It is always a good idea to design a questionnaire and carry out interviews for your research, whatever may be your dissertation is all about. But how exactly you should go about this? Just have a look.
How to start
Get connected with the organizers and let them know you are a student in spite of a professional researcher. People seem eager to help students, although sometimes they hesitate a bit if they think, they are speaking to a journalist. Therefore, be open and truthful about your intentions.
If you are speaking to a group, always remember to write a thank you note afterwards. You may want to take a re-interview of some people sometime later, so make sure that the group thinks positive of you.
Dissertation writing
As you plan the dissertation structure before you start to write it, organize the questions for your questionnaire before you start interviewing people. Your supervisor should be happy to have a look at your questions before you start collecting data to ensure that your meanings are obvious and that the questions have the information you need.
Techniques used for primary research
Sometimes it may happen that people involved in interviews are not interested to give your answers. Don’t take it too personally; just include what all they have said and carry on with other perspective like:
a) Dissertation Structure
The questionnaire should be present in one of the appendices of your dissertation. You should include the points for how you conducted your research.
b) Dissertation Plan
You have to plan your dissertation according to the questionnaire prepared. Whatever interview of people says try to maintain a true scientific basis for your research. By sticking to the questionnaire you allow your research to be completely transparent so that the supervisor can evidently judge on your abilities.
