Calendar Post for December 2 and 4 + Interview/Survey Forum

• Meet in Morgan Library Classroom Two on Friday and bring materials to support your Local Inquiry/Public Essay writing process (newspaper articles, books, interview notes, survey findings, et cetera).

• As a team, be prepared to profile the person you spoke with during a lightening interview on Wednesday. If your team wasn't able to reach someone during class, tell us how and why your interview failed.

• For Friday and Monday, study one of the following admired essays: Chuck Klosterman's "Crazy Things Seem Normal, Normal Things Seem Crazy," about actor Val Kilmer; Elizabeth Kolbert's "The Truthteller," about scientist James Hansen (it appeared in print as "The Catastrophist"); Charles Komanoff's "Whither Wind," about the aesthetics of wind turbines; or Coco Henson Scales's "The Hostess Diaries, My Year at a Hot Spot," whose title says it all (an alternate version features illustrations). All four essays can be found at drop.io.

• For Wednesday, please read David Boerner's "Our Town (Music) Superhero" as an example of how to profile a local personality.

• In preparation for field research this week, based on what you know about your topic, draft a set of interview or survey questions. Then, by Wednesday night, post them to a Writing Studio forum along with a one-paragraph explanation of your specific purpose in conducting this type of inquiry. (Why do you feel you need to talk to this professor, for example, or ask people in Old Town Square these questions?) As you draft your questions, consider our handout on field research, PHG pages 320-322, and the following guidance.

Interviews:

- Are the bread and butter of field research.
- Can be formal or informal, arranged or impromptu.
- Don’t always lend themselves to recording, but recording allows you to be most accurate.
- Provide you with more control because you’re there to guide the discussion.
- Allow you to ask for more elaborate answers.
- Allow you to clarify confusing questions for more accurate responses.
- Allow you to adjust your purpose in light of your interviewee's knowledge.
- Provide a more comfortable atmosphere for raising personal questions.
- Lend themselves to witnessing body language.

Surveys and questionnaires:

- Allow you to gauge information from large groups of people.
- Are easier to tabulate numerically.
- May lead to more honest responses since writing is more anonymous than talking.

Effective interview questions will:

- Start with objective or factual questions, or at the beginning of a chronology.
- Gradually approach more subjective or controversial questions.
- Almost always invite more than a yes or no answer.
- Avoid assumptions about what the interviewee will say, but reflect some knowledge of his or her situation.

Effective survey questions will:

- Be clear and focused.
- Avoid confusing or ambiguous language.
- Be shaped for a target audience.
- Be respectful and objective.
- Avoid skewing responses or leading respondents.
- Take into account different uses for open-ended and closed questions.
- Not take more than a few minutes to answer.

Most importantly, effective questions will address the writer’s purpose, which is generally to find out what people know and think about the topic at hand. Interviews and questionnaires, in other words, will give you a sense of the conversation surrounding your essay.

• There will be no further news quizzes, as you should have an essay topic in mind by now.