ABSTRACT
Although some social research relies purely upon observational techniques and some can be done without ever stepping outside a library, many types of research rely, to a greater or lesser degree, upon asking people for factual information, or questions about what they do and do not do, or about their beliefs, attitudes, aspirations, experiences and feelings. Interviewing people, whether for survey, case study or ethnographic research, presents the researcher with a number of practical problems. In particular, interviewers often face difficulties in:
Obtaining accurate and truthful responses to relatively closed questions, such as ‘How often?’, or ‘How many?’
Obtaining full and sincere responses to open ended questions such as ‘How did you feel about x?’, ‘Can you tell me what happened when y?’
Focusing the interview, that is, getting people to talk about the issues which concern the researcher
