1. What do you think of traditional healing?

2. What traditional practices and beliefs in your own culture may promote illness or health and well-being?

3. What suggestions would you offer to health-care practitioners whose patients adopt practices that are medically harmful by scientific standards but are also strongly supported by cultural traditions?

UNIT 3

LEAD-IN

1. What methods of collecting data do you know? (Refer to Unit 2)

2. What, in your opinion, is the simplest way of getting information about people?

Text 1

Scan the text and answer the following questions:

1. What is the difference between surveys and interviews?

2. What is the difference between personal and telephone interviews?

Interviews Personal Interviews

1. The same principle used in constructing surveys applies to constructing

guides for personal interviews. However, interviews eliminate some of the

problems associated with self-administered questionnaires and are more

flexible, for a number of reasons.

2. First, some people, such as visually impaired, may be able to respond verbally

but not in written form.

4. Second, if the respondent misunderstands a question, an interviewer can

repeat and clarify it. An interviewer can also use probes to get respondent to

expand on incomplete answers or to clarify answers that are inconsistent with

the question.

5. Third, an interviewer can note any environmental factors that affect the interview, such as noise or interference from another person.

6. Fourth, by carefully matching the interviewer with the interviewees, researcher can obtain better quality results. For example, using an interviewer from the same culture as the interviewee makes the interview comfortable for both parties and provides insight that may be lost to outsider.

7. But the chief advantage of a personal interview compared with a self-administered questionnaire is even simpler: People would rather talk than write. If the interview is set up in advance, this method produces response rates approaching 95 percent.

8. But interviews have disadvantages, too. First, Interviews cost more than questionnaires do. The longer the interview and the more open-ended questions asked, the higher the cost, both in interviewer time and in summarizing the data later.

9. Second, interviewers are expected to record all responses verbatim. Open-ended questions require fast and continuous writing, often resulting in inaccuracies even by most competent interviewer.

10. Third, although effort is made to avoid confusing questions, interviewer bias can creep in when a respondent needs to have a question clarified. Interviewers are supposed to remain neutral, but they may inadvertently steer the respondent towards answering in a certain way. For example, interviewers who share the same cultural background as respondents may find it difficult to keep up the appearance of neutrality. And because interviewers may ask the same questions slightly differently from interview to interview, reliability can be impaired. Interviewers should receive extensive training in proper feedback techniques to avoid biasing respondents.

11. The most difficult obstacle to resolve in personal interviews is that of anonymity. While confidentiality can be assured in interviews, anonymity is impossible, because the interviewer is face to face with the interviewee. Because there is no anonymity, interviewees may be reluctant to answer truthfully when sensitive information is called for.

Telephone interviews

12. When speed of data collection over a wide geographical area is essential, the best method is telephone interview. Through random digit dialing, telephone numbers in designed exchanges can be randomly accessed a procedure that permits calls to unlisted numbers, new numbers, and numbers for those who lives in institutions, such as college dorms. Telephone research has become so efficient that within a few hours of any important event, researches can survey public opinion worldwide and the results can be broadcast on the evening news or put on the Internet.

13. Certain procedures help ensure success of a telephone interview. Length is one important factor. The best telephone interviews consist of a limited number of well-defined, usually close-ended questions that can be answered in twenty minutes or less. However, successful thirty-minute-to one hour telephone interviews are possible when the topic is of particular interest to respondents.

14. Mentioning the sponsoring organization is always important in surveys, but perhaps more so in telephone interviewing. When respondents are assured of survey legitimacy and confidentiality, they are far more likely to answer all the questions. Response rate for telephone interviews are, in fact, slightly higher than for personal interviews.

15. Telephone interviews have several advantages besides efficiency. One is cost. Telephone interviews are more economical than personal interviews and even than mail-in questionnaires, which helps explain the growing popularity of telephone research. Compared with personal interviews, telephone interviews are two or three times cheaper.

16. Telephone interviews also offer both convenience to researchers and interviewer safety when access to respondents in potentially dangerous locations is desired. Overall, telephone and personal interviews yield data that are comparable in reliability and validity.

17. There are disadvantages to telephone interviews, however. One is that respondents can become impatient if interviewers ask too much. As a general rule, interviews by phone should be kept as simple as possible.

18. Two other disadvantages are that visual aids such as graphs or maps cannot be used over the phone, and that the interviewer has no knowledge of or control over factors that could be distracting a respondent, such as an interesting television program or a demanding child.