Free Interviews Research Articles

Applying mathematics with real world connections: metacognitive characteristics of secondary students

This paper reports an intensive study of problem-solving activity of female students at the senior secondary level. The study focussed both on the mathematical processing and the underlying cognitive and metacognitive activities that led to that processing. Response maps were used to analyse and categorize the written responses from individual students while videotaped problem solving sessions and structured and free response interviews probed the students' metacognitive knowledge, strategies, decision making, beliefs and affects. Metacognitive activities were involved in all phases of the solution process with key points in students' solutions identifiable in terms of the cognitive-metacognitive framework of Garofalo and Lester (1985). On average more time was spent on orientation and execution activities with little time being spent on organisation and verification activities, however, the successful groups spent less time on orientation than the other groups. All successful groups displayed a high number of key points where metacognitive decisions could influence cognitive action. Success was accompanied by a tendency to engage in a high number of organisational activities, regulation of execution activities and evaluation activities particularly evaluation of execution but fewer opportunities where metacognitive decisions could influence cognitive actions during orientation.

Health as an individual's way of existence.

This paper examines health from the viewpoint of Finnish individuals. The goal of the study was to understand and describe the human being's health as an individual way of existence on the basis of life descriptions. The methodology of the study were based on the existentialist phenomenological conception of a human being's existence and the essence of knowledge. The study answers the research question: How do Finnish adults who have been cared for in hospital experience health? The data were collected from 60 persons via free form thematic interviews. The data were analysed by applying the grounded theory method. The analysis led to the identification of five different ways to experience health. To the interviewees, health meant independent coping, drifting with the current of life, developing one's personal existence, avoiding threats in one's life situation and taking care of the components of one's life situation. The results provide a deeper understanding of health within daily life and of a human being as a nursing client.

The Royal Free interview for religious and spiritual beliefs: development and standardization.

We present the development and standardization of a measure of spiritual, religious and philosophical beliefs. An interview was constructed based on on-going studies by the authors of the nature and strength of belief held by people hospitalized with an acute illness. The interview was tested with three standard populations--staff of a teaching hospital; attenders to an inner city general practice; and people with clearly defined, devout religious beliefs--in order to establish population norms, validity and reliability for each question. The interview performed well with satisfactory validity and high internal and test-retest reliability. It is not presented, however, as a final product which will meet all needs in this complicated area of study. Rather, we have attempted to refine a measure of spiritual and religious belief that might apply to people with a range of personal and public faiths. It is clear that people are able to express these aspects of their lives in a way that can be measured with acceptable reliability and validity. We believe that this interview could, therefore, be applied in any medical, psychological or social setting in which a measure of belief is sought.

Mother Knows Best: Effects of Relationship Status and Interviewer Bias on Children′s Memory

This study examined whether interviewer status or a preconceived bias affect: (a) children′s memory and suggestibility or (b) adults′ descriptions of children′s reports. Forty 4-year-olds participated in play activities with a research assistant. Each child was then interviewed either by the child′s own mother or by an unfamiliar female. Interviewers were instructed to find out what happened (free interview), but half of the interviewers were misled (biased) about the play activities prior to the interview. To examine how accurately adults recount children′s reports, the interviewers were asked to write postinterview descriptions of the play session. Children were then questioned by the interviewer again, who asked a predetermined set of questions (structured interview). Analyses revealed that during the free interview, questioning styles of mothers and strangers differed in several ways: mothers were more task-oriented, whereas strangers spent more time building rapport and were more open-ended in their approach. Biased compared to unbiased interviewers asked more questions about the misinformation provided. Children′s free recall accuracy suffered (e.g., they minimized what occurred, made more order errors) when they were interviewed by biased versus unbiased strangers but not when interviewed by biased versus unbiased mothers. The interviewers′ descriptions of the children′s experiences were generally correct, although mothers reported more correct details than strangers about certain categories of information. Exposure to the biasing misinformation led to greater inaccuracy in interviewers′ descriptions. During the structured interview, children were less susceptible to suggestions of abuse when questioned by their mothers than by strangers. The findings are discussed in relation to concerns about children′s eyewitness memory and adults′ interviews of children.

An interview with Fernando Jose Corbató

article Free AccessAn interview with Fernando Jose Corbató Author: Karen A. Frenkel Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NYView Profile , Interviewee: Fernando Jose Corbató View Profile Authors Info & Claims Communications of the ACMVolume 34Issue 9Sept. 1991 pp 82–90https://doi.org/10.1145/114669.114688Published:01 September 1991Publication History 4citation522DownloadsMetricsTotal Citations4Total Downloads522Last 12 Months58Last 6 weeks17 Get Citation AlertsNew Citation Alert added!This alert has been successfully added and will be sent to:You will be notified whenever a record that you have chosen has been cited.To manage your alert preferences, click on the button below.Manage my AlertsNew Citation Alert!Please log in to your account Save to BinderSave to BinderCreate a New BinderNameCancelCreateExport CitationPublisher SiteeReaderPDF

The psychosocial aftermath of two major disasters in the Soviet Union

AbstractDuring various visits to the Soviet Union information was collected through free interviews and discussions on the psychosocial consequences of the Chernobyl nuclear incident and the earthquake in Armenia. Following a brief history of the disasters and a description of the present situation, it is illustrated in what ways the transformation from victim to survivor is different.

Development of Pupils’ Ideas about Seeing and Hearing‐‐the path of light and sound

Abstract The concept of vision, particularly of non‐luminous objects, has been the subject of recent research, but comparatively little has been done in the area of sound and hearing, despite the fact that, though there are clear distinctions, the two have much in common. The present work uses a combined free response questionnaire and interview procedure to probe pupils’ ideas regarding how they believe they see both luminous and non‐luminous objects, and how they think they hear a source of sound. From the large sample of pupils studied, the prevalence of the ideas in different age groups is compared, and progression can be seen. Some suggestions are offered for teaching strategies which might aid this progression.

Improvement of Screening for Pulmonary Embolism with a Standardized Questionnaire

The anamnesis is believed to be poor in identifying patients with pulmonary embolism (PE), but the method of data collection may be critical for inference on this issue. We compared the prevalences of history findings recorded after a free verbal interview (VI) by the referring physicians with those recorded after completion of a standardized questionnaire (SQ) by the admitting physicians in a group of 177 consecutive patients referred to our Emergency Unit with the suspicion of PE (subsequently confirmed in 97). VI data were incomplete in 18 patients. In the remaining 159 patients, prevalences of symptoms and predisposing factors were higher after SQ than after VI. Accordingly, 8 items (obesity, prolonged immobilization, surgery, varicose leg veins, deep venous thrombosis, pleuritic chest pain, and sudden-onset dyspnea) were significantly more prevalent in patients with confirmed PE after SQ, compared to only 2 items (prolonged immobilization and pleuritic chest pain) after VI. When we tested for the agreement between the two methods of data collection, kappa values ranged from high values (for surgery and hemoptysis) to very low values (for prolonged immobilization and recurrent phlebitis). These results show that the use of an SQ could improve the accuracy of collecting clinical data in patients with suspected PE, as they are also consistent in separating patients with PE from those with unconfirmed suspicion of PE. Moreover, it allows the clinician to be alert towards findings which could be missed when not carefully searched for and which may be useful to raise or strengthen the suspicion of this disease.

Toward a Model of the In-Store Purchase Decision Process: Consumer Use of Criteria for Evaluating Women's Apparel

To identify criteria considered by consumers while making garment purchase decisions, free response interviews of 80 female customers were conducted at point of purchase in two specialty apparel stores. Subjects described the criteria they used to evaluate a garment they had tried on. The most important criteria for apparel assessment were related to aesthetics. Comparison of responses of customers who purchased and customers who did not purchase their garments revealed that different criteria had primary effects in two stages of the purchase process. During the Interest phase, color/pattern, styling, and fabric were most critical in influencing selection of garments from the display racks. Fit, styling, and appearance on the body were more important in determining rejection or adoption of the garments during the Trial phase in the dressing rooms. The research begins to fulfill a need for store intercept data collection, study of free responses minimally shaped by the researcher, and development of theoretical models of the apparel purchase process.

Conceptions of first‐year university students of the constituents of matter and the notions of acids and bases

Preconceptions of first‐year university students of the constituents of matter and the notions of acids and bases were investigated on a total of 400 students. The procedure used consisted of free interviews, semi‐structured interviews and questionnaires. It was found that the constituents of matter were well known to students, but that interactions between these constituents were either totally unknown or were the subject of severe misconceptions. The students’ knowledge tended to be qualitative and formal, with a worrying lack of connection with everyday life.

What children mean to their parents: a qualitative approach

The author explores the meaning of children to their parents using data from free group interviews with 40 randomly selected Finnish couples with a baby aged 3-5 months (half of these couples had no other children). The theoretical background of the study and the validity of the data are briefly discussed. The aim of the study is to foster an understanding of parenthood values experiences and meanings connected to having children. This in turn creates conditions for an ever deeper and more appropriate population policy and counseling services dealing with problems with the birth rate. (EXCERPT)

Social Survey Method in Village Community

In the case study of rural society, based on the observation method, there are so many chances to get the data by the free interview, rather than by the direct observation. One of the characteristics of this method is that the data can be got just by having the social relation with informants by the researcher. Therefore, the revel of information may depend upon the revel of social relation. But there is not necessarily such general tendency that the more familiar and informal the relation is, the more accurate and detailed the information is. The researcher should consider not only the dyadic relation between the informant and the researcher itself but also the social settings around it.The theoretical model, which is reconstructed from the social reality of rural community, should be rather intermediate than abstract one in its character. The researcher should rely on skillful assistant, informant as well as native researcher, in order to have a correct understanding of folk concept and folk model. At the same time, however, the researcher should remember the limit of ideal-typed character of that kind of model, which cannot always take account of the social change.

Heavenly Protection and Family Unity: The Concept of the Revenant among Elderly Urban Women

fieldwork which sought to discover both the supernatural beliefs of a modern urban community and also the rhetoric and other techniques through which those beliefs were presented to others. During that time I interviewed 140 people resident in Gatley, a middle-class suburb of Manchester. Most of the informants attended the same church, consulted the same medical practitioners and used the same shops, so they were a fairly homogeneous group of people. Informants were contacted through my father who was then the local chiropodist, interviews being carried out in his surgery among willing participants. My father was my co-worker, using his long association with his patients to reassure them and put them at their ease in what might, in other circumstances, have been a difficult situation. Chiropodists' patients are, by nature of their complaints, predominantly women in middle or later life. The informants fell into three groupings. Women between 40 and 60 years old, men over retirement age, and women between 60 and 95. The group of elderly ladies was by far the largest group (97 of the total), so they were used as the main sample, the smaller groupings serving as contrast and comparison. I used a free interview technique based on a questionnaire. The questions, relating to many matters broadly supernatural, were used to promote conversation rather than slavishly adhered to. Where informants were willing to talk freely they were encouraged to do so. 79 women from the main sample group responded to questions about encounters with the dead, and it is from their conversation on this topic that this work developed. One of the interesting results of using a free interview based on a questionnaire was in discovering the women's approach to discussions of belief. It was, for example, comparatively rare on any topic for them to simply answer 'yes' or 'no.' In four out of five cases women appended some form of explanation or justification. These explanations for the most part were appeals to experience, and the appeals to experience in turn were for the most part personal experience stories. When the answers were affirmative and the questions 'delicate,' the proportion of narrative was particularly high. In the case of questions about the possibility of encountering the dead in this life, 80% of affirmative answers were accompanied by personal experience stories. The content of these narratives therefore may be fairly assumed to reflect quite closely the type of belief transmitted among the women of Gatley.

Schema shifting: Children's cognitive monitoring of the prose-schema interaction in comprehension

Facility in shifting between familiar schemata in a listening comprehension task was examined in children from the third and sixth grades (8 and 11 years old, respectively). The children heard two consecutively presented ambiguous passages about very familiar daily activities. Comprehension of both passages demanded precisely timed activation of a schema appropriate to each passage. Half of the children were not explicitly cued to the passage shift, thus requiring that they spontaneously recognize the need for a schema shift. Analyses of free recall and interview responses showed that although the younger children had more difficulty than the older children, children at both grade levels demonstrated deficiencies in their cognitive monitoring of the prose-schema interaction.

Flexibility of Schema Shifting in Good and Poor Readers

This study was designed to see whether good and poor readers show similar facility in shifting between familiar schemata in a listening comprehension task. Similar flexibility would mitigate an explanation of comprehension differences based on mediational control mechanisms in the deployment of cognitive structures. Twenty good and twenty poor readers at the third grade level listened to two short passages about very familiar daily activities. Comprehension of the second passage demanded a shift in schemata and only half of the children were explicitly cued to this shift. Analyses of free recall and interview responses indicated that although good readers recalled more information, there was similar flexibility of schema shifting for good and poor readers.

The Yungay Avalanche Of 1970: Anthropological Perspectives On Disaster And Social Change*

DisastersVolume 3, Issue 1 p. 95-101 The Yungay Avalanche Of 1970: Anthropological Perspectives On Disaster And Social Change* Anthony Oliver-Smith, Anthony Oliver-Smith University of Florida Department of Anthropology, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL. 32611, U.S.ASearch for more papers by this author Anthony Oliver-Smith, Anthony Oliver-Smith University of Florida Department of Anthropology, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL. 32611, U.S.ASearch for more papers by this author First published: March 1979 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7717.1979.tb00205.xCitations: 28 † *This article is a version of a paper presented at the 73rd Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association on November 20, 1974, in Mexico City, D.F. The collection of data on which this article is based was carried out with the survivors of the Yungay avalanche and rural refugees in 1970-71, 1974 and 1975. The author resided in the tent encampment and later barracks city from October of 1970 to September of 1971. In addition, another trip was made to Yungay in November-December of 1971 while working for the Peru Earthquake Relief Committee. The methods used in gathering the materials for this study included the traditionally anthropological approach of participant observation supplemented by a number of other techniques. Open-ended, rather free form interviews were held with several hundreds of the Yungay camp residents. A formal questionnaire was administered to 68 (of a total 447) heads of households. Another questionnaire on community organization was undertaken throughout the entire province with 43 of the approximate 70 communities. In addition, a basic census of the Yungay camp was carried out in April of 1971 as well as a brief census of the Yungay market participant community. Subsequent research of a follow-up nature was undertaken in the summers of 1974 and 1975. Support for the initial research period was provided by the Midwestern Consortium for International Activities. Support for the subsequent research trips came from the University of Florida and the Society for Health and Human Values respectively. AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume3, Issue1March 1979Pages 95-101 RelatedInformation

Language and thought content in acute psychosis.

Twenty-three acute schizophrenic inpatients were given a standardized 15-minute free verbalization interview during the acute phase and again during partial recovery. During the acute phase, patients tended to get lost in a vivid, overwhelming flood of details, whereas later they took more distance and were not as overinvolved, even when discussing the same subjects. Over time there was a shift to future concerns and a renewed interest in interpersonal relationships and responsibilities. Patients became more organized and coherent over time.

Questions Concerning the Interview as a Research Technique

FROEHLICH AND DARLEY (3) suggest that the interview may be used among other things as a fact finding device. As such, they suggest an interview might have three purposes: (a) supplementing information, (b) verifying information, and (c) observation of characteristics or mannerisms. Others have discussed at length the value of the interview for various purposes. (2,6) Thus, when considering a recent research project, questions were raised as to the most efficient method for obtaining reliable data. There were three proposals: (1) a mailed questionnaire to all students included in the project, (2) an interview schedule to obtain specific answers to direct questions, and (3) a structured interview to obtain all the data necessary but in a manner, the freedom of which, was governed by the interviewer. Because of the nature of the information desired, it was necessary to ask the interviewee questions which might be interpreted as having future implica tions for him. Therefore, it was felt that the structured, but somewhat free and subtle type interview would provide greater opportunity than either the mailed questionnaire or the interview schedule for the establishment of rap port with the interviewee and for the alleviation of possible anxieties which might result from the interviewee's interpretation of the item implications. By thus relieving any apprehensions the interviewee might feel, greater relia bility of the data should result. For this reason, the less formal, but struc tured interview was selected as the best method of securing the information. Several studies of the reliability of interviews have been reported. Ander son (1) reported a . 85 level of consistency in ratings when an interview was used. This was derived by having the interviews recorded and checked by in dependent raters. When the same interviewer checked his own ratings the level of consistency was . 90. The interview ratings compared with f ac ulty (non-interview) ratings produced a product-moment correlation of . 5 1. He concluded that the interview was a useful device for rating doctoral candidates. Vaughn and Reynolds (5) interviewed persons in two mid-west cities at two intervals of 3-4 months in order to check reliability of gathering information. The information on age produced product-moment correlations of . 85 and . 80; on educational status, correlations of . 82 and . 67; and on socio-economic sta tus, of .61 and .42. They concluded that such coefficients are sufficiently high to warrant the use of the interview for public surveys. Levin (4) concludes that short interviews (about one hour in length as op

Applications of Tests of Non-Intellectual Functions

THE PERIOD UNDER REVIEW has been very prolific. Approximately 1,000 studies, investigations, articles, and books have appeared on the topics covered in this chapter. Nearly 500 studies were found which used measuring instruments, for example, questionnaire type tests, self-ratings, ranking of interests, ratings of others by experts or groups, time sampling procedures, more or less controlled observation, controlled or free interviews, and association tests. Over 500 titles were found which indicated that problems of personality, character, delinquency, and personnel procedures had been discussed or evaluated. Out of this large number of references, 120 studies have been selected for special consideration in this chapter. The following criteria of selection have been applied: studies which used the best experimental technics were first selected; studies containing large populations were included rather than those with small populations when similar problems were being studied; other things being equal, those studies which made use of the most complete statistical procedures in reporting results were chosen. The number was further limited by giving preference to those studies which used well-known measuring instruments. Exceptions to this rule were made when the excellence of the study and the significance of the results seemed to justify inclusion in this review. Finally, in those fields where there were a large number of studies, those were selected which gave the truest picture of the conclusions drawn from all.