Structured Interview Essay

I had the pleasure of interviewing one of our church parisinors, Ms. Maria. Ms. Maria is 75 years old Hispanic woman who has been a widow for the past three years. Ms. Maria was basically a stay at home Mom when her children were young and when she did work she worked as an assembly line worker. Her wages were low and her pension that she currently receives is not enough to meet her monthly needs. Her husband was the main bread winner prior to him dieing of a massive heart attack at the age of 78 while he was at work. Her husband was a cook in a resturanrt and had decied to continue to work until some of their loans were paid off. Since his death, Ms. Maria has been depressed, anxious and struggling to make ends meet and has recently been diagnosed with hypertension. Her three children live out of state a don’t get to visit often.

A questionnaire is a list of a research or survey questions asked to respondents, and designed to extract quantitative date. Questionnaires are easily distributed to the community and can be completed and collected on the spot or be emailed or posted back to the researcher. Self completed questionnaires are the most common survey as they are cheap and can be passed to a lot of people. Some sociologists tend not to use questionnaires because of their low response rate and lack of validity. Also, some people may give false information so some researchers like to stick to interviews and experiments for increased accuracy. I will explore why sociologists shy away from using questionnaires.

Bean I should be aware of the issues of conflict of interest. I need to make sure that our law firm has never represented Ms. Bean’s spouse. If this is the case at all I will need to inform her that we are unable to represent her. If I know Ms. Bean personally at all this would potentially cause a conflict of interest. Especially if I personally know her spouse as well. By carrying on this interview it will give me a great deal of insight into hew case and if any type of conflict of interest may occur I need to be very honest with Ms. Bean, as our potential client, because it could cause a change in the outcome of the case all together if she chooses to have us represent her (ABA, Rule 1.7). Of course I need to keep in mind the ethical rule of confidentiality. Whatever Ms. Bean shares with me is confidential, so it is only to stay between the firm and herself and she should be comfortable in knowing she can tell us anything and it will never leave the law firm (ABA, Rule

When we were given this assignment I was very uneasy about talking to another person about personal matters. Let alone someone who I had never had a conversation with and was of a different race and ethnicity. My interviewee's name is Micheal. He considers himself black of African American descent. He is a black 36 yr old black male. Michael was born in San Bernardino, CA. He’s an educated and a professional male who works in college. He is the father of 2 boys, happily married. His wife is considered a white woman. Michael is the second from the oldest of about 9 children. He was raised by his aunt and uncle who he very happily calls, mom and dad. They had 2 adopted children when he was taken in and then they adopted 2 more after him. He smiles

*For the purpose of this assignment and to keep the privacy of participates, the interviewee will be addressed as such, or as Person A.

Face-to-face interviews will be interview guide approach where there will be an outline of topics and issues that the interviewer will cover with the participant (Babbie &Rubin, 1993). Having an outline it allows the researcher to compare responses between participants and it reduces the interviewer biases (Babbie & Rubin, 1993). An outline is constructed where it will guide the researcher with the participant from one concern to another but in a conversational approach (Babbie & Rubin, 1993). Moreover, a study without any set structure the researcher and participant can get side tracked and not answer the questions needed for the study research. The length of the interview will be approximately thirty minutes, but there will be no time restriction. The information will be recorded similar to a focus group, with a recording device and notes occasionally. Before analyzing the data, the researcher will examine his or her “own thoughts and feelings” because it’s a crucial process in understanding the participants (Babbie & Rubin, 1993, p.

For this mini-project, I interviewed my 72-year-old grandmother. My grandmother, Dominga, was born and raised in the Agua Caliente, El Salvador. She lived in a poor rural area where her parents owned a strip of land where they were able to own animals. She was born to parents who were Mestizo, of mixed European and indigenous descent. My grandmother was around my age in the 1960s, so I wanted to know what her everyday life as a woman was during that time.

I interviewed a social worker named Keri who enjoys her job, but it does have difficult situations. While working with her cases she knows her tolerates. In the field she continues to refresh the information to make sure no law or guidelines has changed. She was asked question about crisis and how she approaches the problem when they appear. She gave her preferences on certain type of crisis counseling. I asked her about the mental illness on the nature of crisis, what multicultural considerations when providing crisis services, and the future as a social worker and how crisis services are implemented.

Devon is 44 years old and is 6 feet and 4 inches. About. The gentleman is slim and looks healthy. Based on the interview he told me that he has become good at chess and has been working to patent his own hat. Therefore he has developed his business skills and math skills.

Being able to pick the right family was more difficult to do than I had originally thought it would be. I reflected on the readings from Leigh and one important thing that is said reminded me that during the interview, I needed to make sure that I was going to be able to not only understand what they are saying, but really hear their points of view without losing a sense of who I am as well as the beliefs that I have. In being able to hear and understand what is being said, I also needed to make sure that I was not passing judgement or categorizing them while they spoke. (Leigh, chapter 3, pgs 17-18). I feel that emotions can be raw without even starting the interview. I had no idea what their situation consists of, what some hidden struggles were, and to be

Many factors influence the well-being of the older adult population. As people advance through life, memory problems develop sometimes. Getting up and down out of a chair, and walking becomes difficult. At times assistance is needed for shopping or preparing meals. Cognitive impairments, nutrition, and falls are a few items I will be addressing in this paper.

Most of the people I spoke with explained that, sociology is to encourage others to do well in life.

“Problems researched with the use of appropriate methods greatly enhance the value of the research.” (Sekaran, 2003) Data can be collected through interviews, questionnaires, observations, and through other techniques, like projective tests. In even more detail, interviews can be conducted in a variety of different ways such as over the phone, through the computer, interviews through the electronic media, and face-to-face. Questionnaires can be conducted personally or administered electronically. “Interviewing, administering questionnaires, and observing people and phenomena are the three main data collection methods in survey research.” (Sekaran, 2003) As stated before, data can be collected in many different ways; however the value of the research is only greatly enhanced when personal opinions and bias is left out of the collection of data.

Whereas a structured interview follows a standardised format, in an unstructured interview the interviewer has complete freedom to vary the interview. Supporters argue that this brings a number of important advantages. Such as, rapport and sensitivity, the interviewee's views are clearer, the ability to check understanding, flexibility and the ability for the interviewer to explore unfamiliar topics. However, there are multiple disadvantages to using unstructured interviews in sociological research. Such as, practical problems, which include, time and sample size, training, and interpersonal skills, there are also issues with representativeness, reliability, quantification and validity.

In survey method research, participants answer questions administered through interviews or questionnaires. After participants answer the questions, researchers describe the responses given. In order for the survey to be both reliable and valid it is important that the questions are constructed properly. Questions should be written so they are clear and easy to comprehend.