语言教学 | 普渡大学写作教学系列Research&Citation5-Conducting Primary Research3

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6、Creating Good Interview and Survey Questions

If you are conducting primary research using surveys or interviews, one of the most important things to focus on is creating good questions.

When creating questions you want to avoid:

Biased questions

Biased questions are questions that encourage your participants to respond to the question in a certain way. They may contain biased terminology or are worded in a biased way.

Biased question: Don't you agree that campus parking is a problem?

Revised question: Is parking on campus a problem?

Questions that assume what they ask

These questions are a type of biased question and lead your participants to agree or respond in a certain way.

Biased question: There are many people who believe that campus parking is a problem. Are you one of them?

Revised question: Do you agree or disagree that campus parking is a problem?

Double-barreled questions

A double-barreled question is a one that has more than one question embedded within it. Participants may answer one but not both, or may disagree with part or all of the question.

Double-barreled question: Do you agree that campus parking is a problem and that the administration should be working diligently on a solution?

Revised question: Is campus parking a problem? (If the participant responds yes): Should the administration be responsible for solving this problem?

Confusing or wordy questions

Make sure your questions are not confusing or wordy. Confusing questions will only lead to confused participants, which leads to unreliable answers.

Confusing questions: What do you think about parking? (This is confusing because the question isn't clear about what it is asking--parking in general? The person's ability to park the car? Parking on campus?) Do you believe that the parking situation on campus is problematic or difficult because of the lack of spaces and the walking distances or do you believe that the parking situation on campus is ok? (This question is both very wordy and leads the participant.)

Revised question: What is your opinion of the parking situation on campus?

Questions that do not relate to what you want to learn

Be sure that your questions directly relate to what it is you are studying. A good way to do this is to ask someone else to read your questions or even test your survey out on a few people and see if the responses fit what you are looking for.

Unrelated questions: Have you ever encountered problems in the parking garage on campus? Do you like or dislike the bus system?

7、Observing

Observations are a type of primary research that involves spending time watching people or other creatures interact with each other and the world around them. Observations are used in nearly every scientific field and can be incredibly useful in gathering information.

Types of Participation

Before observing, consider how you as an observer may alter the event being observed.

• How fully will you participate in the event?

• Will you simply sit, watch, and take notes with no interaction?

• Will you interact with the participants?

• Will you become a participant yourself?

These different choices can radically change what you end up observing. The mere presence of an observer may alter the events--and if you interact with participants, you further risk changing what takes place. The other side to this is that by not participating in an event, you may not gain a complete understanding of that event.

How to Observe

When observing, it is especially important to separate observations from your feelings or reactions to observations. A good way to do this is to take your observations in a double-entry notebook. A double-entry notebook has two columns, one for what is directly observed and one is for what the observer interprets from the events. Here is an example:

Observation: The teacher walks around the circle and speaks to each student individually.

Interpretation: The teacher seems to want to make sure that each student understands the assignment.

If you are observing a group that is not found in public (such as a group of card players, a sports team, or a special-interest group), it may be wise to plan to spend multiple sittings with the group. This will allow the group some time to adjust to your presence (and hence, for you to get more accurate observations).

Recordings vs. Note-taking

How will you be observing? Will you be taking notes in a notebook? With a laptop? Will you be recording your observations in some way (with a cell phone, digital camera, video camera, digital recorder, etc.?)

How you choose to observe is another important consideration that can affect the quality and results of your observations. Remember that you cannot capture everything that takes place with a recording or even by taking detailed notes.

What to Observe

Observational skills require some practice! The key to being a good observer is to pay attention to the details of a situation, write as much as you can, and write it as detailed as possible.

Before you observe, you should consider how you will focus your observations--because you can't focus on everything!

8、Analysis

Analysis is a type of primary research that involves finding and interpreting patterns in data, classifying those patterns, and generalizing the results. It is useful when looking at actions, events, or occurrences in different texts, media, or publications. Analysis can usually be done without considering most of the ethical issues discussed in the overview, as you are not working with people but rather publicly accessible documents. Analysis can be done on new documents or performed on raw data that you yourself have collected.

Here are several examples of analysis:

• Recording commercials on three major television networks and analyzing race and gender within the commercials to discover some conclusion.

• Analyzing the historical trends in public laws by looking at the records at a local courthouse.

• Analyzing topics of discussion in chat rooms for patterns based on gender and age.

Methods

Analysis research involves several steps:

• Finding and collecting documents.

• Specifying criteria or patterns that you are looking for.

• Analyzing documents for patterns, noting number of occurrences or other factors.

9、Analyzing Your Primary Data

Now that you've collected your primary data, it's time to figure out what that data means and what you can learn from it. The keys to analyzing your data are to pull out information that is the most pertinent to your writing, information you can highlight and discuss, and information that will support your claims (if you are making any).

Interviews

Interviews are fairly easy to analyze, as you simply have to go back through the answers you received and decide how to use them within your writing. You can group the answers into categories and create a chart of how those answers may best fit within your paper or article.

If you recorded the interview with a tape or digital recorder, you may want to listen to it and type a transcript of the interview. Since transcription is a tedious process, only use this option if you need to.

Surveys

When analyzing surveys, you want to get the raw data into a form that you can manipulate. If you were using a numerical system or yes/no answer system for your survey, you may find it helpful to enter the results into a spreadsheet program such as Microsoft Excel. If the survey was an open-ended question style, see if you can fit your answers into categories of responses.

Observations

Observations are more difficult to analyze because when you are taking notes, you often write down everything that you see. Start by organizing your notes into categories or by some criteria. Once you have everything organized, see if you can make some generalizations about what you have observed.

Over-generalizing your results

Your first attempts at primary research will most likely include small groups of people and may not be representative of the population as a whole. It is important to remember not to over-generalize your findings--in other words, don't assume that your findings are necessarily true of every person within the group or every person in a society.

Triangulation of Data

One of the benefits of combining primary research with secondary research is data triangulation. Data triangulation is when a piece of data, a finding, or a generalization is able to be verified with several different research methods. This helps add to your credibility and makes your findings stronger.

For example, you are studying binge drinking on campus. You find national averages that indicate that 45% of college students binge-drink nationwide. You conduct your own research at the Purdue campus. You find that 47% of the individuals you surveyed drink; you also interview a counselor on campus who reports that approximately 1/3 of the students they see suffer from a binge-drinking problem. Thus, your results from an interview with an expert and your own survey support the national averages.

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