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8.11 Summary 225

If you feel intimidated by these challenges, start small. A simple, fully struc-
tured interview with closed questions will help you get started. As you become more
comfortable with writing questions, talking to interviewees, and analyzing data, you
might move on to interviews with less structure and greater challenges. Don't be
ashamed to bring in some outside help. A colleague who is knowledgeable and expe-
rienced in interviewing can be an invaluable aide.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. The trust required to successfully conduct an interview may be difficult to
achieve under certain circumstances. If honest answers to difficult questions may
have repercussions for your interviewees, they might be less than forthcoming.
If you were interested in developing a tool that would encourage teens to pay for
downloading music rather than illegally trading copyrighted songs, you might
consider interviewing teens to understand their attitudes and practices. However,
they may be reluctant to share information with you, for fear that their parents
would learn of any inappropriate activity that they have been involved in. As
parental consent is likely to be required for the participation of underage teens,
these concerns are not necessarily invalid. How might you build trust with these
teens? How might you evaluate their comments to determine whether they are
being truthful?
2. The development of a tool to encourage teens to pay for downloaded music
presents some challenges in data gathering. If teens are using home computers
for potentially inappropriate activities, parents may feel that they have a
legitimate interest and concern in what their children are doing. To better
understand the problem, you might decide to interview parents as well
as teens. Would you interview them separately or together? What sort of
questions would you ask parents and how would they differ from questions
that you might ask of teens? Would you use one-to-one interviews or focus
groups? Why?
3. Interviews can become awkward if the interviewees start asking difficult
questions about the research. Imagine you are interviewing hospital equipment
repair technicians about their practices for recording their workflow, including
repairs completed, time spent on each repair, and related tasks. What should
you do if the workers' concern for their job security leads them to ask tough
questions about why the data is being collected and what it will be used for?
If you know that management is trying to collect data that might be used
to raise expectations and workload or to reduce staff, what should you tell
the technicians? How can you resolve your responsibility to the client (the
management) who is paying the bills, while showing appropriate respect for the
workers you are interviewing?