Name: Niken Arista

NIM: 321410173
Class: C.Morning

REFERENCES
Mears, Lunsford Carolyn. 2009. Interviewing for Education and Social Science
Research: The Gateway Approach. United States: Palgrave Macmillan.
Seidman, Irving. 2006. Interviewing as Qualitative Research. New York &
London:Teacher College Press.
Cohen, Manion, & Morrison. 2000. Research Methods in Education: Fifth
Edition. London & New York: Routledge Falmer.
Fraenkel, Wallen, & Hyun. 2012. How to Design and Evaluate Research in
Education: Eighth Edition. New York: Mc Graw Hill.

How to Construct Good Interview Question for Educational Research

As a researcher who want to do the research, especially for Educational
Research. We need an ability to construct a good interview question. Because, we
will ask some people to gain the information to answer the research questions and
purpose for doing the research that we have. So here, an article with the title
How to Construct Good Interview Question for Educational Research.
1. Interview
Interview is a communication between interviewee and interviewer in
which trained interviewer asks questions from respondents to elicit self-reports of
their opinions, attitudes, values, beliefs or behaviors. Interviews are usually
carried out face to face, conducted via telephone, or interactive video or computer.
Interviews that solicit stories of personal experience offer a powerful point
of entry into a word from anothers perspective. Certainly, the collection of life
stories has value to historians, genealogists, and others dedicated to documenting
lived events. But in education and social science research, sophisticated
measurement tools and technologically based procedures can expedite data
collection and analysis in ways that appear to generate more dependable results.
The best stories are those which stir peoples mind, hearts, and souls and
by so doing give them new insights into themselves, their problems and their
human condition. The challenge is to develop a human science that can more fully
serve this aim. The question, then, is not Is story telling science? but Can
science learn to tell good stories?
2. The purpose of interviewing
At the heart of interviewing research is an interest in other individuals
stories because they are of worth. The purposes of the interview are many and
varied, for example:
a. To evaluate or assess a person in some respect;
b. To select or promote an employee;

c.
d.
e.
f.

To effect therapeutic change, as in the psychiatric interview;

To test or develop hypotheses;
To gather data, as in surveys or experimental situations;
To sample respondents opinions, as in door-step interviews.
Although in each of these situations the respective roles of the interviewer

and interviewee may vary and the motives for taking part may differ, a common
denominator is the transaction that takes place between seeking information on the
part of one and supplying information on the part of the other.
3. Question formats
There are several ways of categorizing questions, for example:
a.
b.
c.
d.
e.
f.
g.
h.
i.
j.

Description questions;
Experience questions;
Behaviors questions;
Knowledge questions;
Construct-forming questions;
Contrast questions (asking respondents to contrast one thing with another);
Feeling questions;
Sensory questions;
Background questions;
Demographic questions.
These concern the substance of the question. Kvale (1996:155-5) adds to

these what might be termed the process questions, i.e. questions that:
a.
b.
c.
d.
e.
f.
g.

Introduce a topic or interview;

Follow up on a topic or idea;
Probe for further information or response;
Ask respondent to specify and provide examples;
Directly ask for information;
Indirectly ask for information;
Interpret respondents replies.

4. Developing an interview guide

To make the most of your interviews, it is important to consider how you
anticipate your narrators contributing to your research, what you want them to
discuss, and how you want the interviews to proceed. In order to ensure that you
address the critical topics with each of your narrators, you need to design a simple

interview guide to remind yourself of the matters that you want narrators to speak
about.
5. Asking Questions
First interviews may begin a little awkwardly, with a degree of uncertainty
and formality. As things progress, however, both you and your narrator will find
increased confidence and comfort, and things will generally flow a little more
easily.
Always start the first session for all participants in the same way, using the
question that you decided on your interview guide. This will ensure that you
introduce the study uniformly, cover the preliminary details, and begins from the
same point of departure. As your narrator answers the first question, thats when
things diverge as you follow his or her answer to wherever it might leads.
6. Concluding the interview
After a session, recording your thoughts and reflections in research journal
or on an interview summary sheet allows you to keep an account of what you
have observed and heard. This all the part of the process of preparing for your
next interview or, in the case if your final session, for the next step towards
interpretation.
Thats all the tips, I hope this article useful for all the readers to construct
good interview question for education research.