Rethinking Alexandrova’s Proposal for Improving Measures of Well-Being from Perspective of Interviewer

It is common that in published researched paper, most researchers make a great effort on clarifying the logical relation between their researched target, method, and result, while only give a glimpse of how they operated their method. However, since it is possible to collect the right data in a wrong way according to the given method, the detail of operation deserves more attention if a given research cares about collecting the data rightly. In this sense, the aim of this paper is to propose an analysis to show that if the way to operate a method would influence the quality of data directly, such as interview, the detail of operation matter, such as how they solved the problem happened during the process of collecting data. To demonstrate my argument, I present an analysis of Anna Alexandrova’s (2017) proposal for improving measures of well-being from perspective of interviewer. The aim of her proposal is to improve the pool implement of validation in practice while preserving the spirit of accommodating person centered cares. Since the best way to operate this proposal is interview, and ‘trustworthiness’ is crucial to it. I’d show that without proper guidance, it is easy to collect the right data wrongly for two reasons: One is additional variables of maintaining trustworthiness; The other is the lack of restriction of how to use. This paper divided into three parts: First, I’d summarize Alexandrova’s examination of measures of well-being and what presuppositional aim she meant to achieve through her improved proposal. Second, I’d only focus on one part of the proposal, which directly link to the process of collecting data, and argue that the best way to operate this proposal of this part is adding an additional procedure of interview. Third, I’d point out that there are at least three difficulties that interviewers might encounter, which open the room for collecting the right data in a wrongful way according to the goal of this proposal. The three difficulties are: first, the constantly change cognitive status of participants, which is hard to identify what exactly their understanding looks like that proposal asked for; second, since trustworthiness is crucial to interview, interviewers need to actively maintain trustworthiness with participants while collecting the right data without participation. Given the complex situation an interview might encounter, the way they use to maintain ‘trustworthiness’ for collecting data opens the possibility of violating the spirit of the proposal. The last one of difficulties is that without any guidance of how to prevent the possibility of wrongful use, it’d easily to make interviewers act with discretion when it comes to mass application: from collecting the right data to manipulating the result for efficiency. I’d conclude that even if a proposal or method have no obligation of their potential wrongful use, for example, neither Alexandroava’s proposal nor the original standard procedure of developing measures have any restriction on it but only clarify what kind of data they want, it would be worthy to accommodate more about operator’s situation (Especially when we could do so) for increasing the practicability of achieving method’s presuppositional aim.