THE INTERVIEW GUIDE

The interview comprises 44 ‘closed’ questions and 20 semi-structured or ‘open -ended’ questions. It was designed to maximise accuracy with a base of extremely reliable closed questions and, further, to elicit from the respondents the meaning and context of their views and judgments by means of the open -ended questions. Accordingly many of the open -ended questions are either explicitly keyed with a ‘please explain’ question to the closed items or else variously worded and designed to give complementary responses. For the sake of reliability several questions were, in most cases, aimed at each of the central problems of the investigation and these are to some extent reflected in the section headings. In some cases, as with ‘anomie’, the several questions were in sequence; in other instances, where it seemed more important not to foretell the relationship between questions, they were interspersed across one or more sections. Since our respondents followed the interview from the guide the layout is important: accordingly the page breaks between the double -page spreads in the interview are marked below with a rule.

AUSTRALIAN SENIOR PUBLIC SERVANTS STUDY INTERVIEW GUIDE

PART ONE

BASIC BIOGRAPHICAL DETAILS, FORMATION AND IDENTITY

A few short questions about your background…

1. What is your age?

2. What was the last secondary school you attended?

3. Your father's occupation? (if occupation such as farmer or businessman then please say whether grazier or small farmer; small businessman or company director, etc.)

4. […]