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Evaluating the Effectiveness and Efficiency of Structured versus Unstructured Interviews

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Agarwal and Tanniru conducted a field experiment to evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of structured versus unstructured interviews, using both novice and experienced interviewers. The experiment was conducted to compare the efficiency and effectiveness of the cognitive interview with the standard information requirements interview. However, the experimental results did not indicate that structured interviews enhanced recall. This triggered the experiment using the Cognitive Interview.
This experiment is to test the effects that the Cognitive Interview has on memory and recall. Two hypotheses are tested in this experiment. The use of a theoretically grounded interview technique will provide a more efficient collection of …show more content…

By random, a reference librarian was interviewed using either technique by an interviewer trained in both.
The dependent variables: (1) the number of events elicited per each interview (efficiency), and (2) the degree of completeness of details recalled per event (effectiveness) were examined.
Cognitive interview was found to be both more effective and more efficient than standard interviewing techniques in eliciting episodic knowledge from reference librarians. In order for the cognitive interview to be considered an effective interviewing technique, more than one rater must determine that the degree of completeness of details of the events collected under the CI are higher than those collected under the SI.
All interviews were conducted in private rooms individually. The interviews were conducted at the institute of each patron. Ten students enrolled in a senior-level expert system class who received training on the SI and the CI during regularly scheduled class time. No one involved knew of the details of the experiment or the types of techniques being tested. Interviewers received course credit and monetary compensation for their participation.
The interview has long been part of the systems professional’s repertoire of elicitation tools, used extensively in both requirements analysis and knowledge acquisition. It is said that there are some drawbacks associated with the use of interviews. Open interviews are seen as

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