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This research paper undertakes to examine some of the traditional concerns in using the telephone interview in social research. The purpose is not to lay these concerns to final rest, but to encourage systematic exploration of the limitations and advantages of the telephone interview as a data collection tool. As the number of telephones increases it might be expected that telephone interviews would assume a greater role as an approach to data collection. Methodological limitations inherent within present telephone technology are evident. If one is, for example, interested in the questional context of facial expressions, hand movements, smiles or frowns, or similar characteristics, then the telephone interview is clearly not an appropriate method. It is probably within the context of what is commonly called "survey research" that the use of the telephone holds promise of becoming an important research tool. The discussion of the various methodological issues that follows, stresses the importance of defining the research problem in determining the appropriateness of the telephone interview.

In the article, the author explains the meaning of popular science. He states that the building of science is a more chaotic process. The author is concerned with the individual acts of generating a new idea that sum up into the body of scientific information. To do research is to be in a special state of grace. He maintains that American archival journals suffer for not recording more of the raw experience. He proposes a sort of interview in which good scientists and engineers talk in a very personal way about how they do science and what it means to them.

No research results are any better than the quality of the data. As scientists, survey researchers must share the problems of measuring, understanding, and controlling bias in their data. The potential sources of bias in survey research are many and varied. They may appear at any one or all of the several stages of the data gathering process. For example, they may occur in the selection of the sample, in the development of measuring instruments, in securing the responses of the persons in the sample, in the respondents replies, in the recording of the responses, and in processing the recorded responses. Even beyond the data collection process, bias may occur, as in the misapplication of statistics and in the interpretation of data. Progress has been made toward identifying and controlling sources of bias in some of these stages of the research process. Perhaps most progress has been made in the sampling stage and in the statistical application stage. Much advance has been made also in the reduction of error at the instrumentation stage. However, considerable work remains to be done on the problems of error control, especially biasing error, at all stages of the research between instrumentation and statistical analysis. This includes getting full response from the sample, accurate answers to the questions asked, and accurate recording and processing of responses. The accumulation of bias from these and other possible sources may be referred to as total or aggregate bias. The total bias may then be divided for analytical purposes into the following types: (1) sampling bias, (2) instrumentation bias, (3) non-response bias, (4) respondent bias, (5) interviewer bias, and (6) processing bias. This paper is an effort to deal with the problem of respondent bias in survey research. That respondent bias is a potent force in diminishing the validity and reliability of results from survey research is well recognized. The recognition of this condition has led to an enormous amount of activity aimed at isolating factors which determine this weakness of research results. These studies, by and large, have dealt with the problem of determining the direction of respondent bias, its magnitude, the speearle variables which produce respondent bias, and the effect of such bias on research results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on the research interview and its measurement. Not only is it the most often used tool in social work practice, the interview is also an essential device in social work research. Information can be gathered by this means when no other method is either adequate or possible, yielding richer qualitative data than many other tools and techniques. However, in spite of its important qualities, the interview as a method for collecting original data in research has one major disadvantage: it fails to provide quantitative data for comparison and measurement of interviews. This paper reports attempts to measure a series of forty-eight recorded interviews together with the methods of question formulation and recording development in an attitude study undertaken by the writer in rehabilitation settings in the New York metropolitan area. The study dealt with two groups of individuals with visible and non-visible physical impairments. The primary purpose of the interviews was to collect data about the subjects' attitudes toward their disability. All forty-eight subjects were male adults of various socioeconomic levels, educational backgrounds, and occupations. Each subject had been interviewed by the same interviewer twice prior to the recorded interview to gather biographical data.

The article focuses on sex effects in the interviewing of young adults. Although periodic assessments of the perils of using an interview format to collect data have been made, many social scientists feel that the advantages of the interview outweigh its disadvantages in a wide variety of research situations. Incumbent on those who utilize the interview, however, are the responsibilities of identifying the situations where problems in measurement could occur in the interview, as well as ascertaining the extent of these problems should they occur. The focus of this paper is on the first of these responsibilities-identifying situations where measurement problems can arise due to the effect, in this case, of the interviewer on the subjects' responses. In a number of previous studies interviewer effects have been shown to be related to ascriptive characteristics of the interviewer such as age, sex, and race, as well as to somewhat less apparent traits including the interviewer's social class, his own attitudes about the interview items, and his psychological temperament for the interviewer's role. Other researchers have approached the problem of interview validity from a different angle by trying to identify which types of questions were most susceptible to interview effects.

Recent attempts to develop symbolic interactionist methodologies have sought to treat the interview as an object of sociological enquiry as well as a research instrument. But their accounts in terms of interactional rules and presentation of selves are primarily concerned with reactions to interviews, and the display of the interview setting in talk is treated as a resource rather than as a topic for investigation. Since such a reliance on the availability of phenomena is also a feature of the `natural attitude', lay and sociological usages of the interview share striking similarities. More specifically, both employ the documentary method of interpretation and, in order to claim a correspondence between theft accounts and some external reality, use remedies to counter misunderstandings. On the basis of tapes of selection interviews, the paper examines the competences and policies routinely adopted to provide for the contexting of talk as interview talk. Given that talk serves to display its setting (this is its reflexive character), talk becomes interview talk as members' managed accomplishment of a knowable context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses data collection via the use of a consumer panel. The focus is on whether consumer panels become biased over time as a result of repeated questioning. The group used in the study consists of farm families in Indiana. Results are presented from a questionnaire, which was sent to farmers and measured their opinion of farm supply chain stores and retail farm cooperatives. Questions included whether these stores pay enough local and national taxes, the type of financial system they support and whether they were for profit or non-profit. Results do not show a bias resulting from panel participation.

Ten years ago the authors surveyed the problem of interviewer bias and concluded that it was one of the major sources of error in survey research. A recent survey of the subject confirms the continued existence of the problem. Some significant gains have been achieved in dealing with interviewer bias during the intervening decade, but the same problems still exist to a major degree and relatively little is being done to solve them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses on the a research program conducted by John A. Hornaday and John Aboud supported by the Babson College Board of Research. The program is designed to identify and measure the personal characteristics of those persons who successfully started a new business which led the development of a structured interview guide sheet and standardized objective test. The study has the goal to develop a valid objective test and that will have simple format to ease the administration and interpretation.

Survey research can be seen as one component of the social communication network. This perspective highlights several aspects of the role played by polls in out society, It also suggests some problems in the present and some directions for the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors of some studies have been concerned with problems of establishing and maintaining research relationships from the point of view of the research worker. It is the aim of this article to study the point of view of the subjects of the research. It seeks to answer the following questions: (1) how do they react to being interviewed, observed, and in general, researched upon; (2) what are some of the common defenses they seem to employ, and; (3) why do they employ these defenses?

The article presents a study that analyzed the questionnaires completed by representatives of the College of Examiners for the Advanced Placement Examination in Biology based on interviews with instructors of introductory biology courses. The said questionnaire aimed to determine the content of introductory biology courses, the organization of introductory biology courses, the degree of correspondence between the Advanced Placement course description and beginning biology courses, and the evaluation of the Advanced Placement Examination in Biology. Results revealed by the survey lead to a revision in the college course description.

2 field studies of high school students' sense of obligation to nonclass school activities are reported. Sense of obligation is conceived as mediating some relations between student and school environment, and is define as a personal feeling of "I ought to ..." or "I must ...," i.e., a personal constraint, with reference to attending and helping with group activities. In 1961 (N = 40) and 1965 (N = 80), samples of marginal (poorly suited) and regular (better suited) students in small and large schools were interviewed concerning "reasons for or pulls toward" attending selected nonclass activities, and responses were coded into categories indicating sense of obligation. Marginal students in small schools reported as much sense of obligation as regular students, while marginal students in large schools reported little, if any. Theoretical and methodological implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on the elicitation of information and response biases of repressors, sensitizers and neutrals in behavior prediction. Repressor, sensitizer, and neutral judges predicted the responses of neutral targets on the Adjective Check List. Each judge was paired with a neutral target and interviewed him with the aim of getting to know him as well as possible. Hence, each judge elicited information on which to base his predictions. The groups did not differ with regard to content of information elicited or relevance of the information for criterion responses. Differences in predictions were noted which were consistent with expectations based upon the response biases of the judges. It was concluded that group differences in behavior prediction cannot be accounted for by differential elicitation of information in interpersonal interaction, but instead are determined by response biases. While groups differed in degree of activity in eliciting information from targets, the nature of the information did not differ with regard to interview content measures or judged relevance of the information for the predictive task. Hence, group differences in prediction cannot be accounted for by differential elicitation of information in interpersonal interaction within the limits of this study.

In this report of a study conducted at the Children's Diagnostic Center in Denver, Colorado, the family interview at In take was used in randomly selected cases, the result being a vivid understanding of the family members' ways of Interacting with each other. Although the families and their psychopathologies varied considerably, the author found this method diagnostically useful in several ways, which are discussed and illustrated by cases from the study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on information accrual and clinical judgment. The process of social casework may be seen as a continuing series of assessments, observations, and decisions made by the caseworker. From the very first moments of an initial interview the caseworker is confronted with varying amounts and types of client information, which he uses to form tentative diagnoses and treatment strategies. Such clinical judgments form a crucial part of casework and other therapeutic disciplines and it is for this reason that in recent years investigators in social work and psychology have turned their attention to studying the clinical judgment process. Within the study of clinical judgment an area of relevance to practitioners pertains to the effect of increased amounts of client information on the reliability of clinical judgments. The preponderance of empirical evidence thus far accumulated in clinical judgment research shows that clinicians do not effectively use increased amounts of information to improve either the reliability or validity of their judgments. This finding is in contradistinction to what is found in psychophysical research, in which an increase in stimulus information generally leads to increased discriminative ability. However, there has been little clinical judgment research on the effects of the relevance of information on judgments.

This article presents information on the researcher carried in sensitive subject areas like in terminal illness. According to the author social workers pride themselves on their knowledge and skill in the interviewing process. While they do not necessarily claim exclusive possession of the mastery of conducting meaningful interviews, they do believe that this is their forte. This is particularly true in regard to the research interview process. It is interesting to note that in research enterprises calling for "research interviews in depth," involving the eliciting of feeling tones of respondents, social workers are increasingly being asked to conduct the interviews. There is recognition that the professionally trained social worker, with his experience in dealing with the social functioning of individuals and groups, has much to offer in this phase of research which is aimed at qualitative evaluations of respondents' responses rather than purely quantitative measurements. Indeed, it may be said that in this area the social work practitioner has made a major contribution to research.

This article presents information on some applications and principles regarding research interviews on issues related to sensitive areas like terminal illness, low-income families and poor people. The first basic principle of interviewing in sensitive areas: Most human beings-a-adults or adolescents are likely to share significant, intimate personal data at a time of stress if the data sought in the interview are related to the stress from the front of view of the respondent. This hypothesis was substantiated in connection with the study of hospital patients and was further confirmed in the case of the teenagers, who were not only interested and eager to talk to adult interviewers but also shared with them the kinds of personal details usually discussed only among peers. Additional confirmation may be found in the fact that in the hospital study it was necessary to approach only 102 patients in order to obtain 100 interviews in the teenage study, only 610 teenagers to obtain 600 interviews.

This article presents information on the research carried interviewing with low-income families. The psychiatric heritage of social work accounts in part for the widespread professional skepticism about the use of research instruments for gathering data in the so-called "sensitive areas" of human functioning. Social workers learn early in their professional career of the hazards involved in probing for intimate information without the benefit of knowledge of a subject's personality structure and without an adequate relationship between interviewee and interviewer. Reservations concerning the wisdom of asking for information on touchy subjects are extended not merely to cases involving psychopathology but to people in general. For the purpose often study seventy-five families out of a population of 300 households were interviewed to collect data on pre- and postmarital variables comprising background information on family of orientation, acquaintance engagement period, circumstances under which the marriage was consummated, social, emotional, and sexual adjustment at the beginning of the family life cycle, attitudes toward first child, crisis situation at various stages of the life cycle, ways of meeting crises, and present family functioning.

In this article, extracts from an article on Le Play by F.J. Gould, are given. Le Play was born near Harfleur on the Norman coast on April 11, 1806. He studied at Paris and at Havre. A most diligent explorer he was of things relating to the soil, the rocks, the minerals; but as it is seen, he never forgot humanity. As a young fellow, he gave his friend St. Leger, lessons for which he took pay. This Frenchman was small of stature; a stout walker; willing to eat the most frugal meals, and to camp by starlight in the warmth of the fire of gathered branches. Le Play followed the art of human description and portrayal. He wanted to show the world how the European workman lived, and what was his natural basis. For this purpose, he traveled 210,000 miles, often on foot. He visited Germany, Belgium, Spain, England, Scotland, Ireland, Russia, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Austria, Hungary, Italy, Switzerland, Turkey. In sunshine or tempest, heat or cold, he searched and researched. He interviewed employers, administrators, organizers, heads of institutions, and chiefly the artisans and peasants, making notes of the people's food, housing, customs, habits, recreations, and environment. He went on these pilgrimages of research for twenty-five years.

The article reports on the award given to Harold T. Christensen, from Purdue University, by the National Council on Family Relations. Christensen, was the third recipient of the Ernest Watson Burgess Research Award, an award given to individuals who had made outstanding research and contributions on studies which focuses on family issues. Christensen have pioneered on the method of record linkage to overcome limitations of interviews and questionnaires in gathering accurate information related to issues on premarital conception and child spacing.

The article presents information on the book "The Focused Interview," by R.K. Merton, M. Fiske and P.L. Kendall.