Interview insights

Encourage auditors and assessors to review and organize their notes as soon as possible after completing an interview or site visit. It s easy to lose track of insights and observations if too much time elapses, particulady when an assessment involves multiple sites. 

Discussions and interviews with the task experts can be supplemented with observations of their actual performance, for example, taking notes on certain aspects of the task or taking video or audio recordings. Observational techniques can reveal information that may be difficult to acquire in any other way. Detailed physical task performance data can be recorded, and major environmental influences (e.g., noise, light, interruptions) can all be faithfully represented. Observations can also provide an insight into the way that the team members communicate, allocate job responsibilities, and make use of operating procedures and other resources. 

It is important, especially when consistency has not been designed or built into the maintenance reporting system, to review the data reported to minimize misinterpretation. Clearly defined equipment boundaries for plant hardware are essential for the generation of relevant data. For example, one classification method may define pumps as only the mechanical portions of the pump, whereas another may include the driver (e.g., the motor) and associated controls. Interviews with operating and maintenance personnel as well as review of the maintenance procedures and documents can provide insight into the... 

Yet another technique has been to interview children or adults (such as teachers, Sch fer Smith, 1996) directly, either using questionnaires (Smith et al., 1992), or interviews (Boulton, 1992a). Clearly, people s answers may not be accurate in terms of what we observe, but this method should inform us about what they think and perceive. This has it s own intrinsic interest, and also interest in terms of discrepancies between beliefs and behaviour. In the case of older children, especially adolescents, we may get uniquely useful insights, while bearing in mind the possible distortions due to selective perception and memory, limited insight to motivation, and social desirability in responses, that bear on verbal report data (Boulton, 1992a). 

The studies reviewed have used either observations by experienced adult researchers, or interviews with children who are either questionned generally, or asked to comment on videotaped episodes which they did not participate in themselves. What they do not do is to use data based on interviews with the participants. Yet, participants may have insights into what it going on in a bout, which outside observers, whether adult or child, may not have. 

Unless the TBI has caused severe cognitive impairment (i.e., dementia), most patients after TBI can provide an accurate and insightful description of their physical and cognitive impairment. However, they often have less insight into the nature and severity of many of the common psychiatric symptoms that follow TBI. For this reason, the initial assessment should also include an interview with the patient s family members and friends, if they are available. Interviews with other health care providers (e.g., doctors, nurses, physical and occupation therapists) can also be extremely helpful. 

Nevertheless, these and other data limitations severely restrict our understanding of the experiences of African Americans in the chemistry community. For example, much of the most insightful and interesting data requested from NORC could not be provided or, if provided was of little or no used because of suppressed counts to protect confidentiality. The survey that was provided was for presentations and articles over the past three years. These results show that the median numbers of papers presented by white respondents was two compared to one for black respondents at professional meetings. Each group published a median of one article. An interview questioned the fairness of the so-called peer review journal process. The Cohort 111 interviewee asserts that Science is political. 1 saw a lot of it at.because some of my colleagues were journal editors. 1 saw firsthand why certain articles got published and certain ones didn t. Some got published with scant reviews, while others were scmtinized reviews. ... 

I am pleased to have been asked by Dr. Willie Pearson, Jr., to write the foreword to Beyond Small Numbers Voices of African American Ph.D. Chemists. The field of chemistry has held particular appeal to African Americans since the early twentieth century. The lives of the first African American doctoral chemists provide a backdrop on the African American experience of the time. Dr. Pearson has interviewed a notable number of African American Ph.D. holders and gained considerable insight into the factors that shaped their professional experiences. 

Dr. Pearson has written a compelling volume on the careers of African American doctorate holders in chemistry. He provides documentation that makes possible a critical assessment of the circumstances that governed the experiences of those African Americans who obtained the Ph.D. in chemistry since the beginning of the twentieth century. The information he gathered goes beyond simply statistics to indepth interviews that yield information not previously available in demographic studies of Black scientists. From such data. Dr. Pearson is able to provide new insight on factors that influenced the choice of chemistry as a career. He includes discussion of the variability of these factors as they impacted the lives of the individuals interviewed for this volume. 

Findings would include such items as observations, specific insights, and items to he followed-up on in later interviews or investigation activity. 

Couzin, Jennifer. The Brains behind Blockbusters. Science 309 (July 29, 2005) 728-730. Interviews with inventors of top-selling drugs, many of whom are at or near retirement, offer insights into drug discovery. Many... 

The Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES III), a national study conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reported that 40% of Americans had used a dietary supplement in the month before they were interviewed for the study. Although NHANES did not break down supplement use into specific subtypes, the data gives some interesting insights into the growing acceptance of dietary supplement products in America. 

An interview by a U.S. Labor Parly investigator with a Malaysian intelligence source made in November 1978 is worth printing in full here for the insight it gives into this particular type of operation ... 

David E. Koskoff, Joseph P. Kennedy A Life and Times (Englewood Cliffs, N.J. Prentice-Hall, Inc, 1974), p. 9. Additional insight and information on Kennedy was provided through interviews with law enforcement officials. 

As we said before, we have reproduced our interview notes in a verbatim fashion in the hope that some useful insights can be found in the details. We also think that some general trends emerge from these interviews ... 

You have narrowed your applicant pool down to a few top candidates. You have planned the interview process and your desired outcomes, prepared some insightful interview questions, and are now ready to meet with the candidates who look best on paper. There is far more to people than what appears on their resumes and application forms, and the interview is your chance to really explore in depth who the persons are, how they can contribute to the organization, and whether they are a good match for your needs and your goals as a manager. 

Depending on your desired level of interaction with the participants, you may choose to interview them after observation. Although the key to ethnographic discovery is impartial observation, interviewing can provide additional insight if you keep these basics in mind ... 

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