot be arranged in a realistic setting) where as experiments are mostly an essential feature of physical and natural sciences.
Types of interview: On the basis of the degree of structure present in the questions asked by the interviewer all interviews may be classified into three categories: standardised, unstandardised and semi- standardised.
1. Standarised, Structured or Formal Interview: In this type of interview, the questions and their sequence are determined in advance. The interviewer merely proceeds systematically through the list of questions, noting the replies given by the applicant. He is not free to adapt his questions to the specific situation or to change their advantages or the change their sequence or to ask other questions.
2. Unstandardised, Unstructured or Informal Interview: In this type of interview the interviewer is free to develop each situation in whatever ways he seems most appropriate for the purpose at hand. He can be quite flexible in adapting his approach to whatever appears to be most fruitful for a given respondent. He may change his general line of questioning if important results are not forthcoming or he may alter the wording of the questions so as to achieve some equivalence in meaning for different kinds of respondents or he may omit certain questions and add new ones, and so on.
Unstructured interviews are generally used in exploratory studies or in studies pertaining to sensitive subjects. In the former type of studies the object of the interviewer always is to get a career and deeper view of the problem by contacting knowledgeable people and by freely discussing with them the various aspects of the problem. This can be achieved by an unstructured interview only. Similarly, in studies relating to socio-psychological or sensitive subjects such as use of birth control methods the in depth probing cannot be done by simply putting a certain number of pre-determined questions in a pre-determined sequence. An unstructured interview is the only technique to enable the interviewer to penetrate deep into the problem and know about the ingrained attitudes and beliefs of the respondent. In such interviews the interviewer stats with some general topical question and then gradually and skillfully leads the respondent to this subject of enquiry.
3. Semi-standardised or Semi-structured Interview: In this type of interview, the interviewer asks a number of specific major questions but he is also free to probe beyond the answers to these questions. One such interview is the focused interview. In this interview the interviewer, though bound by a definite framework of topics to be covered about each respondent, is more or less free to frame his questions and to decide their sequence according to his understanding of the situation. The respondents in this type of interview are always persons who are known to possess the experience of the subject under study. The interview is always focused on the subjective experience of such persons.
