asking questions to get good answers

I have been thinking a little about the conversations that I am going to have in Mexico and how I would like to find out more about their ideas of health and the role it plays in their lives. I am not planning on doing any formal interviewing for my project but I thought that it would be helpful to go over one of the readings about asking questions to gain some insight into how to get answers to some of the questions I have. While reading through it I have tried to come up with some useful questions that I could ask while engaged in friendly conversation. Some of these questions are not formed in a descriptive way, but by asking them I can then ask the ones that are more descriptive. Here they are:

·        Why do you cook the food that way?

·        When you cook, what is the most important part of it?

·        What would you say that your husband would say is most important?

·        What would you do differently if your child were sick/ too skinny/ too fat?

·        What types of activities do you do that you feel make you stronger?

·        Do you ever do anything just to make you stronger?

·        When is it that you start to feel tired while working? Do you ever?

·        What is an interesting question about health?

·        If a group of mothers was talking after cooking dinner/ doing chores what kinds of questions would they ask each other?

·        Could you describe a typical day in the fields/ doing chores/ at school?

·        Could you describe your day yesterday from the time that you finished school to the time that you went to bed?

·        Tell me about the last time you had to run? The last time your muscles were sore? Why?

·        The next time you ______________ (do laundry, go to the town, cook that) can I come along?

·        What is your activity/play like now and how is it different from when you were younger?

·        How would you refer to someone who runs a lot? Is very athletic?

·        How would you refer to someone who is very healthy?

·        If you were talking to your friend _________ would you say it that way?

·        If you were talking to a child how would you refer to it?

·        What are some other ways in which I could use that word?  

·        What do you do during free time? What would you do if you had free time? What do you do during _________’s free time?

Some of these questions are better than others. I think that it gets the ball rolling though. I think that as I am there I will be able to clarify the questions a little more to the specific situations. I also think that some of the way these questions are worded doesn’t work for just friendly conversation. And even reading through the reading, I felt that some of the example questions he gave were rude. For instance, asking a waitress to give an example of someone giving her a hard time, can be a terribly rude thing to ask if she is emotional about a specific incidence. Or asking someone to play a game of bridge and explain to him what they are doing along the way, can be really obnoxious. I think that is why it is so important to first build rapport with the interviewee. Also, I see how these questions can work, I just also see that if he’s not careful he could end up bothering someone and not get any information out of them. As for my questions, I think that I will have to work on them a bit but writing them down does help me focus a bit more on the types of questions that will get me more meaningful answers.