Interviews And Questionnaires
Interviews and questionnaires
You are probably all familiar with the interview technique as it is commonly used in society, e.g. job interviews, progress reviews, celebrity magazine interviews etc. You may also be familiar with questionnaires and surveys – perhaps you have been stopped in the street and asked for your views on different brands, for example, or how you intend to vote in the next election.
Interviews and questionnaires in psychology are similar to these everyday occurrences in some ways – it’s still about asking people questions, and these questions can be structured and presented in different ways. However, interviews and questionnaires in psychology can serve quite a different purpose, and may come in quite different forms to those you have previously experienced.
Task 1
What’s in a question?
How would you define a ‘question’?
A more difficult question than it first seems… perhaps some examples may help. How do the following questions differ?
Do you ever drink alcohol?
Which do you prefer, red wine, beer, or neither?
Have you ever felt that you may drink too much?
What do you think about the problem of binge drinking, and what solutions would you propose?
I understand that you have had an unpleasant experience involving alcohol. Do you want to talk about it?
Discuss the questions in small groups and be prepared to report back to the rest of the class.
Task 2
When considering the use of interviews and questionnaires, we must consider what type of information we want to get – what form do we want the answers to take?
Quantitative information can be quantified and counted up – e.g. number of ‘yes’ answers, number of people who answered ’often’ to question 3 etc.
Qualitative information is often rich information which tells us a lot about that individual, but which is hard to compare, generalise and ‘add up’.
Researchers may choose to use quantitative, qualitative or a combination of the two in conducting a study.
Revisit the
You are probably all familiar with the interview technique as it is commonly used in society, e.g. job interviews, progress reviews, celebrity magazine interviews etc. You may also be familiar with questionnaires and surveys – perhaps you have been stopped in the street and asked for your views on different brands, for example, or how you intend to vote in the next election.
Interviews and questionnaires in psychology are similar to these everyday occurrences in some ways – it’s still about asking people questions, and these questions can be structured and presented in different ways. However, interviews and questionnaires in psychology can serve quite a different purpose, and may come in quite different forms to those you have previously experienced.
Task 1
What’s in a question?
How would you define a ‘question’?
A more difficult question than it first seems… perhaps some examples may help. How do the following questions differ?
Do you ever drink alcohol?
Which do you prefer, red wine, beer, or neither?
Have you ever felt that you may drink too much?
What do you think about the problem of binge drinking, and what solutions would you propose?
I understand that you have had an unpleasant experience involving alcohol. Do you want to talk about it?
Discuss the questions in small groups and be prepared to report back to the rest of the class.
Task 2
When considering the use of interviews and questionnaires, we must consider what type of information we want to get – what form do we want the answers to take?
Quantitative information can be quantified and counted up – e.g. number of ‘yes’ answers, number of people who answered ’often’ to question 3 etc.
Qualitative information is often rich information which tells us a lot about that individual, but which is hard to compare, generalise and ‘add up’.
Researchers may choose to use quantitative, qualitative or a combination of the two in conducting a study.
Revisit the