Respond to at least two of your colleagues’ postings in one or more of the following ways:

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Great leaders find power in open ended questions.   Practitioners repeatedly note that the everyday behavior of asking followers open questions and attentively listening to their responses is a powerful leadership technique Van Quaquebeke and Felps (2018).  While researching can be challenging and overwhelming, it is imperative to have a plan as it relates to the types of questions you want to ask.  For instance, when asking sensitive questions.  Saunders, Lewis, and Thornhill (2015) suggest leaving sensitive questions to the end of the interview to build the trust and confidence of the interviewee.  

Open ended questions are designed to encourage the interviewee to provide an extensive and detailed response to give helpful information for the study Saunders et al. (2015).  As an ex-police officer I have had the opportunity to ask many questions of witnesses and typically the more comfortable I made the setting the more information they would divulge.   Additionally, strategically asking different types of questions during the interview builds a good rapport and opens the level of communication.  

According to Powell, Hughes-Scoles, Smith, and Sharman (2014), professionals across the globe are taught how to use open ended questions because if there is poor use of open-ended questions they could dictate what specific details are required or expected.  The purpose of the interview is to get the facts to assist the researcher in their study.

Powell, M. B., Hughes-Scholes, C. H., Smith, R., & Sharman, S. J. (2014). The relationship between investigative interviewing experience and open-ended question usage. Police Practice & Research, 15(4), 283–292. https://doi-org.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/10.1080/15614263.2012.704170

Saunders, M. N. K., Lewis, P., & Thornhill, A. (2015). Research methods for business students (7th ed.). Essex, England: Pearson Education Unlimited.

Van Quaquebeke, N., & Felps, W. (2018). Respectful Inquiry: A Motivational Account of Leading through Asking Questions and Listening. Academy of Management Review, 43(1), 5–27. https://doi-org.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/10.5465/amr.2014.0537

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Dealing with Difficult Participants

        Interviewing, field observations, and document analysis are the primary methods of data collection in qualitative studies (Chenail, 2011). The primary focus during data collection for qualitative case studies using interview is on the interviewee. The interviewer is an observer (Yin, 2018) or an instrument (Chenail, 2011) who must be prepared and must cater to the interviewee’s schedules, availability and make special arrangements as needed to collect the data (Yin, 2018).

Strategies for Addressing Difficult Participants

           Participants can display difficult behavior in a variety of ways like answering in monosyllables, digressing from the topic, getting upset, or even start to interview the interviewer (Saunders, Lewis, & Thornhill, 2015). Saunders et al. (2015) listed multiple approaches when the interviewer meets participants who are difficult to interview: (a) using open-ended questions while receiving monosyllabic answers, (b) reassuring confidentiality of the interview process, (c) referring back to the questions when the participants digress or start questioning the interviewer, (d) staying calm and patient when the participant gets upset. Interviewers can practice conducting interviews (Yin, 2018; Saunders et al, 2015) so they can be prepared to recognize interview pitfalls and respond appropriately. Interviewers can use a technique called interviewing the interviewer where the researcher assumes the role of a participant to create and revise interview protocols (Chenail, 2011).

              While conducting interviews for the small-scale project this week, I faced one of these situations. I used the interview protocol with open-ended questions (Walden University, n.d.) for the interview and some participants digressed from the question. I used the referring back to the question strategy identified by Saunders et al. (2015) to get the answers to my questions. Some of the answers I received made me realize that I must refine my questions, potentially combine some questions, and make them specific and at the same time, ensure the questions are probing and open-ended (Chenail, 2011; Saunders et al., 2015; Walden University, n.d.).

References

Chenail, R. (2011). Interviewing the investigator: Strategies for addressing instrumentation and researcher bias concerns in qualitative research. The Qualitative Report, 16(1), 255–262. Retrieved from http://www.nova.edu/ssss/QR/QR16-1/interviewing

Saunders, M. N. K., Lewis, P., & Thornhill, A. (2015). Research methods for business students (7th ed.). Essex, England: Pearson Education Unlimited.

Walden University. (n.d.). DBA doctoral study rubric and research handbook. Available from http://academicguides.waldenu.edu/researchcenter/osra/dba

Yin, R. K. (2018). Case study research and applications: Design and methods (6th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.