SURVEY PLANNING
3.
Interview or Individual Survey?
 Time
and resources will vary depending on what kind of survey
your group chooses to create. There are many ways you can
develop your survey and there are benefits and drawbacks
to each.
Interview Survey
An interview survey is a survey designed so that one person
asks another each question and records their response. This
is a more time-intensive method, the interviewers will need
to be trained (see p.13) and more time will be needed for
each survey to be answered. A drawback to interview surveys
is that they don't allow the survey to be completely anonymous.
In addition, the interviewer can influence the way someone
answers the questions, even unintentionally. The benefits
of interview surveys are that they let the person answering
the survey develop trust with the interviewer and you have
a higher chance that every question will be answered. There
are other reasons you may want to use an interview format:
-
Cultural
sensitivity
You may want to use an interview format if you know that
the people who will be answering it may need more time
to develop trust of your group, or if they already know
your group and are more likely to answer if they are certain
that it is your group who will be using the responses
to move a campaign. It is important that the interviewers
are familiar and culturally competent with the community.
Individual Surveys
Individual surveys are surveys answered by the person on their
own. Individual surveys require much less time to answer and
people are needed only to distribute and collect the surveys.
-
Will people need
to refer to their records?
If you are asking questions that involve personal finances
or other information that may require the respondent to
consult their cash stubs, bank statements or other records,
you may want to create a take-home survey.
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