Data Collection Examples and Strategies

New Housing Development. A personal interview may be the best way to adjust the stream of questions to probe about specific problems experienced by the residents of a new neighborhood. The fact that the respondents live in a new neighborhood may make telephone and mailing lists unavailable. The open-ended nature of a study about what they like and dislike about life in a small subdivision may require probing on the part of the interviewer. An advantage of a personal interview in this situation is that the respondents are physically close together and that the newness of the neighborhood may make the respondents more approachable.

College Students Voting for Student Government. The university environment would make it difficult to use telephone or mail surveys. Some students may not have a telephone number, and if they do, they may be difficult to reach or they may be from only one particular socio-economic class. A mail survey would probably take too long to reach the students and be responded to, especially with off campus students. A personal interview including a small set of screening questions such as age, gender, ethnic background, and income conducted in the student union building would probably yield results accurate enough to project a favored candidate for the presidency.

Human Resources Professionals in Grocery Distribution. A personal interview of this population would be extremely expensive. However, with only few major companies involved, it is desirable to contact almost all of the companies. A telephone interview is a reasonable compromise from contacting each one personally. A mail survey would probably result in very low response rate, and a higher response rate is needed because of the small population, so it is not recommended.

Attitudes toward Economic Outlook by Fortune 500 CFOs. This is a hard to reach, geographically spread out group of respondents. Personal interviews would be far too expensive. Mail surveys may not be returned in sufficient numbers. The closed-ended nature of the mail survey may limit the answers given. A telephone survey seems provide the best balance of expense, accessibility, and flexibility. Furthermore, a telephone interview would give the greater flexibility needed to probe and get predictions for the next year’s economic forecast. If the research budget is limited, then a mail survey would be the best choice.

Surveying Retail Pharmacies. This audience could be very numerous and spread out geographically. This topic would be of great interest to this audience, not always typical of mail surveys, so a high return rate would be possible. A mailing list for this audience could be easily secured. The expense of a personal interview would not be necessary, as the respondents are too many in number and too spread out geographically. Telephone interviews would yield good results, but the extra expense would not be justifiable.