I need a black g-little
“I need a black g-little” a phrase that I overheard at a pre-recruitment party. An older member of a predominantly white fraternity stated that his family had the tradition of being the lineage with the most black people and that he “needed” a black G-little to follow the trend. This is something that I would never imagine myself ever saying even as a sorority woman who strives for diversity in her own lineage and chapter. This brought up an interesting intersection between my research subjects and the methods in which I would conduct my research.
In class we discussed coming up with questions that would reap most diverse and constructive answers for research. This method is found under the common term “Question Bank.” The interesting thing about creating a question bank is that they are often created before the first interview takes place.
Question banks exist to help guide interviews in a more constructive and structured way rather than that of a conversation or a discussion. From a question bank one is setting up interviews to be guided in a much different way than that of a conversation or an overheard comment. But that does not completely discredit conversations or overheard comments. One creates the questions for the question bank thinking about the information that they want to get out of their interviewees but it is also important to take personal knowledge into account.
Leading with a question from one’s question bank is important as it will give you similar answers in a study of a population. In an interview it is also important to know that if something is unearthed that is nothing like what you expected during the creation of your question bank that it is your job to explore it.
This can even play into the lines of the population that you are interviewing. You want to have different perspectives on the subject in which you are studying. For me especially, studying white greek men and women is just as important as me studying the racial minorities that are within greek life. This diversity is important because while I may be asking the same questions, I will be receiving answers from two different viewpoints that will help create an unbiased conclusion of the population that is being studied.
Within interviewing my subjects it is important to know that they all see their place in the population that I am studying in a different way. While using the same base line of questions it is important that I focus on the way in which they perceive and answer the questions based on their identity. The way in which someone answers questions can draw more information than what their actual answer is. Taking note of body composition, language, hesitancies and other nonverbal signs can create more of a story than I expected.
While interviewing is just one aspect of obtaining information for research, a lot of information can come from it and it is important to focus in on the subject and their interaction with the questions.
