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Thank the respondent. As a last action you should thank the respondent for his or her assistance and leave the respondent with a feeling that he or she contributed to a worthwhile activity. Leaving the respondent. After thanking the respondent, take your leave graciously. Of course, you will want to respect whatever leave-taking courtesies are customary in the culture of the respondent. Completing post-interviewing tasks Several activities should be completed after each interview. First, it is good practice to go over the questionnaire again to make sure that a satisfactory answer was obtained for each item, even though this was done at the end of the interview. A further check under less hurried circumstances may identify omissions. When important data are missing, it may be necessary to return to the respondent to obtain them. Second, right after the interview is the best time to reconstruct responses to open-ended questions. Creating a full reconstruction, in the respondent's own words will help greatly when you later analyze responses to open-ended questions. Telephone interviews Although opportunities are limited, telephone interviews can be conducted with specific target populations known to have telephones. These include government officials, professional, staff of non-governmental organizations, and many business establishments. Before committing to a telephone survey, you should be sure you have phone numbers for all the members of your sample. Also, be prepared to make a number of calls to reach persons in your sample. Even with numbers in hand, making contact may require a number of calls. Once contact is made, your introduction is critically important. Your contact with the respondent is only semi-personal, based on your voice and your powers of persuasion over the telephone. In the first minute on the phone with a respondent, you have to introduce yourself and persuade the respondent to remain on the line with you. The following Web site provides the full text of a research paper as a guide in writing a research paper. We refer you to: Telephone Methods for Social Surveys Although written for use in industrialized countries with extensive and reliable phone systems, the content on this site may help you if you are thinking about conducting a telephone survey. Validity and reliability issues At various points in this and the preceding two chapters we have mentioned conditions that affect the quality of survey data. To help you conduct surveys well, we shall discuss these points now in greater detail. Four sets of conditions that affect the validity and reliability of survey data are:
Effects of interviewer interaction with respondents Figure 11.1 summarizes important ways, you as an interviewer, can affect the data obtained in an interview. How you approach the respondent and the kind of relationship you establish at the beginning of the interview will go far in determining the kind of responses you will get. As shown at the extreme left in Figure 11.1, establishing a feeling of trust with the respondent generally results in complete, valid and reliable data, whereas arousing feelings of suspicion or doubt on the part of the respondent can cause the respondent to refuse to be interviewed or to give less |