8
To provide in-depth information on why respondents think as they do and in a
language that is native to both the researcher and the informants, the author conducted
face-to-face interviews in Mandarin Chinese with 15 respondents from two of the survey
sites--Los Angeles and San Francisco metropolitan areas--in May and June 2001. These
informants were recruited from the pool of survey respondents who gave consent at the
time of the telephone survey to discuss their answers in some future time with the
researcher who designed the survey. The general topic areas of ethnic identity, political
socialization and participation, issue opinions, and attitudes toward U.S. and homeland
governments are the same as in the telephone survey. However, the semi-structured,
open-ended questions permit the researcher to probe why people hold certain opinions or
views.
Participation in this stage of research was sought through telephone calls placed to
those consenting adults in the two MSAs who may have an interest in meeting with the
researcher for face-to-face interviews at a place nearby their home or workplace.
7
Each
potential informant was offered $20 for his/her cooperation, but nearly half of the
informants denied the monetary compensation offered at the end of the interviews.
Although some informants appeared to be fully bilingual, all chose to express themselves
mainly in the ethnic language. Each session typically lasted for about 45 minutes, but
some sessions ran up to 90 minutes. The place of interview was either at the informants’
residence, workplace, or at a café close to the informants. These interviews were first
recorded on tape by the researcher, then transcribed and translated into English by a
Chinese immigrant woman who is experienced with such type of work and who
7
We were unsuccessful to establish contacts with 20% of the consulting respondents due to relocation,
travel, illness, and other reasons.
Convention