This individual assignment requires you to conduct an interview and write a reflective report on
this experience. This includes methodological design considerations.
Learning outcomes
This assignment contributes to the following module learning outcomes:
1. Demonstrate an extended critical understanding of philosophy, ethics, and practices of social
research.
2. Demonstrate practical understanding of research methodologies, tools and techniques, and how
these relate to media and audience studies.
3. Demonstrate critical awareness and critical thinking in developing, planning and executing
appropriate research designs to address research questions.
4. Demonstrate critical awareness of ethical and practical problems associated with the use of
specific methods and strategies to deal with these.
Brief and structure (overview)
You are required to conduct a single interview (i.e. one interview) and write a reflective report on
this experience. This includes specification and critique of methodological design aspects. Further
details below.
Brief
Your interview topic is: persuasive communication.
You should ask your interviewee if they can recall a recent example of a public communication
campaign message that was successful in influencing or changing their attitude or behaviour (for
example, political decision, consumer behaviour, health behaviour, environmentalism etc.). Once
identified, you should then explore what aspects of the communication influenced their response
(e.g. source credibility/likeability, nature of the message, their personal beliefs etc.).
Note. you have the freedom to pose the above as a set of general questions (i.e. allowing your
interviewee to self-identify a topic/message to discuss), or to focus on a specific discipline
2
and/or topic (e.g. PR and COVID-19, Health Communication and Social Media, Advertising and
Climate Change). You should clearly state your choice and the purpose of the interview (i.e.
general or pre-specified topic) in the introduction to your interview report (and section #2:
Interview design).
Note. your second assignment for this module will also be based on your chosen topic (so
select a topic of interest).
Your report for this assignment should focus on the interview experience and process rather than
the data collection itself. You will not be required to provide an interview transcript (though you will
still need to write up the interview for your own notes and to be able to provide anonymised
exemplar quotes to support your reflective discussion – see note below). This exercise aims to
develop your understanding of the process of conducting a good interview, from design, to
conducting and analysing, to reflection (what worked and what didn’t).
Note. All interviewee information should be anonymised and use of lengthy verbatim
interviewee quotes is not permitted within this exercise. However, you are allowed to
selectively make use of paraphrasing (of interviewee responses to questions) or use short
illustrative excerpts from participant answers to help illustrate interview process and
responses etc. You should be able to convey the process of preparing, conducting, and
reflecting upon an interview session without extensive reliance on the content of the
interview.
Your documented submission will take the form of an interview report. Word count is 2500 words
(maximum ± 10% deviation). In your report you should demonstrate theoretical and methodological
understanding of qualitative research, and best practice methodological design. You should also
clearly specify your interview design (what you asked, and how you asked) including design rationale
(for your design choices). You should also demonstrate understanding of the practical challenges of
conducting interviews, and specify the design steps that you took in advance to mitigate. Ethical
considerations and applied ethical protocols (e.g. informed consent) should also be clearly specified
(note. ethical approval is not required here but you must nonetheless demonstrate in section #4
that ethical protocols were followed). Finally, you should also include a reflective component (e.g.
the questions you asked and how you asked them, your own bias and experience and how these
might have influenced your interviews, what you have learnt from this exercise, and with the benefit
of hindsight, what you might have done differently). All key points and conclusions throughout
(including the rational for your design choices) should be supported by evidence of informed
decisions (i.e. drawing from research methods textbooks and/or previous relevant studies).
You are expected to include the following sections in the research interview report (guide to
approximate word count breakdown in parenthesis):
1. Introduction (5%): the chosen research topic, main questions, purpose.
2. Description of the interview setting (5%): e.g., participant (anonymised), environment
(anonymised).
3. Interview design (20%): e.g., theoretical and methodological guidelines/principles followed
(including rationale for choices), questions and sub-questions design, running order and
interview guide.
4. Ethical considerations and protocols (10%): e.g. informed consent, confidentiality, data
management.
