pod red. Zygmunta Gostkowskiego i Jana Lutyńskiego http://hdl.handle.net/11089/2783 2026-04-14T19:03:31Z 2026-04-14T19:03:31Z Słomczyński, Kazimierz M. http://hdl.handle.net/11089/2942 2018-02-01T11:20:11Z 1968-01-01T00:00:00Z

Granice stosowalności ankiety audytoryjnej w środowisku robotniczym Słomczyński, Kazimierz M. The paper discusses the general conception and the results of a methodological research performed among workers in a factory in a small town, capital of a district. It is a study of adequacy of questionnaire procedures with relation to a certain occupational and social environment. The term adequacy has a double meaning here psychological, as the problem under consideration is whether the applied procedure is fitting for the given group because of emotional and intellectual characteristics of its members; and sociological, related with the research situation considered as close or remote to social situations ever experienced by subjects of the study. The survey was designed to cover 83 men, working on one shift in one department of a textile factory. They had at least 5 years of standing at work and finished at least 5 classes of an elementary school. However, only 59 persons appeared on the assigned day. The respondents were asked to fill in a questionnaire immediately after their working hours, in three groups of 20 to 30 men, each one under supervision of two-men research teams. The questionnaire consisted of 10 questions concerning mainly the respondents’ opinions about the management’s attitudes towards workers, their appreciation of the working discipline there in force, and their feelings about forms of address and phrases used by foremen in their direct contacts with workers and by workers when addressing their foremen. During the whole time of the research situation respondents were carefully observed. It allowed to divide the sample into 3 categories of attitudes towards the research situation. Thus 7 persons manifested obvious reluctance to participate. However, none of them went so far as to refuse to collaborate. The most numerous category consisted of persons who manifested neither interest nor obvious reluctance to the questionnaire situation. There were also 6 persons who were positively interested in the study and in its scientific or practical meaning. In the analysis of data particular attention was paid to the problem of adequacy of answers and of lack of answers. Only 40 questionnaires (68%) were filled in completely, while only 47 (80%) were filled without faults. 35 forms (59%) were filled in both completely and without faults. In that number only 6 were filled by respondents who had not had full elementary education, while there were 18 such persons in the whole sample. These data constitute empirical evidence that elementary education is the threshold of performing even simple questionnaire research programs. Lacks of answers and faults in answering, hardly ever analysed in questionnaire surveys, may serve as indications of adequacy of employed procedures and may thus help to interpret, the collected data. After some time since the questionnaire situation control open interviews were made with 28 members of the most numerous group of questionnaire respondents in order to secure repeated answers to two specially chosen questions of the questionnaire. What mattered was the degree of consistency of declarations uttered on the same topic in different situations. It was fond that at least 9 persons changed their minds about one, and at least 5 persons about two questions. As there were 28 respondents in general, this seems to be an evidence of a low degree of consistency of opinions expressed in the two situations. Besides, the data seem to indicate that the filling, of a questionnaire in the work environment did not, against the researchers’ expectations, make the expressed opinions more „official“ or „formal“. To the contrary, responses were more “official“ during the interview, in spite of using the whole range of means of the “art of interviewing“ in order to create an atmosphere of a sincere and intimate conversation. Parallely, another series of interviews was made with members of the two smaller groups of questionnaire respondents. This series was methodological in character, designed to secure information about the general attitude of workers toward the research situation. 20 respondents were thus interviewed, somewhat younger and better educated in average than the others. Perhaps that was why 17 of them said the questionnaire had been easy for them, while the three who admitted some difficulties suffered only 5 years of schooling. The majority of respondents (14 as against 6) felt anonymous enough, and this seems to account in a certain degree for the fact that the questionnaire situation had not made, their opinions „official“. Respondents were rather unlikely to expect (13 as against 7) that the results of the questionnaire could ever be used, for practical purposes; it might increase the tendency to neglect the research situation. Remarks about sincerity of responses (10 to 10) and about eagerness to participate (9 as against 11) also indicate that workers had hardly been convinced that the questionnaire was a suitable tool to grasp their real opinions about how matters stood in the factory. The whole material seems to prove that of the two employed research procedures the technique of individual interviewing was both psychologically and sociologically more, adequate, for the studied community.

1968-01-01T00:00:00Z Lutyńska, Krystyna http://hdl.handle.net/11089/2938 2018-02-01T11:18:38Z 1968-01-01T00:00:00Z

Ankieta do ankietera jako źródło wiedzy o wywiadzie kwestionariuszowym Lutyńska, Krystyna In post-war research made in Poland by means of standardized questionnaire interviews relatively little attention has been paid to verification of data. There is no solid tool for a sociologist to verify data and to secure information about atmosphere and conditions of interviews. A questionnaire addressed to an interviewer here discussed is an attempt at elaborating such a tool. At the end of each interview questionnaire a few questions of various kinds have been inserted (closed and open-ended, about facts and about opinions), and an interviewer was required to answer them immediately after he left his respondent. Such a questionnaire addressed to interviewers was introduced for the first time in the Bełchatów survey of 1963 and then used again in some other studies, with various aims in view. Those aims may be described as (1) verification and selection of interview data; (2) collecting of data necessary for separate methodological investigations; (3) furnishing of general information about atmosphere and conditions of interviews. In the present paper, based on an analysis of 931 questionnaires collected during two surveys, the author presents an analysis made chiefly from the point of view of the third of these aims. Thus she considers the type of material that can be furnished by a questionnaire addressed to interviewers, how it can help to define the social situation of an interview, in what ways it can help a sociologist to verify, and interpret respondents’ utterances. The paper analyses from such a standpoint social situations of interviews in two different local and social environments (a big city and a small town). The following problems are discussed: (1) the influence of the place and circumstances of an interview on the respondent’s verbal reactions; (2) conditions of an interview such as work done by a respondent during the interview, noises, presence of other persons and their active behavior; (3) the manner of receiving interviewers in two social milieus (treats, attitudes towards women interviewers, preparations of respondents to the interview and their appearance, number and topics of conversations initiated by respondents etc.); (4) respondents’ attitudes towards interviewers and an interview (the following attitudes have been distinguished: friendly, critical and unfriendly, anxious and mistrusting, ashamed); (5) interest on part, of respondents in sociology and social research in general and in the research in which they participated; (6) opinions and appreciations of respondents as conversation partners by interviewers (particular attention was paid to the important problem of what is called sincerity of respondents). Conclusions of the article concern both the analysed interviews and the general possibilities of using a questionnaire addressed to interviewers. Some of them are practical suggestions, other are of a general methodological character. Thus it is maintained that differences of interview situations in a big city and with educated respondents on one hand and in a small town among laborers in the other are mainly connected with different styles of living and manners predominant in both, environments. This finding is of practical importance for sociologists. Educated respondents were more apt to make an interview into an informal social occasion; they were more ready to collaborate but their responses were also more often conventional and pretentious than those of laborers, etc. It is also suggested that sociologists should try to make interview conditions during one survey possibly most uniform (e. g., to contact respondents either only in their homes or only at work), to eliminate other persons from interview situations, etc. It must be remembered when using the technique of a questionnaire addressed to interviewers that it can and did furnish much, information about interview situations, but that it is by no means free from defects. E.g., it does not tell, anything about an interviewer’s behavior during an interview. Again, appreciations and interpretations of facts by particular interviewers may be fairly different; some, of them may create images of respondents and of their behavior, thus biasing their observations and consequently their reports. When using a questionnaire to interviewers we require that they make some special observations besides their normal work with respondents. Thus they must be specially instructed by the supervising sociologist. More searching methodological analysis of data secured by that tool ought in future run parallel with analysis of answers of respondents to particular questions asked during an interview.

1968-01-01T00:00:00Z Szostkiewicz, Stefan http://hdl.handle.net/11089/2937 2018-02-01T11:18:21Z 1968-01-01T00:00:00Z

Ankiety dla ankieterów (próba typologii) Szostkiewicz, Stefan The paper deals with the program of employing, the technique of filled-in questionnaire to analysis of the process of data collecting by means of interviews. It is commonly assumed that interviewing by trained interviewers who use questionnaire forms is a standardized technique of data collecting in the sense that all subjects are exposed to identical stimuli and their reactions (utterances) are registered in identical ways. However, practical experience, as well as methodological studies point out that sets of stimuli to which various subjects are exposed during a research are by no means identical. Two kinds of factors are responsible for this fact: outer circumstances of an interview (e.g. its place, moment, presence of other persons, etc.), and the interviewer’s personal characteristics (such as sex, age, skill, psychological features, beliefs, etc.). In methodological studies on presence and scope of factors disturbing the standardization, of questionnaire interviews, questionnaires addressed to interviewers are employed. In recent years a range of surveys has been performed in Poland. They have been instructive enough to attempt their typology and to suggest some propositions about the possibilities to study the particular disturbing factors impairing the level of standardization of interviews by means of proper types questionnaires addressed to interviewers. The author maintains that such a questionnaire is an important, fruitful and economic procedure. In his opinion, however, it is not worth while to try to design a universal questionnaire investigating all significant aspects of the process of personal interview. The problem offers many aspects and thus it requires the use of various patterns of questionnaires to collect complete and reliable material about each of the groups of questions. Four types of questionnaires are here suggested, each of them offering different cognitive potentialities and justified by considerations concerning costs of a study. 1. A standardized questionnaire, demanding from an interviewer steady observation and reporting of certain circumstances during each of his interviews. (Serving for an analysis of interview situations.) 2. A standardized questionnaire, requiring from an interviewer personal informations about himself, and in particular about his own attitude to actual problems dealt with in interviews carried by him. (For an analysis of interviewers’ effect.) 3. A questionnaire demanding from an interviewer non-standardized descriptions of circumstances of each of his interviews. (For an analysis of interview situations.) 4. A questionnaire demanding from an interviewer a non-standardized description (in form of a personal document) of whole research action as he participated in it, including, reports of both outer circumstances of interviews and of his own conduct, feelings, experiences connected with his research work. (For an analysis of research situations and for control of interviewers’ behavior.)

1968-01-01T00:00:00Z Słomczyński, Kazimierz M. http://hdl.handle.net/11089/2936 2018-02-01T11:18:27Z 1968-01-01T00:00:00Z

Zastosowanie ankiety pocztowej w powtórnym kontakcie badawczym Słomczyński, Kazimierz M. The aim of the study here reported was to analyze the utility of a mail questionnaire and its auxiliary procedures as tools of supplementary contact with respondents. Such contacts may be sources of additional data, as well as of information on the respondents’ attitudes towards the initial research situation. The basic research, performed by the Chair of General Sociology of the University in Łódź, dealt with social stratification of the inhabitants of Łódź, as well as with its psychological aspects. The interview questionnaire contained over 50 questions; one part of them was designed to characterize objective situations of respondents and. of their families, another part asked about the feeling of social differentiation, about the personal „vision“ of class structure, about the perception of basic lines of social division, etc. As interviewers were active 42 advanced students of sociology after detailed instruction. The study covered 1000 heads of families, constituting a representative sample of their group Respondents with no less than high school education were summoned for the second time. After almost four months since the initial research contact a mail questionnaire was sent to a new sample of 232 persons. 84 persons (36,2% of the sample) sent their questionnaires back filled in. Extra measures had been taken at certain time spans to increase that number: mail urge that resulted in 55 new responses (23,7%), and then individual visits that furnished questionnaire data from another group of 64 persons (27,6%). Out of the 29 remaining members of the sample 12 (i.e. 5,2%) refused to collaborate, while 17 (7,3%) could not be reached at all. The paper presents an analysis of some factors influencing the number of returned questionnaires in a mail survey. It has been found that such factors as education, occupation or income were not significant in that respect. The important factor was rather the level of familiarity of respondents with problems dealt with in the questionnaire Three degrees of such familiarity were distinguished and consequently it was found that questionnaires had been returned by mail by 69,4% of respondents with a high degree, by 64,2% of those with a medium degree and only by 30,0% of those with a low degree of problem familiarity. The final part of the paper is devoted to an analysis of application of a mail questionnaire for studying respondents’ opinions about interviewers. Content analysis of responses to the question about positive features of the interviewer who contacted the respondent revealed that most respondents (59,7%) remarked suck features as may be included under the heading of good manners and breeding. The group next in number (33,5%) pointed to intellectual qualities of their interviewers and their general level of learning; positive features of character were mentioned by 32,1% of respondents and the skill in conversation by 31,1%. A lesser number of respondents (14,8%) mentioned pleasant appearance of interviewers and their knowledge of problems dealt with in the questionnaire (11,4%). Some points of interest arised as a result of an analysis of the distribution of answers to the discussed question with relation to the respondents’ age and education, as well as to sex of interviewers. Respondents in the age group of 19 to 40 years much more often than elder ones pointed out the interviewer intellectual qualities and his or her general level of learning (38,0% as against 29,1%), as well as skill in conversation (37,0% as against 25,3%). Elder respondents, on the other hand, were more apt to emphasize the interviewer’s pleasant appearance (17,5% as against 12,0%) and his or her positive features of character (34% as against 30%). Respondents with college education were more apt to note the interviewer’s knowledge of problems dealt with in the questionnaire than those with only high school education (17,6% as against 7,8%). Women interviewers were more often appreciated in terms of their manners and breeding (65% as against 50,7%), as well as in terms of their skill in conversation (35,7% as against 23,4%) than their male colleagues; on the other hand, men were more often than women appreciated in terms of their knowledge of topics mentioned in the questionnaire (15,6% as against 8,7%), their positive features of character (36,4% as against 29,4%) and their intellectual qualities (35,0% as against 32,5%). Only 7 persons (3,4% of the sample) expressed critical opinions about the interviewers they had met during the survey. The distribution of responses to the question about positive features of an ideal interviewer is rather similar to the distribution of answers.to the question here discussed. In the end it is emphasized that a repeated research contact is advantageous in a double manner, as it allows an appreciation of the validity of data already collected, and as it positively influences the interviewers’ reliability and exactitude in their work.

1968-01-01T00:00:00Z