SS300
Research Methods in the Social Sciences
Exercise 3: Building an interview schedule
Name ___________________________________
Major area of study ________________________
Minor area of study ________________________
An “interview schedule” is a list of questions that are asked of an individual respondent by an individual
interviewer. Interview schedules are administered either face to face or over the telephone. The principal
difference between a questionnaire and an interview schedule is that the interview schedule involves a person
who asks the questions. The questionnaire is a list of questions that the respondent fills out him or herself.
In this exercise you will develop concepts and measures focused on a research question that can be addressed
through a telephone survey. The topic you choose must be a serious, relevant research question in your area of
study. Topics outside of your area of study and frivolous topics will not be accepted for credit. In addition, the
topic you select MUST be appropriate to study using a telephone survey method. If the topic is not appropriate
to research using the telephone survey method you will lose part of the total grade on this assignment.
This exercise involves the development of causal statements (hypotheses) at both the conceptual and empirical
levels. For example, take the conceptual hypothesis, “economic development causes demographic change.”
The independent variable, or cause, is “economic development,” while the dependent variable, or effect, is
“demographic change.” One can operationalize (or empirically measure) concepts in a variety of ways. For this
example I chose to measure development as “per capita gross domestic product in U.S. dollars in 2009”
In thinking about measurement one must think very carefully about what entity, or unit, one wants to collect
data on and, eventually, make statements about. In my case, I chose the “country” (state, or nation) as the unit
of analysis. I want to make a conclusion, or generalization, about countries. I want to be able to compare
countries. As a consequence of my choice of unit of analysis my empirical hypothesis is “As the per capita GDP
($US) by country rises, the average Total Fertility Rate by country declines. The Total Fertility Rate (TFR) is a
measure of the concept, demographic behavior. The data variables that I will collect by country are per capita
GDP in US dollars and TFR. It is essential to your progress in SS300 that you understand the difference
between the data that are collected and the entity or unit upon which it is collected.
For both the measurable independent and dependent variables (empirical variables) you should seriously
consider the importance of multiple indicators in measuring complex concepts. If you use an index to
summarize multiple indicators into a single score as the independent or dependent you must describe in your
writeup how the questions relate to one another. Remember the discussion in class about the “face validity” of
the Attitude toward Abortion Index and the Trust in Government Index.
A common mistake students make on this assignment is to ignore the difference between concepts and measures
and mix them up below under number 1 and two. Part 1 below requires concepts while Part 2 requires measures
of those concepts. Ignoring this difference will seriously affect your grade on this assignment.
1.

Your topic _______________________________________________________ (5%).

The unit of analysis ________________________________________________ (5%).

The study population _______________________________________________ (5%).

The sampling frame ________________________________________________ (5%).
Write a conceptual hypothesis that expresses a cause-effect (causal) relationship. The hypothesis must
include at least one independent variable (cause) and only one dependent variable (effect). The research
question must be from your major or minor area of study. (15%)
a.
b.
c.
2.
Write an empirical hypothesis with two measures that is appropriate for telephone survey research.
One of the measures should be an independent variable (cause) and the other a dependent variable
(effect). (15%)
a.
b.
c.
3.
The empirical hypothesis:
__________________________________________
The empirical independent variable (s): ________________________________
The empirical dependent variable:
________________________________
Design a 10 item survey instrument for a telephone interview from beginning to end. The indicators
you develop should relate to the empirical hypothesis from part two above. Remember that multiple
indicators of a concept are better than one indicator alone and that if you use multiple indicators of a
concept, an additive index of the indicators makes a good dependent variable. Please note that the
quality of each question as an indicator (measure) of a concept is worth 1% of the grade for each
question.
a.
b.
c.
d.
e.
4.
The conceptual hypothesis: __________________________________________
The conceptual independent variable (s): ________________________________
The conceptual dependent variable:
________________________________
Include full instructions for interviewers and respondents. (5%)
Order the questions appropriately. (5%)
For each question:
i.
Specify the question type. (1%)
ii.
Specify its level of measurement. (1%)
Include at least one example of the following types of questions:
i.
1 contingency question.
ii.
1 full filter question.
iii.
1 quasi-filter question.
iv.
1 partially open question.
v.
1 open question.
vi.
1 closed question.
Make sure that, if appropriate, you use some scaled items in the questions.
Specify and explain how you will test the empirical hypothesis. By this I mean which inferential
statistical test will you use to see if the independent variable has an impact on the dependent variable.
(20%)