7/27/2019 30408432-MI0039

1/14

Master of Business Administration-MBA Semester 4

ASSIGNMENT SET1

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY - MI0039

Question 1:Warigon is a retail company and they want to automate the payment system.

Assume that you are the design engineer of that company. What are thefactors that you would consider while designing the electronic paymentsystem?

Answer 1:

Designing Electronic Payment SystemsThe following factors like non technical in nature, that must be consider whiledesigning the electronic payment system for the retail company to automate the

payment system:

Privacy. A user expects to trust in a secure system; just as the telephone is a safeand private medium free of wiretaps and hackers, electronic communication mustmerit equal trust.

Security. A secure system verifies the identity of two-party transactions through"user authentication" and reserves flexibility to restrict information/services throughaccess control. Tomorrow's bank robbers will need no getaway cars-just a computerterminal, the price of a telephone call, and a little ingenuity. Millions of dollars have

been embezzled by computer fraud. No systems are yet fool-proof, althoughdesigners are concentrating closely on security.

Intuitive interfaces. The payment interface must be as easy to use as a telephone.Generally speaking, users value convenience more than anything.

Database integration. With home banking, for example, a customer wants to playwith all his accounts. To date, separate accounts have been stored on separatedatabases. The challenge before banks is to tie these databases together and toallow customers access to any of them while keeping the data up-to-date and errorfree.

Brokers. A "network banker" -someone to broker goods and services, settleconflicts, and facilitate financial transactions electronically-must be in place.

Pricing. One fundamental issue is how to price payment system service. Forexample, should subsidies be used to encourage users to shift from one form ofpayment to another, from cash to bank payments, from paper: based to e-cash. Theproblem with subsidies is the potential waste of resources, as money may beinvested in systems that will not be used. Thus investment in systems not only might

7/27/2019 30408432-MI0039

2/14

not be recovered but substantial ongoing operational subsidies will also benecessary. On the other hand, it must be recognized that without subsidies, it isdifficult to price all services affordably .

Standards. Without standards, the welding of different payment users in differentnetworks and different systems is impossible. Standards en at interoperability, giving

users the ability to buy and receive information, regardless of which bank ismanaging their money. None of these hurdles are insurmountable. Most will be

jumped within t next few years. These technical problems, experts hope, will besolved as technology is improved and experience is gained. The biggest questionconcern how customers will take to a paperless world.

Question 2:The four Ps concept in marketing are the four major ingredients of a

traditional marketing mix directed at the customer or target market. List and

explain the four Ps of marketing? Are the 4 Ps really applicable to Internetmarketing? How?

Answer 2:

4 Ps of marketing :1. Product

2. Place3. Price

4. Promotion

Explanation :

1. PriceThe price is the amount of money a customer pays for the product or service. The

price is very significant as it governs the companys profit and therefore existence.

Modifying the price has an intense impact on the marketing strategy and, contingent

on the price elasticity of the product, it will frequently affect the demand and sales aswell. The price that the marketer sets should balance the other elements of the

marketing mix.

2. Product

The product is the simplest idea. It is an item or service that fulfills what a consumerneeds or wants. Your product can literally be anything, even an idea. You must have aconcrete grasp on what the product is, however, before you can successfully market it.

3. Promotion

Promotion can be all of the methods of communication that a marketer may use to

deliver information to various people about the product. Promotion is made up ofthings like: advertising, public relations, personal selling, viral and word-of-mouth,

7/27/2019 30408432-MI0039

3/14

and sales promotion. Promotion is essentially how you get the word out about your

product or service.

4. Place

Place is all about providing the product at a location which is convenient for

consumers to access. Today, that is frequently online. Place also has a lot to do withdistribution, or getting the product to the customer. Several approaches such as

intensive distribution, selective distribution, exclusive distribution and franchising can

be applied by the marketer to match the other parts of the marketing mix.

The four Ps can help you become a better marketer by understanding the simplified balanceof marketing products or services. Once you have a good understanding of these four aspects,

you can have more success in marketing your products or services.

- See more at: http://netprofitstoday.com/blog/the-four-ps-of-marketing/#sthash.eegSfVWB.dpuf

Q4. Website is the most important front end tool in the online marketing. It provides the

interactive mode of operation to the user. Define what is a website? Analyze the

structure of a website.

(defining the website 1 mark, diagram- 2 marks, analyzing with the justification- 7

marks)

Answer : Website :

A webpage is a document, typically written in plain text interspersed with formatting

instructions of Hypertext Markup Language (HTML, XHTML). A webpage may incorporateelements from other websites with suitable markup anchors.

Analyzing the structure of Website :

Browsing and page creation are two fundamental forms of Web usage. The two activities areinherently related, in large part through the complex link topology of the WWW; patterns of

browsing and information discovery are based fundamentally on the ways in which pages areconnected through the construction of hyperlinks. Links carry considerable meaning: a link to

another page, especially on another site, encodes a valuable type of human judgement. We

have been investigating link structure as a way of understanding its relation to the process of

searching for information, its role in the implicit communities that page creators define, andits implications for the understanding of social behavior on the Web.

Hubs, Authorities, and Communities. There is, clearly, no explicit global scheme that

controls the construction of Web pages and hyperlinks; how then can we discern high-levelforms of structure from the link topology? In our work, we have found that the notion of

authority provides a valuable perspective from which to consider this issue. A topic withbroad representation on the WWW contains a number of prominent, authoritative pages, and

structure emerges from the way in which such authorities are implicitly ``endorsed'' through

hyperlinks. Modeling the mechanism by which authority is conferred on the WWW is itself achallenging problem. In many cases, authoritative pages on a common topic do not endorse

one another directly -- Microsoft and Netscape are both good authorities for the topic of ``web

7/27/2019 30408432-MI0039

4/14

browsers,'' but they do not link to one another -- and so often they can only be grouped

together through an intermediate layer of relatively anonymous hub pages, which link to

multiple, thematically related authorities. Thus, hubs and authorities are distinct types ofpages that exhibit a natural form of symbiosis: a good hub points to many good authorities,

while a good authority is pointed to by many good hubs. Note that a good hub may not even

be pointed to by any page; in other words, some of the most valuable structural contributions

to the Web are being made by relatively unrecognized individuals.

We feel that this two-level model of hubs and authorities is appropriate to a domain asheterogeneous as the Web, where individuals, organizations, and large commercial enterprises

create hyperlinked content with different (and often conflicting) objectives in a common

environment. The model also provides a natural way to expose structure among both the set ofhubs, who often do not know directly of one another's existence, and among the set of

authorities, who often do not directly acknowledge one another's existence. We refer to a

densely interconnected set of hubs and authorities as a community. Note that our use of the

term ``community'' is not meant to imply that these structures have been constructed in acentralized or planned fashion. Rather, our experiments with the Web's link structure suggest

that communities of hubs and authorities are a recurring consequence of the way in whichcreators of WWW pages link to one another in the context of topics of widespread interest.

The notion of using link information to define measures of ``importance,'' as we do in

identifying authoritative pages, has antecedents in the study of social networks, citation

analysis, and recent approaches to hypertext information retrieval. Two such approachesrelated to ours are the influence weightmethodology of Pinski and Narin, from the field of

citation analysis, and thePageRankalgorithm of Brin and Page for the WWW. The models

underlying these techniques form an interesting contrast to ours. They posit frameworks inwhich one's importance is determined by the extent to which one is referred to by other

importantsources; they do not incorporate a notion ofhubs. As discussed above, we feel that

our model for the interaction between authorities and hubs captures some of the crucialfeatures of the Web's social organization: authority very often ``flows'' between highly visiblenodes only through an intervening set of hub pages.

Styles of Linking and Community Formation. One can find densely linked collections of

hubs and authorities in a remarkably diverse range of settings on the WWW. Because such

collections have an intrinsic definition in terms of the link structure, we can identify themeven in the absence of a specific topic description. This suggests a promising approach to

WWW categorization: Rather than assuming an a priori collection of subjects, we can let the

link-based communities themselves define the prevailing topics, niches, and user populations

of interest on the WWW. It is important to bear in mind that the issue here is not simply to

partition the WWW into focused groups of this sort; the full representation of any such groupon the WWW is typically enormous, and our small set of related authorities must serve the

critical function of providing a compact yet informative representation of a much larger

underlying population.

In order to fully realize these possibilities, we need to further deepen our understanding of the

many styles in which users create hyperlinks. We see recurrent contrasts between thestructures of communities that have primarily academic, commercial, or governmental

7/27/2019 30408432-MI0039

5/14

representation on the Web; the style of linking in a structure such as a corporate intranet

stretches our basic notions even further. We also see that communities on the Web often exist

to extents disproportionate to their presence in the ``real'' world.

Inferring Global Structure through Sampling. Although our goals are to infer notions of

structure that apply in aglobalsense on the WWW, we have developed analysis techniques

that operate on carefully chosensamples of only a few thousand Web pages at a time. Indeed,we find that our techniques typically extract the greatest degree of orderly structure in the

context of topics for which the overall number of relevant pages, and the density ofhyperlinking, is the largest. As a means for better understanding some of these phenomena,

we believe it would be extremely valuable to develop probabilistic models of page and

hyperlink creation that contain enogh structure to capture certain global properties of theWWW, and yet are clean enough to allow for concrete analysis. Such models could serve as a

testbed for studying the effectiveness of link-based analysis on the WWW, and potentially for

suggesting new methods of using links to study the structure of hypertext.

Links, Traffic, and Browsing Patterns. We began by observing that the activities of

browsing and linking are tightly coupled, and that the way in which the link structure of theWeb has evolved has, in large part, determined the style in which people navigate it. Webelieve that browsing and search can be further enhanced by an awareness of Web

communities. A few search engines are beginning to use link information, but effective tools

can be built into browsers too. For example, simply presenting pages pointing to the page

being browsed can lead a user to good hub pages very quickly. Such a technique can also bean effective supplement to contrasting approaches based on collaborative filtering, which use

browsing logs in place of the quality judgments of hubs. In general, tools that incorporate

high-level information about the WWW link topology can naturally lead users to adopt more``link-aware'' browsing paradigms, and can aid in developing approaches to navigation that

make more effective use of global structural information.

Question 3: Mobile advertising has become a no-brainer for some brands to drive in-storetraffic and online revenue. This is possible only after the growth of Mcommerce. DefineMcommerce. Describe the areas of its potential growth and future of mCommerce

7/27/2019 30408432-MI0039

6/14

Answer 3:

M-commerce (mobile commerce) is the buying and selling of goods and services through

wireless handheld devices such ascellular telephoneand personal digital assistants (PDAs).

Known as next-generatione-commerce, m-commerce enables users to access the Internetwithout needing to find a place to plug in. The emerging technology behind m-commerce,

which is based on the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP), has made far greater strides in

Europe, where mobile devices equipped with Web-ready micro-browsers are much more

common than in the United States.

In order to exploit the m-commerce market potential, handset manufacturers such as Nokia,

Ericsson, Motorola, and Qualcomm are working with carriers such as AT&T Wireless andSprint to develop WAP-enabled smart phones, the industry's answer to the Swiss Army Knife,

and ways to reach them. UsingBluetoothtechnology, smart phones offer fax, e-mail, and

phone capabilities all in one, paving the way for m-commerce to be accepted by an

increasingly mobile workforce.

As content delivery over wireless devices becomes faster, more secure, and scalable, there iswide speculation that m-commerce will surpass wireline e-commerce as the method of choice

for digital commerce transactions. The industries affected by m-commerce include:

Financial services, which includes mobile banking (when customers use theirhandheld devices to access their accounts and pay their bills) as well as brokerage

services, in which stock quotes can be displayed and trading conducted from the same

handheld device

Telecommunications, in which service changes, bill payment and account reviews can

all be conducted from the same handheld device

Service/retail, as consumers are given the ability to place and pay for orders on-the-fly

Information services, which include the delivery of financial news, sports figures andtraffic updates to a single mobile device

IBM and other companies are experimenting with speech recognition software as a way to

ensure security for m-commerce transactions.

Question 4: Write an essay on the need for research design and explain the principles ofexperimental designs.

Answer 4:

The need for the methodologically designed research:

a)- In many a research inquiry, the researcher has no idea as to how accurate the results of his

study ought to be in order to be useful. Where such is the case, the researcher has to determinehow much inaccuracy may be tolerated. In a quite few cases he may be in a position to know

http://searchmobilecomputing.techtarget.com/definition/cellular-telephonehttp://searchmobilecomputing.techtarget.com/definition/cellular-telephonehttp://searchmobilecomputing.techtarget.com/definition/cellular-telephonehttp://searchcio.techtarget.com/definition/e-commercehttp://searchcio.techtarget.com/definition/e-commercehttp://searchcio.techtarget.com/definition/e-commercehttp://searchmobilecomputing.techtarget.com/definition/WAPhttp://searchmobilecomputing.techtarget.com/definition/WAPhttp://searchmobilecomputing.techtarget.com/definition/WAPhttp://searchmobilecomputing.techtarget.com/definition/Bluetoothhttp://searchmobilecomputing.techtarget.com/definition/Bluetoothhttp://searchmobilecomputing.techtarget.com/definition/Bluetoothhttp://searchmobilecomputing.techtarget.com/definition/Bluetoothhttp://searchmobilecomputing.techtarget.com/definition/WAPhttp://searchcio.techtarget.com/definition/e-commercehttp://searchmobilecomputing.techtarget.com/definition/cellular-telephone

7/27/2019 30408432-MI0039

7/14

how much inaccuracy his method of research will produce. In either case he should design his

research if he wants to assure himself of useful results.

b)- In many research projects, the time consumed in trying to ascertain what the data mean

after they have been collected is much greater than the time taken to design a research whichyields data whose meaning is known as they are collected.

c)- The idealized design is concerned with specifying the optimum research procedure thatcould be followed were there no practical restrictions.

Professor Fisher has enumerated three principles of experimental designs:

1. The principle of replication:

The experiment should be reaped more than once. Thus, each treatment is applied in manyexperimental units instead of one. By doing so, the statistical accuracy of the experiments is

increased. For example, suppose we are to examine the effect of two varieties of rice. For this

purpose we may divide the field into two parts and grow one variety in one part and the other

variety in the other part. We can compare the yield of the two parts and draw conclusion onthat basis. But if we are to apply the principle of replication to this experiment, then we first

divide the field into several parts, grow one variety in half of these parts and the other varietyin the remaining parts. We can collect the data yield of the two varieties and draw conclusionby comparing the same. The result so obtained will be more reliable in comparison to the

conclusion we draw without applying the principle of replication. The entire experiment can

even be repeated several times for better results. Consequently replication does not present

any difficulty, but computationally it does. However, it should be remembered that replicationis introduced in order to increase the precision of a study; that is to say, to increase the

accuracy with which the main effects and interactions can be estimated.

2. The principle of randomization:

It provides protection, when we conduct an experiment, against the effect of extraneous

factors by randomization. In other words, this principle indicates that we should design orplan the experiment in such a way that the variations caused by extraneous factors can all be

combined under the general heading of chance. For instance if we grow one variety of rice

say in the first half of the parts of a field and the other variety is grown in the other half, thenit is just possible that the soil fertility may be different in the first half in comparison to the

other half. If this is so, our results would not be realistic.

In such a situation, we may assign the variety of rice to be grown in different parts of the

field on the basis of some random sampling technique i.e., we may apply randomization

principle and protect ourselves against the effects of extraneous factors. As such, through the

application of the principle of randomization, we can have a better estimate of theexperimental error.

3. Principle of local control:

It is another important principle of experimental designs. Under it the extraneous factors, theknown source of variability, is made to vary deliberately over as wide a range as necessary

and this needs to be done in such a way that the variability it causes can be measured and

7/27/2019 30408432-MI0039

8/14

hence eliminated from the experimental error. This means that we should plan the experiment

in a manner that we can perform a two-way analysis of variance, in which the total variability

of the data is divided into three components attributed to treatments, the extraneous factor andexperimental error. In other words, according to the principle of local control, we first divide

the field into several homogeneous parts, known as blocks, and then each such block is

divided into parts equal to the number of treatments. Then the treatments are randomly

assigned to these parts of a block. In general, blocks are the levels at which we hold anextraneous factors fixed, so that we can measure its contribution to the variability of the data

by means of a two-way analysis of variance. In brief, through the principle of local control we

can eliminate the variability due to extraneous factors from the experimental error.

Question 5: Distinguish between primary and secondary of data collection. Explain the

features, uses, advantages and limitations of secondary data. Which is the best way of

collecting the data for research primary or secondary? Support your answer.

Answer 5:

Primary Data:

Primary sources are original sources from which the researcher directly collects data that have

not been previously collected e.g.., collection of data directly by the researcher on brand

7/27/2019 30408432-MI0039

9/14

awareness, brand preference, brand loyalty and other aspects of consumer behaviour from a

sample of consumers by interviewing them,. Primary data are first hand information collected

through various methods such as observation, interviewing, mailing etc.

Secondary Data:

These are sources containing data which have been collected and compiled for another

purpose. The secondary sources consists of readily compendia and already compiledstatistical statements and reports whose data may be used by researchers for their studies e.g.,

census reports , annual reports and financial statements of companies, Statistical statement,Reports of Government Departments, Annual reports of currency and finance published by

the Reserve Bank of India, Statistical statements relating to Co-operatives and Regional

Banks, published by the NABARD, Reports of the National sample survey Organization,Reports of trade associations, publications of international organizations such as UNO, IMF,

World Bank, ILO, WHO, etc., Trade and Financial journals newspapers etc.

Secondary sources consist of not only published records and reports, but also unpublished

records. The latter category includes various records and registers maintained by the firms and

organizations, e.g., accounting and financial records, personnel records, register of members,minutes of meetings, inventory records etc.

Features of Secondary Sources

Though secondary sources are diverse and consist of all sorts of materials, they have certain

common characteristics.

First, they are readymade and readily available, and do not require the trouble of constructing

tools and administering them.

Second, they consist of data which a researcher has no original control over collection and

classification. Both the form and the content of secondary sources are shaped by others.

Clearly, this is a feature which can limit the research value of secondary sources.

Finally, secondary sources are not limited in time and space. That is, the researcher usingthem need not have been present when and where they were gathered.

Use of Secondary Data

The second data may be used in three ways by a researcher. First, some specific information

from secondary sources may be used for reference purpose. For example, the generalstatistical information in the number of co-operative credit societies in the country, theircoverage of villages, their capital structure, volume of business etc., may be taken from

published reports and quoted as background information in a study on the evaluation of

performance of cooperative credit societies in a selected district/state.

Second, secondary data may be used as bench marks against which the findings of researchmay be tested, e.g., the findings of a local or regional survey may be compared with the

7/27/2019 30408432-MI0039

10/14

national averages; the performance indicators of a particular bank may be tested against the

corresponding indicators of the banking industry as a whole; and so on.

Finally, secondary data may be used as the sole source of information for a research project.

Such studies as securities Market Behaviour, Financial Analysis of companies, Trade in creditallocation in commercial banks, sociological studies on crimes, historical studies, and the like,

depend primarily on secondary data. Year books, statistical reports of governmentdepartments, report of public organizations of Bureau of Public Enterprises, Censes Reportsetc, serve as major data sources for such research studies.

Advantages of Secondary Data

Secondary sources have some advantages:

1. Secondary data, if available can be secured quickly and cheaply. Once their source of

documents and reports are located, collection of data is just matter of desk work. Even the

tediousness of copying the data from the source can now be avoided, thanks to Xeroxingfacilities.

2. Wider geographical area and longer reference period may be covered without much cost.

Thus, the use of secondary data extends the researchers space and time reach.

3. The use of secondary data broadens the data base from which scientific generalizations can

be made.

4. Environmental and cultural settings are required for the study.

5. The use of secondary data enables a researcher to verify the findings bases on primary data.

It readily meets the need for additional empirical support. The researcher need not wait the

time when additional primary data can be collected.

Disadvantages of Secondary Data

The use of a secondary data has its own limitations.

1. The most important limitation is the available data may not meet our specific needs. Thedefinitions adopted by those who collected those data may be different; units of measure may

not match; and time periods may also be different.

2. The available data may not be as accurate as desired. To assess their accuracy we need to

know how the data were collected.

3. The secondary data are not up-to-date and become obsolete when they appear in print,because of time lag in producing them. For example, population census data are published

tow or three years later after compilation, and no new figures will be available for another ten

years.

4. Finally, information about the whereabouts of sources may not be available to all socialscientists. Even if the location of the source is known, the accessibility depends primarily on

proximity. For example, most of the unpublished official records and compilations are located

in the capital city, and they are not within the easy reach of researchers based in far off places.

7/27/2019 30408432-MI0039

11/14

Question 6: Describe interview method of collecting data. State the conditions under which it

is considered most suitable. You have been assigned to conduct a survey on the reading habits

of the house wife in the middle class family. Design a suitable questionnaire consisting of 20

questions you propose to use in the industry.

Answer 6:

1).Structured Directive Interview:

7/27/2019 30408432-MI0039

12/14

This is an interview made with a detailed standardized schedule. The same questions are put

to all the respondents and in the same order. Each question is asked in the same way in each

interview, promoting measurement reliability. This type of interview is used for large-scaleformalized surveys.

Advantages:

This interview has certain advantages. First, data from one interview to the next one are easilycomparable. Second, recording and coding data do not pose any problem, and greater

precision is achieved. Lastly, attention is not diverted to extraneous, irrelevant and timeconsuming conversation.

Limitation:

However, this type of interview suffers from some limitations. First, it tends to lose the

spontaneity of natural conversation. Second, the way in which the interview is structured may

be such that the respondents views are minimized and the investigators own biases regardingthe problem under study are inadvertent introduced. Lastly, the scope for exploration is

limited.

2).Unstructured or Non-Directive Interview:

This is the least structured one. The interviewer encourages the respondent to talk freely about

a give topic with a minimum of prompting or guidance. In this type of interview, a detailedpre-planned schedule is not used. Only a broad interview guide is used. The interviewer

avoids channelling the interview directions. Instead he develops a very permissive

atmosphere. Questions are not standardized and ordered in a particular way.

This interviewing is more useful in case studies rather than in surveys. It is particularly usefulin exploratory research where the lines of investigations are not clearly defined. It is also

useful for gathering information on sensitive topics such as divorce, social discrimination,

class conflict, generation gap, drug-addiction etc. It provides opportunity to explore the

various aspects of the problem in an unrestricted manner.

Advantages:

This type of interview has certain special advantages. It can closely approximate the

spontaneity of a natural conversation. It is less prone to interviewers bias. It provides greater

opportunity to explore the problem in an unrestricted manner.

Limitations:

Though the unstructured interview is a potent research instrument, it is not free fromlimitations. One of its major limitations is that the data obtained from one interview is not

comparable to the data from the next. Hence, it is not suitable for surveys. Time may be

wasted in unproductive conversations. By not focusing on one or another facet of a problem,the investigator may run the risk of being led up blind ally. As there is no particular order or

sequence in this interview, the classification of responses and coding may required more time.

This type of informal interviewing calls for greater skill than the formal survey interview.

7/27/2019 30408432-MI0039

13/14

3).Focused Interview:

This is a semi-structured interview where the investigator attempts to focus the discussion on

the actual effects of a given experience to which the respondents have been exposed. It takes

place with the respondents known to have involved in a particular experience, e.g, seeing aparticular film, viewing a particular program on TV., involved in a train/bus accident, etc. The

situation is analyzed prior to the interview. An interview guide specifying topics relating tothe research hypothesis used. The interview is focused on the subjective experiences of therespondent, i.e., his attitudes and emotional responses regarding the situation under study. The

focused interview permits the interviewer to obtain details of personal reactions, specific

emotions and the like.

Merits:

This type of interview is free from the inflexibility of formal methods, yet gives the interview

a set form and insured adequate coverage of all the relevant topics. The respondent is askedfor certain information, yet he has plenty of opportunity to present his views. The interviewer

is also free to choose the sequence of questions and determine the extent of probing,

4).Clinical Interview:

This is similar to the focused interview but with a subtle difference. While the focusedinterview is concerned with the effects of specific experience, clinical interview is concerned

with broad underlying feelings or motivations or with the course of the individuals life

experiences.

The personal history interview used in social case work, prison administration, psychiatric

clinics and in individual life history research is the most common type of clinical interview.The specific aspects of the individuals life history to be covered by the interview are

determined with reference to the purpose of the study and the respondent is encouraged to talk

freely about them.

5).Depth Interview:

This is an intensive and searching interview aiming at studying the respondents opinion,

emotions or convictions on the basis of an interview guide. This requires much more training

on inter-personal skills than structured interview. This deliberately aims to elicit unconscious

as well as extremely personal feelings and emotions.

This is generally a lengthy procedure designed to encourage free expression of affectively

charged information. It requires probing. The interviewer should totally avoid advising or

showing disagreement. Of course, he should use encouraging expressions like uh-huh or Isee to motivate the respondent to continue narration. Some times the interviewer has to facethe problem of affections, i.e. the respondent may hide expressing affective feelings. The

interviewer should handle such situation with great care.

1. Start the interview. Carry it on in an informal and natural conversational style.

2. Ask all the applicable questions in the same order as they appear on the schedule withoutany elucidation and change in the wording. Ask all the applicable questions listed in theschedule. Do not take answers for granted.

7/27/2019 30408432-MI0039

14/14

3. If interview guide is used, the interviewer may tailor his questions to each respondent,covering of course, the areas to be investigated.

4. Know the objectives of each question so as to make sure that the answers adequatelysatisfy the question objectives.

5. If a question is not understood, repeat it slowly with proper emphasis and appropriate

explanation, when necessary.

6. Talk all answers naturally, never showing disapproval or surprise. When the respondentdoes not meet the interruptions, denial, contradiction and other harassment, he may feel

free and may not try to withhold information. He will be motivated to communicate whenthe atmosphere is permissive and the listeners attitude is non judgmental and is genuinely

absorbed in the revelations.

7. Listen quietly with patience and humility. Give not only undivided attention, but alsopersonal warmth. At the same time, be alert and analytic to incomplete, non specific andinconsistent answers, but avoid interrupting the flow of information. If necessary, jot

down unobtrusively the points which need elaboration or verification for later and timelier

probing. The appropriate technique for this probing is to ask for further clarification insuch a polite manner as I am not sure, I understood fully, is this.what you meant?

8. Neither argue nor dispute.

9. Show genuine concern and interest in the ideas expressed by the respondent; at the sametime, maintain an impartial and objective attitude.

10.Should not reveal your own opinion or reaction. Even when you are asked of your views,laugh off the request, saying Well, your opinions are more important than mine.

11.At times the interview runs dry and needs re-stimulation. Then use such expressions asUh-huh or That interesting or I see can you tell me more about that? and the like.

12.When the interviewee fails to supply his reactions to related past experiences, representthe stimulus situation, introducing appropriate questions which will aid in revealing the

past. Under what circumstances did such and such a phenomenon occur? or How didyou feel about it and the like.

13.At times, the conversation may go off the track. Be alert to discover drifting, steer theconversation back to the track by some such remark as, you know, I was very much

interested in what you said a moment ago. Could you tell me more about it?

14.When the conversation turns to some intimate subjects, and particularly when it deals withcrises in the life of the individual, emotional blockage may occur. Then drop the subject

for the time being and pursue another line of conversation for a while so that a less direct

approach to the subject can be made later.15.When there is a pause in the flow of information, do not hurry the interview. Take it as a

matter of course with an interested look or a sympathetic half-smile. If the silence is tooprolonged, introduce a stimulus saying You mentioned that What happened then?