Interviews and Surveys

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Interviews and Surveys

The Personal Project encourages students to consult a wide variety of sources when pursuing their learning goal. Often the best source of information are human beings. Interviewing topical experts and/or surveying those impacted by an issue can be extremely useful.

It is a good idea to make very clear what you will do with data obtained in an interview or survey. Here is a suggested privacy statement that you can include at the top of a list of survey or interview questions:

Privacy Statement: The information you provide will be used solely for the purposes of my Personal Project. Your individual responses will be kept confidential and will not be shared with anyone outside my Personal Project team. Once the project is complete, all individual data will be destroyed.

Ethical research

Interview

An interview is a one-on-one interaction with an expert on a topic. Interviews can be used to gain information, but are also often used to find new sources or help sharpen direction or thinking.

Interview questions should be open-ended and give the person being interviewed the chance to speak their mind. Questions that can be answered with a simple yes or no are not good interview questions.

An interview can be conducted face-to-face, via a video call or even via email or chat.

Two questions every interview for your Personal Project should probably have:

What do you think about the direction of my Personal Project?
What resources do you recommend I look into to further my understanding of this topic?

Survey

A survey asks multiple people a set of questions. The people answering need to be well-selected and capable of answering the questions.

In order to be able to deal with the often large amount of data resulting from a survey, most questions should probably be closed-ended (multiple-choice, yes/no, rating).

A survey can be conducted through an online form or face-to-face. A tip is to combine the best of both and create an online form for data collection, but fill it out on behalf of the respondent, asking them the questions face-to-face.

End every survey with one or two open-ended questions, giving the respondents the option to provide feedback on the survey and provide input they feel the questions did not allow them to give. E.g.:

Is there anything else you want to share?
What question do you feel was missing from this survey? What would your answer be?

'MLA Referencing' an Interview

Author(s): Names of the interviewer. If multiple interviewers, identify the main creator and add "et al.".
Title: The main topic of the interview
Publisher: Interview by ... + publication
Date of First Publication: Date of the interview
Location of Publication: City or ...
Type: Interview or Personal Interview.

Examples

Hawk, Tony. The Evolution of Trucks. Interview by Sam Jones. Skateboarding Today, June 2024, pp. 45-52.

Leppard, Jeff. School Event Organisation Protocols. Interview by Ella Gubbels, 6 June 2023, Hanoi. Personal Interview.

'MLA Referencing' a Survey

Author(s): Names of the survey conductor. Most likely: You.
Title: State the event you observed
Publisher: N/A
Date of First Publication: Date of the observation
Location of Publication: City or more specific
Type: Survey Data.

Examples

Davis, Brycen. Student Lunch Choices. 24 May 2025, Hanoi. Survey Data.

Shea, Katie. Opinions on US Elections. 1 Jan 2025, Montreal. Survey Data.

Teens, Social Media and Technology. Pew Research Center, 2022, www.pewresearch.org/internet/2022/08/10/teens-social-media-and-technology-2022/. Survey Data.

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