Questionnaires may be used to test Members' responses to a new service as was done in Westminster in connection with a proposal to store press material electronically. Interviews with individual Members and their staff Interviews allow a more targeted, in depth approach than is possible by use of questionnaires alone and are often used in conjunction with surveys based on questionnaires. They may be the best way to learn, for example, why a parliamentarian does not use some or all of the parliamentary library's se rvices. It will be interesting to learn about the value of this initiative. There can be some difficulties in obtaining representative feedback using the interview method.
Legislators are very busy people who are reluctant to devote time to interviews.
They also tend to ha ve individual ways of working, which makes essential the selection of a sample reflecting a wide spectrum of approaches to the job. A focus group is a group of users with common characteristics who are interviewed as a group. CRS uses focus groups with success, obtaining honest and useful assessment. However, when the House of commons Library considered the use of focus groups it was warned, both by interviewers with experience of Westminster parliamentarians and by the Members of the Information Committee, that MPs could not be relied upon to keep such appointments. The benefits to be derived from carefully selected focus groups could be mitigated by failure to attend on any significant scale.