AELFTHRYTH GITTINGS: 22 YEARS
WITH SCPR/ THE NATIONAL CENTRE
Field Newsletter, Summer 2000 (National Centre for
Social Research)
It was January 1978 when I replied
to an advertisement for interviewers
on The Dwelling and Housing Survey. I was interviewed by Margaret Weatherby,
trained by Daphne Shaw, amongst others, and launched by June Hillidge. To all
three I owe a great debt - without their help and encouragement my career with
SCPR/the National
Centre would
never have got past the first hurdle. I know exactly how long ago. I was a raw
recruit because I was pregnant with my youngest child at the time and he is now
a strapping young man of 22. Dwelling and Housing was apparently rather a large
a project for SCPR to handle in those days, so we were busily recruiting and
training in large numbers. If I applied now I doubt if I would have got
started. What Area Manager would have taken on a pregnant mother with three
children?
I thought of it as a stopgap till
the baby was older and I could apply
for a ·'proper job'. Instead I found that I liked the work. It would be wrong
to say I enjoyed every minute of it. There are many frustrations out in the
field as interviewers know well. It is never much fun on dark November evenings
with the wind howling at one’s back, parking is a constant problem in the
central London points I used to work, broken appointments are infuriating and
above all the frustration of so few people being at home. The evenings when I
left the comforts of home to trudge round in the wet and not get a single
interview were the low points, when I would scan the advertisements for that
'proper job.' An evening spent in unproductive door knocking is not just an
evening when you have not earned anything, but a tedious evening when you have
not enjoyed those more intangible rewards of the job
And there were many rewards, outweighing
the frustrations. The subject
matter was always interesting and I liked the variety - in those days we did
not have any continuous surveys. Just as I was thinking I should start
screaming if I had to ask one more person what was wrong with the Health
Service, I was at the end of my assignment on that particular project and on to
a new subject.
I liked going into so many different
kinds of homes and I liked meeting
people from all walks of life, from the poorest people living in dreadful
circumstances to famous people, household names that unfortunately the rules of
confidentiality prevent me naming. One respondent sticks in my mind - a young
man of 23 whom I was interviewing for the 1981 wave of the National Child
Development Study. He asked me why we were so interested in interviewing his
age group repeatedly, so I explained how a great deal of valuable information
about health, education etc could be found out by following the same people all
through their lives. "No" he said "that's not it. Do you know
the real reason?" When I looked blank he explained, "they know that
someone special for mankind was born in that week and they are trying to find
him." While struggling to keep a straight face, I spent the interview
wondering if he thought he was that "special" person waiting to be
discovered.
Above all I liked the feeling
that this was worthwhile work and that most
surveys on which I worked would collect information that I hoped would be used
to improve people's lives. Occasionally I applied for 'proper jobs' but when I
went for interviews and discovered what the jobs entailed, they never seemed so
interesting or worthwhile as working for SCPR. So I spent ten years in the
field as an interviewer and then supervisor.
In 1990 I started working in the
London Office and slowly took over
responsibility for Interviewer Training. I soon found myself not just training
new interviewers but also devising the training courses and writing the
training documents. CAPI was a great challenge; when my children got their
first computer in the early 80s and invited me to have a go at zapping aliens I
declared that it was not for me, I was too old to learn how to use a computer.
Instead 10 years later I found myself not just learning to use one, but
teaching others. It did a lot for my standing in the eyes of those same children,
by then young adults.
Though there have been many changes,
as I see it they are all peripheral.
The central, or core task of the interviewer has not changed. It is still, as
it was defined to me at training 22 years ago "asking the right respondent the right
question in the right
way", and
all those parts are equally important. What seems the most major change in the
years I have worked in survey research, the switch to CAPI has only affected
one of those three elements though it meant extending Basic Training to a
second day. Asking the right question has got easier with the computer doing
the routing. On the other hand the first part of the job - asking the right
respondent - has become very much more difficult as it gets harder and harder
to contact people and persuade them to take part. 22 years ago entry-phones
were still a rarity, more women stayed at home, and there were fewer single
person households. But most significantly people were less suspicious of
strangers at the door and fewer people felt they had been over-surveyed.
As a result the emphasis in training
has had to change. We still train
people on the need to ask the right question in the right way, emphasising the
self discipline required when they are mostly out on their own with no one
looking over their shoulder to check. However for the last ten years we have
spent an increasing amount of time preparing new interviewers for the problems
of the doorstep. When I was trained this was a matter that was hardly
mentioned; when someone asked a question about how to persuade people to
co-operate we were just told "that is part of your skill as an
interviewer." Now a considerable part of the training is spent on
persuading reluctant respondents, and we have the training video "Who's
that Knocking at my Door?" This can get over far more messages in half an
hour than was possible just talking about the subject. The four highly skilled
interviewers showing their approaches to doorstep problems have provided a very
valuable training tool for both us and the other research organisations who are
learning from our expertise.
It soon became apparent that even
more time could be used to train
interviewers in doorstep skills, but this would not be possible without
extending the basic training into a further day. With the drop out of
interviewers who get trained and then do not work for us, or only ever do one
assignment it seemed better to give a third day's training later to those who
are likely to stay. Since 1994 interviewers have been invited to a Basic
Training Stage 2 at the point when they are going to be upgraded from A to B.
At this training most of the morning is spent discussing introducing surveys,
using scenarios on a tape as a focus. This technique promotes a lively
discussion as by the time interviewers attend this training they all have
enough experience to contribute about situations they have encountered and how
they solved them and this we hope increases confidence all round.
In the last 10 years I have trained
nearly 900 new interviewers. If only
they had all stayed that would be our interviewing force. So we come full
circle, back to the situation when I first joined, still trying to recruit and
retain interviewers. But it has been very rewarding. Preparing people to do
this important work and trying to ensure they will do it to the highest
standard has always seemed to me very worthwhile and it has been a privilege to
have this responsibility. I cannot think of a way I would rather have ended my
time with the Centre. I
have also trained nearly 90
supervisors and all our floorwalkers and it has been a particular pleasure for
me, quite frequent in recent years, to have interviewers whom I initially
trained back at a supervisor or floorwalker training.
At all my trainings I have had the assistance
of a wonderful bunch of
floorwalkers. Thank you all for your help over the years; without your
assistance, your watchfulness, tact and friendliness the trainings would not
have gone as well as they did and I am sure new interviewers would not have
learnt the job so well or gained so much confidence. I also owe a debt of gratitude
to all the interviewers, supervisors, and nurses whom I have consulted over the
years when writing or revising the various manuals - Interviewers' Manual,
Survey Nurses' Manual, Supervisors' Manual and Nurse Supervisors' Manual. Many
of you have informed me about changes that needed to go into the manuals -
thank you all for helping to make the latest editions even better. A similar
thank you to the Area Managers, past and present, for help with the manuals and
for ideas for improvement to the training courses.
,
I would have liked
to be around to drop in and see many of you from time to time, so I would not
have to feel this is good bye. But my life is taking a different course. My
husband's job is now based in Hong Kong, so I shall go out to join him, with
the prospect of his job moving to Shanghai in the new year. These are exciting
changes and challenges for me. To make the most of life in Shanghai I need to
learn some Chinese - not an easy task and I fear I will never be very fluent,
but at least a little vocabulary will help. I will be back from time to time to
see the family and am sure I will pop into the London office and will ,hope to
see some of you then.
In the meantime the very best
wishes to all of you - I leave happy in the
knowledge that Hazel has already proved a very able successor, who will take
interviewer training forward to meet new challenges. And good bye for the
moment, or rather "zai jian"