Qualitative Instrument of Interviews, Checklist and Observations
Nonetheless, these followings are all about qualitative research. According to the notes, interviews are oral questions by interviewer to interviewee.The purpose of an interview is to find out what is in and on someone else mind and to access the perspective of the person being interviewed (not putting things in their mind). It usually has something to do the behaviors that we cannot observe i.e. feeling, thoughts or intentions, past behaviors actions, situations that prelude before observers and human organization and meaning.The trio-processes of interviews are (1) other perspectives are meaningful (2) knowable and (3) can make explicit. There are four types of interviews which are structured, semi-structured, informal and restropective. There are 6 types of questions an interviewer can ask (1) experience, behaviors (2) opinions,values questions (3) feeling questions (4) knowledge questions and sensory questions. Observation is how people act and how things look. There are four type of observations which are participant observations, non participant observation, naturalistic observation and simulations.Checklist is a list whereby researcher used while observing behaviors i.e. writing behaviors or writing strategies which is observable. So, with interviews which covers unobservable behaviors, checklist covers observable behaviors and the four type of observation do really covers to the full extend of a case study level.
From Theory to Practice
In my case study, I will do observation of writers' behaviors and thinking aloud protocols that covers unobservable behaviors i.e. cognitive strategies used by writers while composing an ESL writings. This ought to be interesting. in my first draft, my proposal focuses on error analysis, and then in my second proposal, I changed the direction of my proposal by doing contrastive rhetoric analysis. It is because Kaplan (1966) of intercultural thoughts were never documented in Malaysia, at least to my browsing through literature, at least it is confirm it was never done in military context setting. I may considers using the trio of observations, checklist and interviews to triangulate my findings. However, it depends....
