Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
7. Both the interviewer and respondent become
further educated.
8. Misinterpretation could be avoided.
7. An interviewer should always try to create an
atmosphere of mutual understanding, belief,
and faith.
In spite of the above strengths, there are also
certain weaknesses of a personal interview
method of data collection:
1. It is very expensive and time consuming, par-
ticularly when the area of study is big.
2. The whole method of a personal interview
depends on the quality of an interviewer.
As such for a big study, one needs to employ
a number of interviewers, wherein they differ
among themselves and thereby causing
differences in the quality of information.
3. Nonresponse from potential respondents like
higher officials in the government/private
machineries is one of the major problems
with this type of interview.
4. The presence of an interviewer may overstim-
ulate or may cause shyness to the respondent,
thereby hampering the quality of the data.
5. Selecting, providing training, and supervising
an interviewer are the challenging tasks of a
researcher.
7.1.2.2 Telephonic Interview
With the advancement of communication
technology, telephonic interview is gaining
momentum. An interviewer should contact a
respondent over a telephone. Telephonic methods
of interviews include phone calls, SMS, and
emails. Respondents are asked to provide a suitable
time slot during which they could be talked over the
telephone. During the interview, questions are
asked and responses may be noted or recorded;
the process facilitates the interview of the
respondents at different places at different times.
Short message service (SMS) and multimedia mes-
sage service (MMS) are also used for interviewing
over telephones, and an interview may also be
conducted through emails. Questionnaires can be
sent as an email attachment to which the respon-
dent replied. Like the other methods, a telephonic
interviewing method has merits and demerits.
Merits
1. It is faster than any conventional method
of personal interviewing or data collections
through questionnaires or schedules.
2. It is cost-efficient.
3. It is easily manageable, no questions of train-
ing or supervising the field staff, etc.
4. People located at distant places over the
world may be contacted for the purpose of
the interview.
5. It is lesser time consuming than the other
methods.
6. Telephonic interview can be recorded.
Criteria for Better Interviewing
1. An interviewer should be selected carefully;
only those persons who are well acquainted
and honest and have the intelligence to cap-
ture the essence of the interview should be
selected for this purpose.
2. A selected interviewer should be trained ade-
quately so that there would be no ambiguity
arises in understanding the questions and the
expected responses.
3. An interviewer should be well behaved, hon-
est, sincere, hard working, and impartial.
Interviewing is an art of extracting the inner
heart of the respondent.
4. An interviewer must enjoy the confidence and
faith of the respondent.
5. An interviewer's approach must be friendly,
courteous, conversational, and unbiased.
6. An interviewer should refrain from asking
undesirable and unwarranted questions.
Demerits
1. All intended respondents may not have a tele-
phone connection.
2. Sometimes it is difficult to collect the tele-
phone numbers of all potential respondents.
3. Respondents may refuse to response without
facing the interviewers.
