h)

Continuum of subject-respondent-informant-expert

Suppose a consultant is brought in to see why a project went wrong at an organization. The objective is to learn the truth about what happened in order to guard against a similar failure in the future. The consultant visits the organization and obtains from management a list of key players in the project. He then interviews these people, and also interviews people that are named by them. He asks all of them what went wrong. He then puts together a composite picture (weighting some people’s accounts more than others, based on his judgment of the accuracy of their reports), and presents the result to management.

(a) Is this a good methodology given the research objective?

(b) Where would you place the attitude toward the interviewees that is implicit in this methodology along the continuum of subject-respondent-informant-expert?