abhishreshthaa
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Characteristics of Direct and Indirect Interviews
- Direct interviewing involves asking questions such that the respondent is aware of the underlying purpose of the survey.
- Most marketing surveys are relatively direct.
- That is, although the name of the sponsoring firm is frequently kept anonymous, the general area of interest is often obvious to the respondent.
- Direct questions are generally easy for the respondent to answer, tend to have the same meaning across respondents, and have responses that are relatively easy to interpret.
- However, occasions may arise when respondents are either unable or unwilling to answer direct questions.
- For example, respondents may not be able to verbalize their subconscious reasons for purchases or they may not want to admit that certain purchases were made for socially unacceptable reasons.
- In these cases, some form of indirect interviewing is required.
- Indirect interviewing, often referred to as disguised, involves asking questions such that the respondent does not know what the objective of the study is.
- A person who is asked to describe the “typical person" who rides a motorcycle to work may not be aware that the resulting description is a measure of his own attitudes toward motorcycles and this use of them.
- Both structure and directness represent continuums rather than discrete categories.
- However, it is sometimes useful to categorize surveys based on which end of each continuum they are nearest.
- This leads to four types of interviews: structure-direct, structure-indirect, unstructured-direct and unstructured-indirect.