The content of the interview therefore should specifically reflect the interview's objectives. It should answer the questions that Jason wants answered.
Criterion-related validity should also be considered. Jason needs to ensure that the information he is trying to gather would be available and reliable. This can be difficult because he is trying to gauge reactions of his subjects. Construct validity also needs to be considered. Convergent validity is required -- he must understand how the attitudes of the townsfolk different from those of the general population. Thus, he must have a comparable. He may therefore need to conduct his survey with the general population to use as a comparable. Discriminant validity will also need to be examined, to ensure that the responses are independent of any bonding between the interviewer and interviewee.
The next step to developing internal validity is to ensure that there are few error sources -- to build better reliability. Respondents, for example, may not understand some terms or concepts, and therefore could give an answer that they do not intend as a result. Thus, key terms and phrases must be defined. In particular, Jason has reason to believe that lack of knowledge itself is an obstacle, so he needs to bridge this gap if he is to get accurate responses to his questions -- or he needs to test for the impact of a lack of knowledge on the community members' attitudes. To guard against errors originating from the interviewer, professional interviewers should be used. For example, Jason noted...
This means that the answers should be consistent over time. Repeated measurements of the same person with the same instrument should yield the same result. Thus, the survey could be conducted more than once, to see if there are any changes in the attitudes of the townsfolk. For example, a change in attitudes from the winter to the summer; or the beginning or the summer to the end of the summer, could lend understanding to the nature of the problem. There could be significant topic sensitivity with this particular issue, so Jason will need to understand how that affects his survey and hopefully be able to build a survey that eliminates this.
Lastly, equivalence should be considered. Jason should conduct more than one survey, to ensure that each survey is equivalent to the other. In this survey it may be more expedient given the small number of residents to build in internal consistency using the split half technique. This way, correlation can be measured between the two halves to ensure that the questions are internally consistent, thus yielded consistent results. If Jason undertakes each of these steps, he will be able to build a robust survey with a high level of internal validity, so that he can trust the results, much more so than his current ad hoc interviews with the locals.
