Research Bloopers

So last week I continued (after a long hiatus) interviewing women for a client story booklet that I’m working on. Because I don’t speak Kannada I needed to use a translator for the interview. The translator that I used was a wonderful woman from the Mann Deshi staff in Hubli, Karnataka. However, this interview is an example of exactly how research should NOT be conducted:

Me: Are there any ways that Mann Deshi can be more helpful to women?
Interviewer: How can Mann Deshi help women more? What services would you like Mann Deshi to provide? How about health insurance?
Client: Um… health insurance.
Interviewer (to me): She says that she really needs health insurance.
My Friend (to interviewer, knowing what was going on): But she just said earlier that she doesn’t need to spend very much money on healthcare.

Bank clients know that Mann Deshi is eager to offer health insurance. However, my friend who is researching health insurance in the Hubli office thinks that health insurance may not benefit women, may not be a good idea, that there may be better alternatives, and that promoting certain health insurance schemes could be unethical. The interviewer was totally leading the client and misrepresenting what the client said.

The interview was not going as I had wanted it to. The translation was awful, my questions seriously needed to be restructured, we kept getting interrupted by random people, there were 5-6 people in the room, and the woman got up in the middle and asked if she was done. It was simultaneously amusing and angering! The bottom line is that I didn’t do a very good job.