Data Collection Techniques: Postal Questionnaire, Personal Interview, and Structured Interview

1. The Islamic University of Gaza- Higher Studies Deanery Research writing (MMCD 6304) Lecture 5: Techniques for data collection Husam Al-Najar

2. Techniques for data collection

3. Postal questionnaire Almost all postal questionnaires have ‘closed-ended’ questions that require a specific response such as ‘yes’ or ‘no’ or ranking the importance of factors.

4. Personal interview The personal interview is another major technique for collecting factual information as well as opinions. It is a face-to-face interpersonal The interview technique is suitable under the following circumstances: 1. When the people being interviewed share the same characteristics. 2. When you know enough about your interviewee so you only ask what is important. 3. When interpersonal contact is essential to explain and describe the questions. 4. When a case study needs to be investigated in detail asking questions such as how and why things had happened the way they did. 5. When the research requires an explanation as why the respondents are answering or feeling the way they do. Interviews can take three forms: unstructured, structured and semi-structured. Some research may require one form of interview, while others may require a combination of the three forms.

5. Unstructured interview • This form of interview uses ‘open-ended’ or ‘open’ questions and the questionnaire is often pitched at a very general level. • It is usually conducted with qualitative research. • can also be conducted at the beginning of any research (also known as exploratory interviews) when the researcher knows little about his/her subject area. • It is purely an exploratory exercise. For example, suppose you are studying the factors that affect job satisfaction for construction operatives and you wish to explore your thinking around this research outline through informal interviews. • At the end of the unstructured interviews you will probably end up with a list of ten factors which you will then examine on a wider sample through structured interviews or a postal questionnaire

6. Semi-structured interview more formal than the unstructured interview there are a number of specific topics. This form of interview uses ‘open’and ‘closed- ended’ questioning but the questions are not asked in a specific order and no schedule is used. 1. It takes place with respondents known to have a particular experience. 2. It refers to situations that have been analysed prior to the interview. 3. on the basis of an interview specifying topics related to the research hypotheses 4. focused on the respondents’ experiences regarding the situations under study. Semi-structured interviews start by asking indirect questions in order to build up a link with the respondent then explore the specific issues the interviewer has in mind.

7. Example: Suppose you are investigating the factors which cause conflict between managers and the site agents. • You may start by asking the site agents ‘What sort of problems do site agents have in getting along with their managers?’ • and ‘What sort of disagreement do you have with your site manager?’. • You can then move on to ask more formalised questions such as ‘Have you ever had any disagreement with your manager over the following: • allocation of resources, (b) scheduling, (c) overtime pay, (d) promotion?’ • In the semi-structured interview, the interviewer has a great deal of freedom to probe various areas and to raise specific queries during the course of the interview. • For example, the first question above can be probed by asking ‘In what way do site managers try to restrict your work?’ or ‘Do any of your colleagues have the same problem?’.

8. Structured interview • questions are presented in the same order with the same wording to interviewees. • The interviewer will have full control on the questionnaire. • the questioning may start with some ‘open’questions, but will soon move towards a ‘closed’ question format. • Three assumptions of the structured interview: • For any research objective, the respondents have a sufficiently common vocabulary so that it is possible to formulate questions which have the same meaning for each of them. • It is possible to phrase all questions in a form that is equally meaningful to each respondent. • If the meaning of each question is to be identical for each respondent, its context must be identical and, since all preceding questions constitute part of the context, the sequence of questions must be identical.

9. 4. The main advantages of the structured interview therefore are: • The answers can be more accurate. • The response rate is relatively high (approximately 60–70 per cent), specially if interviewees are contacted directly. • The answers can be explored with finding out ‘Why’ the particular answers are given. There is another data collection technique which is known as the ‘telephone interview’. The rules and techniques that are applied to telephone interview are similar to face-to-face interviews

10. Sampling Once you have decided on the technique for collecting your fieldwork data and have thought about what you want to ask, you should be ready to decide on the characteristics of the respondents. In all cases a sample has to be drawn from its population. The term ‘sample’ means a specimen or part of a whole (population) which is drawn to show what the rest is like. For instance, if you are conducting a postal survey then you need to obtain a list of respondents which is known to fall into the category of your survey (survey sample). If you are conducting case studies interviews then a relative small number of cases (interview sample) is used for inferences to all cases (a population). Selecting the research sample is very important and great care must be taken when choosing the type of sample design.

11. The researcher has to ensure that the characteristics of the sample are the same as its population and act as representative of the population as a whole. Usually, the means of drawing a representative sample is done either randomly or non-randomly. The term ‘random’ means selecting subjects (respondents) arbitrarily and without purpose. Designing the research sample can take many forms, each of which is suitable to a particular situation. Listed below are some of the types of sampling designs available to the researcher: 1 Non-random accidental sampling. 2 Non-random purposive sampling. 3 Simple random sampling. 4 Systematic random sampling. 5 Stratified random sampling.

12. Random sampling • This type of sampling can be used when specifics about the characteristics of the sample are not essential, such as background of respondents, size of company and type of work, etc. • However, there are two main criteria that you need to take into consideration when selecting your sample. • First, what do you want to know? • Second, about whom do you want to know it? Both of these questions can be answered by referring back to the purpose of your study ,i.e. your aim, objectives and hypothesis (or key questions).

13. In order to draw a random sample you need to follow two steps: • Identify the population from which the sample is to be drawn. This means obtaining a list of names and addresses • If the list is small, you may be able to send your questionnaire to all the names identified in your list. If the list is long, you then need to devise a method of random selection which ensures that each subject (in this case contractor) has the same probability (chance) of selection. In other words, adopt a random numbering technique to select a sample. For example, if you have a list of 400 contractors and you want a sample of 80,you might select every fifth name on the list.

14. Selected sampling • It begins by choosing a list of names and addresses of participants with specific characteristics, • The name of clients and their addresses were identified from the management contractors who were interviewed in phase one of the research. • Names of persons who were suitable to participate in the research were identified through telephone conversations with the client organisations. • The ten clients selected for the interviews were homogenous and shared similar characteristics. • A structured interview questionnaire was designed and posted prior to the interview. • The interviews provided some freedom to probe certain areas and raised specific queries during the course of the interview. More specifically, ‘why do you feel that way? ’and ‘why do you hold that view? ’or ‘how did this happen?’.

15. In this study, a selected sample of clients was thought to be more appropriate than a random sample due to the nature of the study. If the interviews are based on people who are very different in characteristics, philosophy and experience, the questions will have different meanings for each of them. The answers, therefore, may be ambiguous for the subject under investigation. However, this does not mean that you are not permitted to have a sample of different characteristics. Your research design may require you to compare the views of two groups of people who have different backgrounds.