As far as interviews go, I have never interviewed anyone "famous" or well known by a lot of people. I've only interview certain teachers at my school and a few students. While conducting a research interview, similar to what the book mentioned, having a few questions at hand is very important. In my opinion, if someone has agreed to giving you their time and day for an interview, it's only best to have your questions and what not organized and ready. If you're coming up with questions off the bat during the interview, the interviewee would not seem to happy about it, because obviously you're not ready and pretty much wasting more time.
This was pretty much all I did when I had to interview people. I didn't use a recorder to record what they had to say. I listened attentively and jotted down a few notes. But don't write down everything that they are saying. I think that would just make the interviewee more nervous because now they're monitoring more of what they're saying.
Overall, having my questions at hand was what helped the interview to go by smoothly. Also from listening to their responses, more questions can arise from that. So I learned not to go over board with so many questions. Also, choosing people is the most important, because they are the ones that are going to supply you with the answers. You don't want to go through an interview and not get any major important information out of it.
As for improvement, I always see room for more improvement throughout everything. Even though I may not notice any flaws at the moment that I am interviewing people, sometimes if I get any feedback I would incorporate that into my next interviewing session.
Monday, February 9, 2009
Conducting Research Interviews
Posted by Genurr at 7:29 PM
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
Yea i think that having the questions before hand helps a lot. Also because if you don't come prepared it doesn't only make the other person nervous, but it may make you nervous as well. Writing down notes is definatley good, that way you dont forget what they said.
I agree that having the questions upfront and ready during the interview is important. As I wrote in my blog, I made sure my questions were very specific and in order to do that I had to think over what I was going to ask. I never thought about making the interviewee nervous for writing down everything they are saying. For me, I found it more helpful to write everything the interviewee answered to make my research interview as accurate as possible. I will keep in mind not to make the interviewee nervous about me writing everything down the next time I conduct a research interview.
I think I have also only interviewed teachers or students from my high school but none recently. I agree with you in having questions ready for the interview that way there is awkward silence that everyone hates. It is true that you should be thankful that the interviewee is taking time out of his or her busy schedule for someone to come and ask them questions. So that means we should not waist their time and try and take as much information we are able to get out of them. But I would want to bring a recorder so I could listen to it after the interview that way I can hear if I missed anything at the time of the interview.
Post a Comment