Chapter 08

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/StatBase/Source.asp?vlnk=1385&More=Y
The Family Expenditure Survey (FES) is carried out on by the Office of National Statistics on behalf of the UK government every year. It is a social survey of household income and expenditure on goods and services in approximately 6500 private households in the UK, and its standardised format allows data analysts to produce generalizable statistics about patterns of consumption, which help to inform government policy.

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/ssd/surveys/general_household_survey.asp
This is another national social survey carried out on behalf of the government, but it has a wider focus than the FES. Using households as a basic unit of analysis, the General Household Survey measures social change more generally, in terms of people’s education and employment experiences, health-related behaviours and patterns of marriage, cohabitation and fertility. The survey is conducted using face-to-face, computer-assisted structured interviews.

http://www.gallup.com/
Gallup polls are perhaps the most famous of social surveys. This USA-based company carries out public opinion polls through structured interviews with members of the general public about various political and economic issues, including the popularity of presidential candidates, attitudes to work and reactions to the war in Iraq. The results of these surveys have been used to inform government policy but also to produce a wide range of informative journalistic reports, which can be viewed in the archives of this website.

http://qb.soc.surrey.ac.uk/surveymethods/interviewing/factsheet%205%20final.pdf
CASS is an ESRC-funded resource centre that provides courses and information about conducting social surveys, aimed at academics, market research companies, government researchers and so on. Here you can look at the forms that are used for various national surveys, such as the British Crime Survey and British Social Attitudes Survey. There is also a survey “question bank”, where you can find a wealth of articles giving advice on how to define key concepts and variables and design questions for particular topics in social research, such as crime, health and education. This link brings you directly to their piece on structured interviewing.

http://candocareer.com/job-interview-questions/structured.htm
Here is an example of the way that the basic structured interview format can be applied to contexts of everyday life. The Cando Career Coaching and Resume Writing service is a privately run Canadian organisation that provides information and advice about job-seeking. The author, Candace Davies, suggests that job interviewers might ask you structured questions about your written and verbal communication abilities, team building skills, and so on - and that like the social researcher, they will want to compare individuals’ responses to these standardised measures.

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Oxford University Press, Online Resource Centre, Chapter 08.

Chapter 08