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Race in America

American Culture 399

SURVEY RESOURCES

USE THE FOLLOWING SUBJECT HEADINGS IN MIRLYN TO FIND  BOOKS ON INTERVIEWING AND CREATING SURVEYS

SUBJECT HEADINGS

Interviewing. 
Interviewing in sociology. 
Social sciences -- Research. 
Social surveys. 
Questionnaires

Here is a quote from Qualitative Interviewing: The Art of Hearing Data, page 64-65 on finding interviewees.
"
Finding interviewees with the relevant, first-hand experience is critical in making your results convincing. A report from someone who was kidnapped is better than one from a journalist who interviewed the victim. If you want to learn about student culture, talk to students who have participated in that culture, not to their parents, guidance counselors, teachers, or even resident assistants.

Finding students to talk to may not be difficult, but finding the person who attended a particular meeting that occurred years ago may be more problematic. Your search for particular individuals may be hit or miss in the beginning, but once you find one person who was involved in the matter, he or she can usually tell you who else to talk to or where you might find documents that list the names of others who were involved...When you are examining a specific issue such as a political dispute or a successful protest, you can look in newspapers, on Web sites, or in newsletters for the names of people who were involved. If you are studying a historic or political event, you can often find out who did what by looking in court records, libraries, or archives (including newspaper archives). Sometimes a bit of detective work and preliminary inquiry is required to get started. In an oral-history project about a black musicians' union, for example, Diane Turner (1997) had to ask around to find consultants in the field who could tell her the names of performers who had been in the union."