Face to Face Interviews

• Face to face interviews provide the closest interaction between you and your respondent.

• The standard procedure for a face to face interview is to have a personal copy of the questionnaire and mark responses directly in the codebook.

• Care must be taken to maintain anonymity if promised.

• Gaining access to people in the sample may be difficult using a face to face method.

• While response rate is improved using this method, the geographical area that your sample can come from is limited.

• Because of the limited time that you may have, you must be careful not to introduce biases into your data by using this technique.
  • Trying to conduct interviews at only one time, for example, can bias the data because of the people who tend to be at home at that time.

• Surveys can be longer because the respondent cannot see how many questions are left.

• You can gain access to hidden populations such as those without a telephone or mail.