Pilot Interview

I believe my inquiry will take a qualitative approach, although I will be using surveys and quantitative inquiry tools to insure my inquiry questions and research include a high volume of participants. I believe Surveys and observations to be a good starting point for my inquiry, which I will follow up with detailed, more in depth discussions from interviews. My inquiry is going to involve observing dance classes and as Bell states. 

‘You can follow up on these ideas, probe responses and investigate motifs and feelings’ (Bell, 2005, p.157).

This is how I can see my inquiry research undergoing.  I conducted my Pilot interview on a friend whom is a performer and also a teacher. I explained that the information would not be used or published as I was merely piloting the tools, not conducting and analysing research. I choice to have a semi structured interview with four set questions and a few topics to cover to make sure I did not loss direction. Taking this approach allowed me to follow other paths and areas that I may not have considered had I only set structured questions. Non direct interviews may also have this result but interviews are time consuming, although I can see the benefits I also have to be practical. I conducted the interview at my friend’s house; I think it is important to choose neutral ground as it makes all participates feel comfortable, which will insure for a more positive interview without results being affected by the environment or the way the interviewee felt.

I firstly had to decide on my questions all of which had more of an open approach.

I found this process very time consuming although easier than writing questions for my survey probably because they were asking more about how people felt or defined situations. I used one closed question but will mostly use these for surveys.  I felt it would be far more beneficial to let the interviewee have the freedom to freely discuss with me. I was stopped a few times as the interviewee felt I was being misleading. I found it difficult to not be leading when I was given the freedom to follow up on her thoughts, so it might be useful for me to have more set questions in order to remain unbiased.

During the interview I took notes, I should have used a tape recorder as the interview lost the feeling of a relaxed discussion as I could not take notes and participate. I thing tape recording will definitely be the most efficient in capturing data. I have also considered using Skype to conduct interviews, arranging meetings can be very time consuming. Skype allows us to interact instantly, meaning we can arrange interviews at convenient times and increase the amount we do. Overall interviews are time consuming but are going to be a very useful inquiry tool when conducting research for my inquiry.