Question types

Open questions
This type of questions help you get more information and a longer answer from your interviewee. You also use this type of question to get qualitative responses.  It is advisable to use the 5Ws and How to ask open questions. The 5W questions are questions beginning with What? Where? When? Why? and Who?  When you begin your question using any of these words, you'll get a well reasoned answer. From the video below, we can see the interviewer using the 5Ws and How to ask the actress open questions. Questions like "What can you tell us about your character?" "How was it for you working with other great actors?", got the actress talking in lengths about the movie and her role in it.


Strengths of Open questions. 
Using open questions in a interview helps you get more information from your interviewee. Your open questions allow them to think and give a detailed response

Weakness of Open questions.
Your interviewee might end up giving you irrelevant answers or going off topic when responding, this might make it difficult to pick up the detail you want from their answer. In addition, analyzing responses from open questions is not easy as everyone thinks differently and responses might not be similar or measurable.

Closed questions 
This type of question get you short responses. You will get quantitative response which are good for measuring and creating graphs.  In the video below we can see the interviewer asking closed questions which led to the interview coming to a quick close. The actress was unable to give out good and useful information because the  questions were closed. "Did you enjoy playing the evil character?" is an example of closed question in this video, the actress couldn't say much pertaining the question therefore the interviewer moved on to the next which is also closed, "Are you working on any other film?" This brought the interview to a quick close.


Strengths of Closed Questions.
When asking a closed question, you'll get quick and measurable answers. These type of questions can be used in a questionnaire meant to collect measurable data. This way you can represent them on graphs and charts. It also takes little time which is a bonus if you or your interviewee is in a rush.

Weaknesses of Closed Questions
They don't get your interviewee thinking therefore you'll get short responses. It is not advisable to use closed questions during an interview as you will not get detailed responses which will cut the interview short. As we can see in the interview above, the interview did not last long at all as the actress couldn't give long answers to the closed question. A question like "What other film are you working on?" would have given a different result (longer answer and longer interview). 

Leading Questions
These questions are asked to encourage the interviewee to answer the question in a certain way. 

Strengths of Leading Questions 
They help you get the answers you want

Comments

  1. cdavies26 October 2017 at 02:42

    Excellent use of and understanding of key interview techniques terms. You look at the strengths and weaknesses associated with the question types and outline where and when is best to use them.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Interview context

Image
Interview contexts are found in all interviews. The context of an interview will determine where an interview will be conducted, the purpose of the interview, where the interview is going to be broadcast and the target audience.  This will also affect your approach to an interview depending if the interview is formal or informal. Interview context in order to ensure they are broadcast in the right way. Take an interview with the Prime minister for example, the scene must be professional and formal and the questions must be formal and of national interest because that's what the public would be interested in hearing from their Prime Minis ter. The questions must be serious and it would be broadcast as hard news as the information from the Prime Minister is going to affect everyone. In the video below, we can see the Prime Minister in an interview with the BBC revealing Brexit will bring "difficult times." As we can see, the interview is taken seriously as Theresa May o...
Read more

Structure of an interview

Image
This is a plan which you work off interviewing most people in order to build their confidence and allow them to relax in the interview. It is important to structure your interview questions correctly in order to get the interviewee to answer your questions to your satisfaction. This involves getting them to relax into the interview before getting to the long hard questions. We do this to get the answers we want and something to that will be in the interest of our target audience. Most interviews are structured in the following way: Introduction Developmental questions Confidence building Key questions Soundbites Summary Windup Introduction This particular structure is used to introduce the interviewee into the topic being discussed and help them relax into the answering the key questions. All traditional interviews begin with an introduction. An example is the video below that shows Rihanna on Good Morning America, she was there to promote her new line of cosmetics. The inte...
Read more