Conducting Surveys and Interviews
Conducting surveys and interviews is traditionally outside the scope of engineering, but more frequently (and for the better) engineers are talking to the humans that will use their designs. To find out what the user thinks, you’re going to have to ask them some questions, and just like in the scientific method, your methodology needs to be sound and repeatable.
Example applications
Surveys and interviews are used extensively in requirements engineering and user evaluation. In ENGN2226, it is important to understand both how to design surveys and interviews, but also what some of the pitfalls might be in the design of these tools. Were the participants incentivised? Are there any sources of underlying bias or were leading questions used?
When to use them
Rowley (2012) suggests interviews are good to use when:
- the objectives centre on understanding experiences, opinions, attitudes, values, and processes
- there is insufficient known about the subject to be able to draft a questionnaire
- the interviewees might be more receptive to an interview than other data gathering approaches
Whereas Boynton and Greenhalgh (2006) note that surveys are useful when you can predict the possible range of answers.
Key concepts
- an overview of the key differences between interviews and a survey
- an example of how how a research project might generate data from an interview and a survey
- advice to the student engineer on how to conduct a quality survey or interview. Using the portfolio or the group project as a context might be useful.
Core resources
On interviews:
- Rowley, J., (2012) “Conducting research interviews”, Management research review, Vol 03/2012 pp260-271. Online: http://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/pdf/10.1108/01409171211210154 [access via ANU’s reverse proxy]
On surveys:
Similar tools…
If your approach involves talking to vulnerable people or groups, such as interviewing people in a development context, a great handbook that gives an overview of conducting field research is the Medecins Sans Frontiers guide: