Interview Analysis

Purpose

Surveys give a very good overview of how the general public thinks about Instant messaging, however, the results and the inferences that can be drawn are very generalized and not detailed enough. The purpose of conducting the interviews is to gain more in-depth insights and perspectives from selected groups of people, and therefore find out different points of view on Instant Messaging.

We can also ask more questions that go more in-depth than the survey, and receive more elaboration on their views, rather than just a short answer. By conducting interviews on selected individuals representing different groups of society with different points of view, we can also compare their opinions on different aspects of Instant messaging.

We chose five interviewees as follows:

Mr Kelvin Yap, Class of 2010 Year Head, Raffles Institution

Being a Year Head, he knows about pupils and their usage of Instant Messaging. He also has a repertoire of experience in dealing with student welfare. We can gain professional insights on Instant messaging and expert view on their impact on teenagers as he has first-hand experience in counselling students for a myriad of matters.

Mr Soon Yin Jie, Teacher, Raffles Institution, IT Department

As a teacher in the field of Computer Science, Mr Soon has an awareness of the technical aspects of Instant Messaging and its mechanisms. Being familiar with communication technologies, we will be able to glean information regarding the principal differences of Instant Messaging compared to e-mail and Voice over Internet Protocol.

Mdm Cathrine Tan, Parent

Mdm Cathrine Tan is a parent that allows her children to use Instant messaging. We want to find out why, and to what extent she allows her children to use Instant messaging and what she thinks about Instant messaging that could counter the problems faced with it.

We also want to know about her understanding of Instant messaging and possibly her measures to keep her children from using Instant messaging for the wrong purposes.

Mr Gerald Yam, Teenager

Gerald Yam is a friend of one of our group members and we have decided to interview him because we want to receive insights about Instant messaging from the eyes of a teenager. Our project is also mainly focusing on how Instant messaging affects teenagers and he is a suitable candidate from this group of society.

His parents allow him to use Instant Messaging and we want to find out from him how Instant messaging has affected his daily life and why he uses Instant messaging. We also want to find out from him what he thinks about teenagers like him using Instant messaging.

©The Probl(IM)s Group 2008