Ankiety dla ankieterów (próba typologii)

Abstract

The paper deals with the program of employing, the technique of filled-in questionnaire to analysis of the process of data collecting by means of interviews. It is commonly assumed that interviewing by trained interviewers who use questionnaire forms is a standardized technique of data collecting in the sense that all subjects are exposed to identical stimuli and their reactions (utterances) are registered in identical ways. However, practical experience, as well as methodological studies point out that sets of stimuli to which various subjects are exposed during a research are by no means identical. Two kinds of factors are responsible for this fact: outer circumstances of an interview (e.g. its place, moment, presence of other persons, etc.), and the interviewer’s personal characteristics (such as sex, age, skill, psychological features, beliefs, etc.). In methodological studies on presence and scope of factors disturbing the standardization, of questionnaire interviews, questionnaires addressed to interviewers are employed. In recent years a range of surveys has been performed in Poland. They have been instructive enough to attempt their typology and to suggest some propositions about the possibilities to study the particular disturbing factors impairing the level of standardization of interviews by means of proper types questionnaires addressed to interviewers. The author maintains that such a questionnaire is an important, fruitful and economic procedure. In his opinion, however, it is not worth while to try to design a universal questionnaire investigating all significant aspects of the process of personal interview. The problem offers many aspects and thus it requires the use of various patterns of questionnaires to collect complete and reliable material about each of the groups of questions. Four types of questionnaires are here suggested, each of them offering different cognitive potentialities and justified by considerations concerning costs of a study. 1. A standardized questionnaire, demanding from an interviewer steady observation and reporting of certain circumstances during each of his interviews. (Serving for an analysis of interview situations.) 2. A standardized questionnaire, requiring from an interviewer personal informations about himself, and in particular about his own attitude to actual problems dealt with in interviews carried by him. (For an analysis of interviewers’ effect.) 3. A questionnaire demanding from an interviewer non-standardized descriptions of circumstances of each of his interviews. (For an analysis of interview situations.) 4. A questionnaire demanding from an interviewer a non-standardized description (in form of a personal document) of whole research action as he participated in it, including, reports of both outer circumstances of interviews and of his own conduct, feelings, experiences connected with his research work. (For an analysis of research situations and for control of interviewers’ behavior.)