Lekarze jako respondenci i ich stosunek do badań socjologicznych (Refleksje na temat wywiadów socjologicznych z lekarzami i innymi kategoriami inteligencji

Abstract

Very frequently sociological interviews are conducted with various professional categories of white collar workers. Two questions arise in this connection: (1) Is it justified to assume that interviews with various occupational categories are characterized by a peculiar research situation, i.e. specific conditions and climate of interviewing? (2) Do the occupation of respondents and their feeling of affiliation with a particular occupational milieu influence their answers given in an interview? To elucidate these questions materials from various surveys were analysed, and especially: (i) 118 filled-in questionnaires given to interviewers in a survey on opinions of medical doctors about their profession in the city of Łódź in 1967, (2) 630 questionnaires filled in by interviewers in a ¡survey on cultural consumption of nine occupational categories of white collar workers with higher education. Results of the analysis have showed that interviewers were being received by physicians hospitably: in 56.0% of cases the interviewers were offered coffee, tea, candies, cigarettes etc. In this respect physicians did not differ from other categories of intelligentsia; however, they comparatively rarely (19% cases) initiated with interviewers conversations on ,,off-the-record” topics. Such conversations were most frequently initiated by lawyers (36.4% of cases) and office workers (24% of employees interviewed). Unofficial conversations of physicians with interviewers differed from those initiated by other occupational categories in that, they most often did not relate to topics connected with personal matters of respondents but concerned problems important for the whole medical profession. Materials from over a dozen of various surveys on different categories of white collar workers were also analysed; the conclusion being that it was physicians who most often refused to be interviewed. There were as many as 12.6% of refusals among physicians whereas the percentage of refusals among office workers, teachers and journalists were respectively 2.0, 2.0, 1.8. No refusals were found among pharmacists. Most probably refusals are related with would-be-respondent’s knowledge about sociology and sociological surveys as well as with their image of the role of science they represent themselves. Utterances of some respondents on these topics seem to corroborate this hypothesis. Although the majority (77%) of physicians interviewed expressed their positive attitude toward sociology many of them did not treat sociology as a science but rather as a kind of literature with no practical results. Related with this attitude was a strong feeling of an exceptional social importance of the medical profession. Professional ethnocentrism of particular professional groups may influence the answers obtained in surveys and the researchers should be on the alert against this kind of distortions likely to ensue from, this factor.