Ankieta do ankietera jako źródło wiedzy o wywiadzie kwestionariuszowym

Abstract

In post-war research made in Poland by means of standardized questionnaire interviews relatively little attention has been paid to verification of data. There is no solid tool for a sociologist to verify data and to secure information about atmosphere and conditions of interviews. A questionnaire addressed to an interviewer here discussed is an attempt at elaborating such a tool. At the end of each interview questionnaire a few questions of various kinds have been inserted (closed and open-ended, about facts and about opinions), and an interviewer was required to answer them immediately after he left his respondent. Such a questionnaire addressed to interviewers was introduced for the first time in the Bełchatów survey of 1963 and then used again in some other studies, with various aims in view. Those aims may be described as (1) verification and selection of interview data; (2) collecting of data necessary for separate methodological investigations; (3) furnishing of general information about atmosphere and conditions of interviews. In the present paper, based on an analysis of 931 questionnaires collected during two surveys, the author presents an analysis made chiefly from the point of view of the third of these aims. Thus she considers the type of material that can be furnished by a questionnaire addressed to interviewers, how it can help to define the social situation of an interview, in what ways it can help a sociologist to verify, and interpret respondents’ utterances. The paper analyses from such a standpoint social situations of interviews in two different local and social environments (a big city and a small town). The following problems are discussed: (1) the influence of the place and circumstances of an interview on the respondent’s verbal reactions; (2) conditions of an interview such as work done by a respondent during the interview, noises, presence of other persons and their active behavior; (3) the manner of receiving interviewers in two social milieus (treats, attitudes towards women interviewers, preparations of respondents to the interview and their appearance, number and topics of conversations initiated by respondents etc.); (4) respondents’ attitudes towards interviewers and an interview (the following attitudes have been distinguished: friendly, critical and unfriendly, anxious and mistrusting, ashamed); (5) interest on part, of respondents in sociology and social research in general and in the research in which they participated; (6) opinions and appreciations of respondents as conversation partners by interviewers (particular attention was paid to the important problem of what is called sincerity of respondents). Conclusions of the article concern both the analysed interviews and the general possibilities of using a questionnaire addressed to interviewers. Some of them are practical suggestions, other are of a general methodological character. Thus it is maintained that differences of interview situations in a big city and with educated respondents on one hand and in a small town among laborers in the other are mainly connected with different styles of living and manners predominant in both, environments. This finding is of practical importance for sociologists. Educated respondents were more apt to make an interview into an informal social occasion; they were more ready to collaborate but their responses were also more often conventional and pretentious than those of laborers, etc. It is also suggested that sociologists should try to make interview conditions during one survey possibly most uniform (e. g., to contact respondents either only in their homes or only at work), to eliminate other persons from interview situations, etc. It must be remembered when using the technique of a questionnaire addressed to interviewers that it can and did furnish much, information about interview situations, but that it is by no means free from defects. E.g., it does not tell, anything about an interviewer’s behavior during an interview. Again, appreciations and interpretations of facts by particular interviewers may be fairly different; some, of them may create images of respondents and of their behavior, thus biasing their observations and consequently their reports. When using a questionnaire to interviewers we require that they make some special observations besides their normal work with respondents. Thus they must be specially instructed by the supervising sociologist. More searching methodological analysis of data secured by that tool ought in future run parallel with analysis of answers of respondents to particular questions asked during an interview.