Interviews- Methods of Data Collection

· In general: Participants will be introduced to the interview as a specific methodology of data collection, be it in qualitative (f.i. expert interviews) or quantitative form (f.i. surveys). Interviews are used in a large variety of academic fields, ranging from the social sciences and humanities to medicine, psychology, business, marketing, or agriculture. They are especially useful for studies which 1) want to investigate human behavior, convictions, attitudes, or socio-statistical characteristics, or 2) rely on information held by specific persons.

· At first, interviews will be put into the context of the different phases of a research project and possible methodologies for collecting data.

· Then, different kinds of studies for which interviews can be used will be identified as well as different types of interviews.

· Afterwards, it will be analyzed what the researcher can measure with different question forms and their respective strengths and weaknesses will be scrutinized.

· Thereafter, the formulation of questions and the conceptualization of a questionnaire will be discussed and exercised.

· Eventually, the selection of interviewees and the problem of data bias will be tackled.

· Please note: The workshop focuses on the collection of data. The issue of data analysis will only be broached marginally.

· Target group:
Firstly, the workshop addresses researchers who use or intend to use interviews in their research. Secondly, it addresses researchers who use data which other scholars collected by using interviews and want to critically scrutinize their validity and reliability. Thirdly, it also addresses everyone who wants to know what is behind the statistics and numbers we frequently encounter in academia as well as in our daily life (f.i. “60 percent of Egyptians believe…” or “Less than half of the Egyptian population is frequently going to…”).