Research Shortcuts

SHORTCUT 29. Use the Telephone or E-mail

SHORTCUT 29 Use the Telephone or E-mail Most people go out of their way to avoid telephoning strangers. For some odd reason, the fear of a slammed receiver is greater than the fear of a slammed door. If you approach telephone interviewing as professionally as we suggested you attack face-to-face meetings, you need have no fear. Even when the expert is a short walk away, we often prefer telephone interviews. Busy people who can't schedule a half hour in the office until several weeks hence, often squeeze in the time much sooner for ten minutes on the phone. In a ten-minute phone call, we usually get as much information as in a half hour sitting with the person, and we also save the time it takes to travel back and forth. 85 Copyrighted Material 86 RESEARCH SHORTCUTS 1. If you want to reach a particular expert, or speak for more than a minute or two, write or phone the secretary in advance and suggest a telephone appointment time. Explain what you're after and why, just the way you do when setting up a face-to-face interview. Then be sure to remember to phone again at the arranged time. 2. Use the good interview techniques described in Short· cut 27. But don't take notes. The silences while you transcribe eat up too much telephone time. Instead buy a telephone pickup for your cassette recorder or use your phone's built-in digital recorder if it has one. It's legal to record from the phone so long as one of the two speakers agrees to it; since you're one of them, you're on perfectly legal grounds. (You may want to tell the other person that you're recording, to insure that he'll speak at his normal rate of speed.) While the interview is still fresh in your mind, be sure to transcribe the tape or take the notes you need from it. Poor pickup due to unforeseen noises may blur some answers, and weeks later you won't be able to fill them in from memory. Many experts provide their e-mail addresses online. Some specifially warn against e-mailing by students looking for easy homework answers, but others invite serious researchers to email them with questions. If your expert invites e-mail, make sure that your e-mail doesn't look like spam. On the subject line, put "Request for Clarification of Your Research" and avoid starting the e-mail with, "I am a student ..." Instead, start right in by quoting what the expert said or wrote, tell where you saw it, and ask your question or questions about it. To look like a serious researcher, make sure your tone, spelling, grammar, and punctuation are faultless. And keep your e-mail short. Copyrighted Material ...