Conducting Research Interviews

When I first thought about it, I didn’t think I had ever conducted any kind of interview. But once I thought about it for a while I remembered that as a freshman in high school I had to interview someone in a career I was interested in. I still remember it pretty well, though, because I was so nervous that it took me hours before I could get the courage to call the radio DJ I had decided to talk to. The whole thing went well, mostly because he could tell I didn’t know what I was doing, and he was great at interviewing, so he helped me out a lot. The part that needed the most improvement was my questions that I had set up for the interview. I realized afterwards that I had asked some of the wrong questions, so I didn’t get all the information that I wanted. In chapter 6 of our book it tells us that the interview guide will serve as a “road map” for getting the right information. At the time I didn’t realize there were so many questions that you could develop, such as primary versus secondary or open versus closed. Any advice I have for my fellow classmates would have to be that you need to really research types of questions you need to ask in order to receive the information you need. You have to direct the way the interview is going to go.