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Interviews

Purpose: To help Scouts to obtain information from someone who has experience or expertise in a certain topic.

Interviews can be an excellent means of finding out information on a topic – either from someone who has a great deal of knowledge or from people who have experience. Interviews should be well prepared and if people are being asked about personal experiences, care should be taken that the questions are appropriate i.e. not too personal.

Development Stage:
• Identifying the problems
• Developing Awareness
• Measuring Change

Instructions:
• Identify the subject area that you want to find out more about.
• Think about the person or the people you will be interviewing. The questions should be 'open questions', that is questions that cannot be answered by 'yes' or 'no'.
• Write down a list of questions you would like to ask people.
• Put the list of questions into an order, starting with the easy/basic topics and then getting harder.
• When you are happy with the questions you are going to ask, and the order in which they are written, you can arrange your interviews. Make sure that people know the topic, the sort of questions that you will be asking and how long the interview will take. It is helpful for two or three people to attend so that the questions can be divided and one person can be responsible for taking notes.
• When all the questionnaires are completed / enough people have been asked, you can put the results together.
• For each question look at the answers that you have been given.
• How different are the answers you have received? Where they what you had expected?
• Once all the results have been put together, think about what you have found out and how you will share your results with others.
• It may be helpful to ask people with experience of developing questionnaires to help you with this exercise.

Equipment Needed: Questionnaires, pencils or pens

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© World Organization of the Scout Movement - 2008

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