People may not want to respond to unknown interviews

or why.
 People may not want to respond to unknown interviews or about things they
consider private.
 The person may answer the survey questions even they do not know the
answer in order to appear smarter or more informed. Sometimes they want to
help the interviewer by giving pleasing answers.
 Observation is best suited for exploratory research, and surveys for descriptive
research. Experimental is best suited for casual information
 Experimental Research: Gathering primary data by selecting matched groups
of subjects, giving them different treatments, controlling related factors, and
checking for differences in group responses.
 Experimental research tries to explain cause-and-effect relationships.
 Ex: before adding a new sandwich to the Menu MacDonald’s might use
experiments to test the effects. Introduce one price of the sandwich in one city
and another price in another city.
CONTACT METHODS:
 Information can be collected by mail, telephone, personal interview, or
online.
 Mail questionnaires can be used to collect large amount of information at a
low cost. Respondents (people) may give more honest answers to more
personal questions on a mail questionnaire than to an unknown interviewer
in person or over the phone.
 Problem with mail: not very flexible [all respondents answer the same
questions in a fixed order. Mail surveys take longer to complete, and the
response rate (number of people returning completed questionnaires) is very
low.
 Telephone interviewing is one of the best methods for gathering
information quickly and provides greater flexibility than mail.
 Interviewers can explain the difficult questions depending on the answer the
received, or skip some questions. Respondent’s rates are higher than mail.

 However telephone interviewing, the cost per respondent is higher than mail.
Also people may not want to discuss personal questions with the interviewer.
 This method introduces interviewer bias (the way the interviewer talk and
ask questions, affects the answers. Different interviewers use different ways,
and sometimes under time pressure, and interviewer may cheat by recoding
answers without asking questions.
 Personal Interviewing takes two forms: individual and group interviewing.
 Individual interviewing involves talking with people in their homes or offices,
on the street, or shopping malls. Such interviewing is flexible.
 Trained interviewers can guide the interview and explain difficult questions,
explore the issues. They can show actual products, advertisements, or
packages and observe behavior.
 However, individual interviews may cost three or four times as much as the
telephone interviews.
 Group interviewing consist of inviting six to ten people with a trained
moderator to talk about a product, service or organization. Participants
normally are paid a small sum for attending.