DOC/714s Week 5: Interview and Observation DOC/714s Week 5: Interview and Observation CONTENT CRITERIA Follows directions Step 1: Interviewing and Observing – discussion provided insights into the interview process Step 2: Sense-making – discussion provided evidence of emerging patterns. 500-700-word paper discussed communication in professional and/or personal life, and included Overall impressions of process Personal reactions to process Synthesis of the process • • • APA FORMATTING Properly formatted title page, body, and references Properly formatted citations Properly formatted references POSSIBLE POINTS 80 5 5 5 APA STYLE • Proper Grammar & Punctuation: Total Points Comments: 5 100 POINTS EARNED 1 Interview and Observation Adam Wakefield University of Phoenix DOC/714S Dr. Roxanne M. Williams 01/25/2021 2 Interview and Observation Interviewing and observing participants can be a useful tool to gather qualitative data. Human behavior and thought process can sometimes be assumed by the researcher. Interviewing and observation provides evidence to support or contradict the researcher’s assumptions, which is the reason it can be considered a practical instrument. Creating Questions To conduct a successful interview, the first step is to create open-ended questions. Openended questions encourage the interviewee to provide information based on their personal experience. This type of questions also limits bias and narratives from the researcher. Dale Carnegie advised in his 1936 classic How to Win Friends and Influence People. “Ask questions the other person will enjoy answering.” During the interview assignment, open-ended questions were created with follow up questions such as “Tell me about a time that communication was ineffective.” With a follow up question “What do you think could have been done differently to encourage more effective communication?” Observation During the interviews, there were multiple unexpected outcomes which were observed. The first patterns observed was both interviewees referring to the workplace when speaking about effective communication. In the duration of the rest of the interviews, both interviewees did not reference personal relationships outside of their workplace. A similarity within the interviews were the events in which communication was affective. Both of the participants spoke about effective communication when increased production created added stress on the staff members. Another observation learned from this exercise was the use of body language. The first interview was conducted in person. The first person who was not perceived to be uncomfortable 3 before the interview, immediately commenced to have nervous body language tendencies when the interview started. Both his feet and arms were crossed, and eye contact was decreased from before. He also stuttered frequently which was abnormal from the times I spent with him previously. The next interview was conducted via video-chat. During the interview, the participant’s body language was personally viewed as open. He seemed to be comfortable as he appeared to talk freely while maintaining eye contact with the camera. It cannot be yet confirmed that there may be a difference in comfort levels with in-person interviews compared to video interviews. This discovery may be an important variable to follow when continuing qualitative interviews. Conclusion It was learned that qualitative interviews are an effective tool for research. Conducting interviews with open-ended questions decreases the number of assumptions a researcher may have by hearing first-hand from the individuals involved in the field being studied. Interviews also allow the researcher to ask questions which may be difficult to find through other methods of exploration. In future research, it is planned to experiment with different variables to improve interview results. The variables which will be experimented with consist of location, preparation time allowed, length, personal non-verbal communication, and method of interview such as video-call or face-to-face. Based on the results of the limited data from the interviews, it is recognized that video-call interviews will be the primary method of future qualitative interviews until face-to-face interviews can prove to maintain a reasonable comfort level within the participants. 4 References Carnegie, D. (1936). How to win friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.
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