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Schedule as a Data Collection Technique in Research

Schedule is the tool or instrument used to collect data from the respondents while interview is conducted. Schedule contains questions, statements (on which opinions are elicited) and blank spaces/tables for filling up the respondents. The features of schedules are :

• The schedule is presented by the interviewer. The questions are asked and the answers are noted down by him.
• The list of questions is a more formal document, it need not be attractive.
• The schedule can be used in a very narrow sphere of social research.

The main purposes of schedule are three fold :

• To provide a standardized tool for observation or interview in order to attain objectivity,
• To act as memory tickler i.e., the schedule keeps the memory of the interviewer/ observer refreshed and keeps him reminded of the different aspects that are to be particularly observed, and
• To facilitate the work of tabulation and analysis.

Types of Schedule

There are several kinds of schedule. Rating Schedules is a schedule used to obtain opinions, preferences etc, respondents over statements on the phenomenon studied. The schedule consists of positive and negative statements of opinion on the phenomenon. Documents Schedules are used to collect data/information from recorded evidences and/or case histories. Here the blanks, functional issues related blanks and the like to be filled up from records and documents are present. Survey Schedules are like questionnaires. Observation Schedules are schedules used when observational method of data collection is used. These could be structured or unstructured interview schedules are used for collecting data when interview method of communication with the respondents is used.

Essentials of a Good Schedule

A good schedule must have the following features

• Content: Should cover questions or statements relating to all significant aspects of the study.
• Dissectional: Should look into the problem analytically, dissecting every, major and significant components of the problem.
• Context: Should suit the context in which it is applied. Different types of studies need different schedules.
• Criterion: Should use sound logic in classifying respondents based opinions expressed.
• Construction: Should be constructed in such a way that questions statements progress gradually and in order. Better it is sub-divided into parts, each part deeding with a certain sub topic of the issue studied. For each objective, a separate part may be devoted.
• Language: Should be linguistically superbly designed. Clear and straight forward language be used.
• Reliable: Should be reliable such that same results are obtained whenever the schedule is used when everything else remains same.
• Mechanical Aspects: Paper used, margin space given, spacing, printing, size of letters, etc. should be normal.
• Size: Should not too length nor too short. Should give fair coverage to the topic.
• Qualities to be Avoided: Long, complex, presumptuous, personal, embarrassing, hypothetical issues, morality oriented, upsetting type and necessary questions must be avoided.

To sum up, accurate information and accurate response are the two essential conditions of a good schedule. Accurate communication is effected by proper wording of questions so as to produce desired sense without any ambiguity. Accurate response is said to have been achieved when replies contain the information sought for. The response is achieved by stimulating the respondents to fill the schedule. Besides, the physical structure of the schedule should be attractive; the questions asked or information sought should be adequate and relevant to the enquiry, so that final generalization may be based upon it. The information sought should not only be valid, it should also be capable of being tabulated and if possible being subjected to statistical analysis.

Procedure for Formulating a Schedule

• Study the different aspects of the problem. The problem under study should first of all be split up into various aspects. The determination of these aspects will depend upon clear understanding of the problem under study.
• Sub-divide the problem to get necessary information. Each aspect has again to be broken up into a number of sub-parts. These sub-parts should be quite exhaustive to give a full and complete picture of-the aspect under study.
• Class questions. Care should be taken to see that the questions convey the exact sense. Respondents will be willing to supply information without any hesitation, bias or distortion of facts, if questions are exact and clear.
• Serialization of Questions. In order to obtain well-organised information, it is necessary that the questions should be presented to the respondents in a well-ordered serial. It has been experienced to various field studies that the change in the order of questions affects the answers adversely.
• Testing the validity of schedule. Whatever may be the degree of precaution taken, some slips are based to be left out and these can be located when the schedule is put into a reliability and validity test.
• Division. The schedule be divided into adequate number of divisions. Introductory part, instructional part, issues related parts, etc. are certain parts by which the schedule is divided into parts.
• Appropriate form of questions. Use appropriate forms of questions at appropriate places. Open ended, close ended, pictorial, Yes or No (Questions), multiple choice questions, etc. can be used.

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12 Questionnaire and Schedule Method

Pa . Raajeswari

INTRODUCTION

A questionnaire and schedule is considered the heart of a survey work. Hence, it should be carefully constructed. Questionnaires are a method used to collect standardized data from large numbers of people. They are used to collect data in a statistical form. If it is not properly constructed, the survey will become difficult.

A questionnaire is a research instrument consisting of a series of questions on other prompts for gathering information from respondents. Although they are often designed for statistical analysis of the responses, this is not always the case.

MEANING OF QUESTIONNAIRE

A questionnaire is a form prepared and distributed to secure responses to certain questions. It is a device for securing answers to questions by using a form which the respondent fills by himself. It is a systematic complication of questions and organised series of questions that are to be sent to the population samples. It is an important instrument in normative-survey research, being used to gather information from widely scattered sources. The questionnaire procedure normally comes into use where one cannot readily see personally all of the people from whom the research desires responses or where there is no particular reason to see them personally.

Purpose of questionnaire is twofold: i) to collect information from the respondents who are scattered in a vast area, ii) to achieve success in collecting reliable and dependable data.

FORMS OF QUESTIONNAIRE

Structured vs. non-structured . The structured contains definite, concrete and direct questions, whereas non-structured may consist of partially completed questions or statements.

A   non-structured questionnaire is often used as the interview guide, which is non-directive. The interviewer possesses only a blueprint of the enquiries and he is largely free to arrange the form or statements of the questions. The enquiries framed in a general form beforehand are given a specific form during the actual process of interview.

Closed form vs. open form : the question that call for short check responses are known as restricted or closed form type. They provide for making a yes or no, a short response, or checking an item out of a list of given responses. It restricts the choice of response for the respondent. He has simply to select a response out of supplied responses and has not to frame his response in his own way.

It is easy to fill out, takes less time, keeps the respondent on the subject, is relatively more objective, more acceptable and convenient to the respondent, and is fairly easy to tabulate and analyse.

The open-form, open-end or unrestricted type questionnaire calls for a free response in the respondent’s own words. The respondent frames and supplies his own response. No clues are provided. It probably provides for greater depth of response. The subject reveals his mind, gives his frame of reference and possibility the reasons for his responses

The mixed questionnaire: the mixed questionnaire consists of both close and open type questionnaires. For social research, this method is very useful. Many questionnaires include both open and closed type items. Each type has its specific merits and limitations and the research worker has to decide which type is more likely to supply the information he wants.

Fact and opinion questionnaire: questionnaire are also classified as: i) questionnaire of fact, which requires certain information of facts from the respondent without any reference to his opinion or attitude about them and ii) questionnaire of opinion and attitude in which the informant’s opinion, attitude or preference regarding some phenomena is sought.

Pictorial questionnaire: in the pictorial questionnaire, pictures are used to promote interest in answering questions. It is used extensively in studies of social attitudes and prejudices in children or illiterate persons. In a pictorial questionnaire, the selected alternative answers in the form of pictures are given and the respondent is required to tick the picture concerned. This questionnaire may be very useful for collecting data in a developing country like India, specially from the rural masses who are mostly illiterate and less knowledgeable. The serious limitation of this questionnaire is that it is lengthy in form. Also it is highly expensive.

In the questionnaire technique, great reliance is placed on the respondent’s verbal report for data on the stimuli or experiences to which he is exposed and for knowledge of his  behaviour. The questionnaire is effective only when the respondent is able or willing to express his reactions clearly. A good questionnaire can elicit cooperation of the respondent to get frank answers on almost any subject, even such personal matters as sex and income. Thus, it is clear that the respondent can judge the study only by what he can see. The questionnaire, by its very nature, is an impersonal technique and it is several pieces of paper appeals/persuades the respondent that he ought to participate.

RULES FOR CONSTRUCTING A QUESTIONNAIRE:

• Clearly worded items(eg: avoid usually ,most)
• Short questions
• Only one idea(concept)per question
• Avoid negatively worded items
• Avoid technical language and jargon
• Avoid leading questions(cues to answers)
• Avoid lengthy questions

FORMULATION OF QUESTIONS AND FORMAT

If the types of measurements to be made are clearly known, then the researcher can formulate necessary questions relating to each measurement. While formulating a question, its content should be such that each respondent graphs the intention of the question very quickly as originally thought by the researcher. This will minimize the distortion of the research focus. In addition, the format of each question in relation to that of the overall questionnaire should be decided.

The following factors are to be considered before drafting the questionnaire.

• Covering letter: The person conducting the survey should introduce himself to the respondents through a covering letter. In this covering letter,one can state the objectives of his study along with a formal request to fill up the questionnaire.
• Number of questions: As far as possible, the number of questions should be limited. There should be no repetation of questions. The response from the respondents will be  poor if the numbers of questions are too many. Hence, care must be taken to minimise the number of questions.
• Sequence of questions: The questions should be arranged in a logical order. The sequential arrangement of questions makes it easy for the respondents to make a spontaneous reply.  Eg: It is irrelevant to ask the number of children before asking whether the respondent is married or not.
• Ambiguity of questions: The questions should be unambiguous, that is, questions should give only one meaning. There should be only one answer to a question. The question should focus on only one point.
• Questions should be short and simple: The questions should not be lengthy. They must be short and easily understandable by the respondent. As far as possible technical terms should be avoided.
• Personal questions: As far as possible, questions of personal and pecuniary nature should not be asked.  Eg: Questions about income, sales tax paid and the like may not be answered by respondents in writing. If this information is essential, if must be obtained by personal interviews. Therefore, these questions are to be avoided unless otherwise the study actually requires it.
• Instructions to the informants: The questionnaire should provide necessary instructions to the informants. For example, it should specify the time within which it should be sent back and the address to which it should be sent. Instructions necessary to fill up the questions can also be given in the questionnaire.
• Type of answer: As far as possible the answers for the questions should be objective type, that is ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ type questions are most welcome. However, when the alternative is not clear cut, the ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ questions should be avoided.
• Questions requiring calculations: Questions requiring calculation of ratios, percentages, and totals should not be asked as it may take much time and the respondents may feel reluctant.
• Attraction: A questionnaire should be made to look as attractive as possible. The printing and paper used should be neat and qualitative. Enough space should be left for answering the questions.

QUESTIONNAIRE DESIGN PROCESS:

STEP I: Determine survey objectives, resources and constraints

STEP II: Determine the data collection method

STEP III: Determine the question response format

STEP IV: Decide on the question wording

STEP V: Establish questionnaire flow and layout

STEP VI:Evaluate the questionnaire

STEP VII: obtain approval of all relevant parties

STEP VIII: Pre-test And Revise

STEP IX: Prepare and final copy

STEP X: Implement the survey

TYPES OF QUESTIONNAIRE

METHOD OF ADMINISTRATION

• Self administered questionnaire: respondents fills in the questionnaire him/her self.
• Schedule: the investigator/researched reads out the questions and records the respondents answers

ADVANTAGES OF QUESTIONNAIRE

• The responses are gathered in a standardised way, so questionnaires are more objective, certainly more so than interviews.
• Generally, it is relatively quick to collect information using a questionnaire. However, in some situations they can take a long time not only to design but also to apply and analyse.
• Potentially information can be collected from a large portion of a group. This potential is not often realised, as returns from questionnaires are usually low. However, return rates can be dramatically improved if the questionnaire is delivered and responded to in class time.

DISADVANTAGES OF QUESTIONNAIRE

• Questionnaires, like many evaluation methods occur after the event, so participants may forget important issues.
• Questionnaires are standardised so it is not possible to explain any points in the questions that participants might misinterpret. This could be partially solved by piloting the questions on a small group of students or at least friends and colleagues. It is advisable to do this anyway.
• Open-ended questions can generate large amounts of data that can take a long time to process and analyse. One way of limiting this would be to limit the space available to students so their responses are concise or to sample the students and survey only a portion of them.
• Respondents may answer superficially especially if the questionnaire takes a long time to complete. The common mistake of asking too many questions should be avoided.
• Students may not be willing to answer the questions. They might not wish to reveal the information or they might think that they will not benefit from responding perhaps even be penalised by giving their real opinion. Students should be told why the information is being collected and how the results will be beneficial. They should be asked to reply honestly and told that if their response is negative this is just as useful as a more positive opinion. If possible the questionnaire should be anonymous.

INTRODUCTION OF SCHEDULE

”The schedule is nothing more than a list of questions which it seems necessary to test the hypothesis”. A schedule is a structure of set of questions on a given topic which are asked by an interviewer is investigated personally. Schedule is the most important tool. It is similar to a questionnaire. It is administered by the researcher in person and it is filled up by the researcher. As the schedule is presented in person it need not be attractive. The techniques of preparing questionnaire are also applied to framing an interview schedule.

DEFINITION OF SCHEDULE

Schedule is also a set of questions which is filled in by investigator who is made responsible to collect information. The investigator approach to the respondent and record the responses of the respondent. In some cases respondent is encouraged to record the answers to the questions with the help of investigator.

The success of this method is based on selection and training of investigator, to collect information. Investigator must have competency for cross examination if necessary, investor’s personal qualities like honest hard work will improve the quality of the work. This system is very useful for extensive enquiries. It is very expensive still normally adapted by state and large organization. Census survey is conducted by this method.

MEANING OF SCHEDULE

Schedule and questionnaire are the most important tools generally used in social research. The two forms are similar in nature but the difference lies in its construction and usage. The schedule is the form containing some questions or blank tables which are to be filled by the research workers after getting information from the informants. The schedule  may thus contain two types of questions i) direct questions and ii) form of a table. There are some kinds of information that can be procured only by putting a question, e.g., questions for eliciting the informants opinion, attitude, preferences or his suggestions about some matter. There are others which may better be put in the form of tables.

From the above discussion the following salient points about schedule emerge:

• The schedule is presented by the interviewer. The questions are asked and the answers are noted down by him.
• The list of questions is a more formal document, it need not be attractive.
• The schedule can be used in a very narrow sphere of social research.

PURPOSE OF SCHEDULE

The main purposes of schedule are three fold: i) to provide a standardized tool for observation or interview in order to attain objectivity. Ii) to act as memory ticker i.e., the schedule keeps the memory of the interviewer/observer refreshed and keeps him reminded of the different aspects that are to be particularly observed, iii) to facilitate the work of tabulation and analysis.

TYPES OF SCHEDULES

1.  Rating schedule

In the field of business guidance, psychological research, and social research, the rating schedules are used to assess the attitudes, opinions, preferences, inhibitions and other like elements. As evident from the term ‘rating’, in these schedules, the value and trend of the above mentioned qualities is measured.

2.   Documents schedule

The schedules of this type are used to obtain data regarding written evidence and case histories. In these schedules, those terms are included which occur frequency in documents and are to be generally found in case histories.

3.    Institutional surveys forms or evolutional schedules

The use of these schedules, as is evident from the name, is made to gather data about specialised institutions or agencies. The form and the size of evolutional  schedules is determined by the nature and the complexity of the problems of an institution, more complex the problem, bigger the size of the schedule.

4.    Observation schedules

In these schedules, observer records the activities and responses of an individual or a group under specific conditions. The observation schedules may need one or more research worker to be completed. The main purpose of an observation schedules is to verify some information.

5.   Interview schedules

A fifth form of schedule is sometimes treated independently and at other times considered included in the previous type. In an interview schedule, an interviewer presents the questions of the schedule to the interviewers and records their response on blank spaces.

STEPS IN FRAMING A SCHEDULE

1.    Study the different aspects of the problem

The problem under study should first of all be split up into various aspects. The determination of these aspects will depend upon clear understanding of the problem under study.

2.   Sub-divide the problem to get necessary information

Each aspect has again to be broken up into a number of sub-parts. These sub-parts should be quite exhaustive to give a full and complete picture of the aspect under study.

3.   The framing of actual questions.

Care should be taken to see that the questions convey the exact sense, are easily followed by the response and they will be willing to supply information without any hesitation, bias or distortion of facts.

4.    Serialisation of questions

In order to obtain well-organised information, it is necessary that the questions should be presented to the respondents in a well-ordered serial. It has been experienced in various field studies that the change in the order of questions affects the answers adversely.

5.    Testing the validity of schedule

Whatever may be the degree of precaution taken; some slips are bound to be left out and cannot be located unless the schedule has been put into operation.

HOW DO SCHEDULES WORK?

• A rather expensive method as enumerators do not come cheap or resesrch scholar expenses often run high.
• Schedules are filled by the enumerator/researcher who can also interpret the question if necessary.
• Needless to say, the identity of the respondents  is known
• Information collection is both assured and punctual
• Questionnaires and schedules are flexible in what they can measure although they each have

SCHEDULING TOOL:

•  A Tool which supports the scheduling method
•  Identifying components names
• Providing components definitions
• Contains components relationships.
• Is used to generate the project specific schedule model.
• For eg: primavera, MS project, artemis, welcome, spider

ADVANTAGES OF SCHEDULE

1.Economical: since the questionnaire approach makes it possible to cover, at the same time, a large number of people spread over a large territory, it is decidedly more economical in terms of money, time and energy. Other methods do not afford such a facility.

2.Time saving: besides saving money, the mailed schedule also saves time. Simultaneously, hundreds of persons are approached through it whereas if they are to be interviewed it may take a very long time.

3.Suitable in special type of response: the information about certain problems can be best obtained through questionnaire method. For example, the research about sexual habits, marital relations, dreams etc, can be easily obtained by keeping the name of respondents anonymous.

4.Ensures anonymity: as the respondents are not required to indicate their names on the questionnaires, they feel free to express their views and opinions. Anonymity is a meaningful characteristic of questionnaire method. In view of its anonymity the questionnaire is more effective than an interview.

5.Less pressure on the respondents: the method places less pressure on the subject for immediate response and gives more time to the respondents for properly answering questions.

6.Uniformity: the questionnaire, by its very nature, is an impersonal technique. Uniformity from one measurement situation to another is provided by virtue of its standardised wordings of questions, standardised sequence of questions and fixed or standardised instructions for recording responses.

DISADVANTAGES OF SCHEDULE

Illiterate and less educated: one of the major limitations of the questionnaire is that it can be administered only on subjects with a considerable amount of education. Complex questionnaire requiring elaborate written replies can be used indeed on a very small percentage of population.

Proportion of returns is usually low: in a mailed questionnaire, the proportion of returns is usually low, it may sometimes be as low as 10%.

Mis-interprets/ unintelligible reply: in a questionnaire, if the respondent misinterprets a question or writes his reply unintelligibly, there is very little that can be done to correct this. In this approach there is no facility for repeating questions, explaining them or seeking clarification of a particular response.

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SCHEDULE AND QUESTIONNAIRE

Questionnaire and Scheduleare the most important tool in the process of data collection. It is administered by the researcher in person and it is filled up by the researcher. As the schedule is presented in person it need not be attractive. The techniques of preparing questionnaire are also applied to framing an interview schedule. Hence, usually the researchers are advised to refer to the questionnaire for more details and concentrate in preparing questionnaire and schedule.

• http://www.studylecturenotes.com/social-research-methodology/what-is-interview-schedule-definition-types
• http://www.kkhsou.in/main/masscom/research_tool.html
• https://owlcation.com/social-sciences/Schedule-and-Questionnaire-in-Research-Methodology
• http://libweb.surrey.ac.uk/library/skills/Introduction%20to%20Research%20and%20Ma naging%20Information%20Leicester/page_51.htm
• http://14.139.60.114:8080/jspui/bitstream/123456789/719/27/Methods%20of%20Data %20Collection.pdf

• Key Differences

Know the Differences & Comparisons

Difference Between Questionnaire and Schedule

The research process is incomplete without collection of data, which starts after identification of research problem and chalking out research design. The researcher should keep in mind that there are two types of data, i.e. primary and secondary data . There are several methods involved in the collection of primary data, like observation, interview, questionnaires, schedules, etc.

Content: Questionnaire Vs Schedule

Comparison chart.

Definition of Questionnaire

We define questionnaire as an instrument for research, which consists of a list of questions, along with the choice of answers, printed or typed in a sequence on a form used for acquiring specific information from the respondents. In general, questionnaires are delivered to the persons concerned either by post or mail, requesting them to answer the questions and return it. Informants are expected to read and understand the questions and reply in the space provided in the questionnaire itself.

The questionnaire is prepared in such a way that it translate the required information into a series of questions, that informants can and will answer. Further, it should be such that the respondent gets motivated and encouraged, to make him engaged in the interview and complete it. The merits of questionnaires are discussed below:

• It is an inexpensive method, regardless of the size of the universe.
• Free from the bias of the interviewer, as the respondents answer the questions in his own words.
• Respondents have enough time to think and answer.
• Due its large coverage, respondents living in distant areas can also be reached conveniently.

Definition of Schedule

The schedule is a proforma which contains a list of questions filled by the research workers or enumerators, specially appointed for the purpose of data collection. Enumerators go to the informants with the schedule, and ask them the questions from the set, in the sequence and record the replies in the space provided. There are certain situations, where the schedule is distributed to the respondents, and the enumerators assist them in answering the questions.

Enumerators play a major role in the collection of data, through schedules. They explain the aims and objects of the research to the respondents and interpret the questions to them when required. This method is little expensive as the selection, appointment and training of the enumerators require a huge amount. It is used in case of extensive enquiries conducted by the government agencies, big organisations. Most common example of data collection through schedule is population census.

Key Differences Between Questionnaire and Schedule

The important points of difference between questionnaire and schedule are as under:

• Questionnaire refers to a technique of data collection which consist of a series of written questions along with alternative answers. The schedule is a formalised set of questions, statements, and spaces for answers, provided to the enumerators who ask questions to the respondents and note down the answers.
• Questionnaires are delivered to the informants by post or mail and answered as specified in the cover letter. On the other hand, schedules are filled by the research workers, who interpret the questions to the respondents if necessary.
• The response rate is low in case of questionnaires as many people do not respond and often return it without answering all the questions. On the contrary, the response rate is high, as they are filled by the enumerators, who can get answers to all the question.
• The questionnaires can be distributed a large number of people at the same time, and even the respondents who are not approachable can also be reached easily. Conversely, in schedule method, the reach is relatively small, as the enumerators cannot be sent to a large area.
• Data collection by questionnaire method is comparatively cheaper and economical as the money is invested only in the preparation and posting of the questionnaire. As against this, a large amount is spent on the appointment and training of the enumerators and also on the preparation of schedules.
• In questionnaire method, it is not known that who answers the question whereas, in the case of schedule, the respondent’s identity is known.
• The success of the questionnaire lies on the quality of the questionnaire while the honesty and competency of the enumerator determine the success of a schedule.
• The questionnaire is usually employed only when the respondents literate and cooperative. Unlike schedule which can be used for data collection from all classes of people.

As everything has two aspects, so as with the case of questionnaire and schedule. The risk of collection of inaccurate and incomplete information is high in the questionnaire, as it might happen that people may not be able to understand the question correctly. On the contrary, schedule faces the risk of biases and cheating of the interviewer.

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August 23, 2017 at 8:33 am

Excellently explained. Thank you so much. I always had doubts and confusions regarding these two. God bless you. Gracias.

Surbhi S says

August 23, 2017 at 9:49 am

Thanks for sharing your views with us and blessings as well.

sharnga says

December 2, 2017 at 11:47 am

best explained thanx a lot regards.. sharga

Monu singh rajawat says

January 19, 2018 at 7:03 pm

it is easy article for understanding and very nice for differentiate questionnaire and schedule.

Tabinda says

April 25, 2018 at 8:19 am

Thanks a lot for the information,as it helped me a lot…

October 5, 2018 at 12:27 am

Thanks really appreciate

Shikha says

January 3, 2022 at 9:03 pm

Thanks a lot for the information, as it helped me a lot…. Thank you so much

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Home » Education » What is the Difference Between Questionnaire and Schedule

What is the Difference Between Questionnaire and Schedule

The main difference between questionnaire and schedule is that questionnaires consist of a set of open-ended or close-ended questions, whereas schedules contain a set of structured questions that are directly asked by the interviewer.

Although questionnaires and schedules are used as data collection tools in research studies, there are slight differences between questionnaires and schedules.

Key Areas Covered

1.  What is a Questionnaire       – Definition, Features  2.  What is a Schedule      – Definition, Features 3.  Difference Between Questionnaire and Schedule      – Comparison of Key Differences

Questionnaire, Schedule, Data Collection

What is a Questionnaire

Questionnaires are used to gather information or data when conducting research. Questionnaires include different types of question forms that are related to respondents’ points of view: close-ended, open-ended, short form, long-form, etc. One of the important facts one should consider when forming questions for a questionnaire is that questions should always be unbiased. An effective questionnaire should also be simple and concise. Furthermore, a questionnaire should be specific to the topic and should consist of different types.

The use of questionnaires in research is considered a more feasible and efficient research method than in-depth interviews. There are many benefits of using questionnaires to gather data. Questionnaires save the time of respondents as well as the researcher. At the same time, the use of questionnaires allows the researcher to capture a larger audience, especially when compared to the use of in-depth interviews to gather data. Also, the researcher can print and distribute the questionnaires among respondents. Some researchers also distribute a soft copy of the questionnaires to the target audience. 

What is a Schedule

A schedule is a research tool to gather information and design a research study. A schedule consists of a set of structured questions on a specific topic. The interviewer directly asks these questions personally. When the respondents face issues in understanding the questions in a schedule, they can seek help from the interviewer to sort them out. A schedule contains well-structured questions, and those questions are asked by the interviewer, or else the respondents should write the answers to the questions in the presence of the interviewer.

The questions in a schedule do not contain answer options; the respondents have to write or respond to the interviewer verbally. The data gathered in a schedule is qualitative . In a schedule, the order and the structure of the questions are significant, and the proper order of the questions cannot be changed. The use of a schedule is an expensive method to collect data because interviewers should be hired and trained for the purpose.

Similarities Between Questionnaire and Schedule

• Both questionnaires and schedules are data collection tools.
• Questionnaires and schedules consist of a set of questions to be asked from the respondents.

Differences Between Questionnaire and Schedule

A questionnaire is a structured data collection tool where choices may be given or may not be given, while a schedule consists of a set of structured questions on a particular topic that are directly asked by the interviewer.

Although a questionnaire may consist of open-ended questions and close-ended questions, questions in a schedule may not be composed of choices. The respondents must answer the questions in a schedule.

Questionnaires can cover a large audience easily, whereas schedules cover only a small set or small groups of people.

Although the use of questionnaires is cost-effective, the use of schedules in data collection is very expensive since the researcher should hire and train the interviewers on how to get the responses.

The respondents of a questionnaire can give their responses in the absence of the researcher, whereas in schedules, the respondents should provide their answers in the presence of the interviewer.

Respondents

Although respondents are assisted by the interviewer in clarifying the questions in a schedule, the respondents are not assisted when answering questionnaires.

The main difference between questionnaire and schedule is that questionnaire consists of a set of open-ended or close-ended questions, whereas a schedule contains a set of structured questions that are directly asked by the interviewer.

1. Amaresan, Swetha. “ 28 Questionnaire Examples, Questions, & Templates to Survey Your Clients .” HubSpot Blog, HubSpot, 23 May 2022. 2. “ Schedule .” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 13 May 2022.

Image Courtesy:

1. “ Musculoskeletal survey Nordic questionnaire ” By different – The Nordic questionnaire on ergonomic problems is Creative Commonds (CC BY-SA 4.0) via Commons Wikimedia 2. “ Women In Tech – 82 ” By WOCinTech Chat (CC BY 2.0) via Flickr

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Schedule/work plan

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If you're unsure if your research proposal requires a schedule or work plan, please consult your project handbook and/or speak with your instructor, advisor, or supervisor.

The information about schedules or work plans in proposals was gathered from RRU thesis and major project handbooks, current in 2020, from programs in the Faculty of Social and Applied Sciences, the Faculty of Management, and the College of Interdisciplinary Studies. If the details here differ from the information provided in the handbook for your project, please follow the handbook's directions.

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Research Tips and Infromation

8 Effective Strategies for Managing Research Time

1. Set Specific Goals

2. prioritize tasks, 3. break tasks into smaller pieces, 4. create a schedule, 5. take breaks, 6. use technology to your advantage, 7. stay organized, 8. outsourcing certain tasks, introduction.

Effective time management is crucial for successful research projects. When you are conducting research, you need to balance a variety of tasks, such as collecting data, analyzing results, and writing up your findings. Without proper time management, it can be easy to get overwhelmed and fall behind schedule.

Time management refers to the process of planning and organizing how much time to allocate to different tasks and activities to make the most of the available time. Time management involves breaking down complex projects into smaller, more manageable tasks, prioritizing those tasks, creating a schedule, taking breaks, and using technology and outsourcing to streamline the research process.

In this post, we’ll explore these strategies in detail and offer tips on how to apply them to your own research projects. Whether you’re a seasoned researcher or just starting out, this post will help you to maximize your productivity and achieve your research goals with ease.”

In this post, we will explore several strategies for managing research time, including:

• Setting specific goals: By defining clear goals for your research project, you can prioritize your tasks and stay on track.
• Prioritizing tasks: You can use techniques such as the Eisenhower matrix to prioritize your research tasks and maximize your productivity.
• Breaking tasks into smaller pieces: By breaking larger tasks into smaller, more manageable pieces, you can work more efficiently and stay focused.
• Creating a schedule: A schedule can help you allocate your time effectively and ensure that you are making progress towards your goals.
• Taking breaks: Taking regular breaks can help you stay focused and productive, and prevent burnout.
• Using technology to your advantage: You can leverage tools such as citation managers, project management software, and communication apps to streamline your research process.
• Staying organized: Staying organized throughout your research project can help you avoid distractions and ensure that you are making progress towards your goals.

By using these strategies, you can manage your research time more effectively and achieve better results. Let’s see these strategies in detail in the next sections.

Setting specific goals is essential for managing research time effectively. Without clear goals, it can be difficult to stay focused and on track. Specific goals allow you to break down your research project into smaller, achievable tasks, making it easier to manage your time and measure progress.

Here are some tips on how to set specific goals for your research project in the computer science domain:

• Identify your research question: Start by identifying the main question or problem that you want to investigate. For example, if you are researching machine learning algorithms, your question might be, “What is the most effective algorithm for predicting user behaviour based on website activity?”
• Break down your research question into smaller tasks: Once you have identified your research question, break it down into smaller, more specific tasks. For example, you might need to review the existing literature on machine learning algorithms, collect data on website activity, test different machine learning algorithms, and analyze your results.
• Create a timeline for each task: After breaking down your research question into smaller tasks, create a timeline for each task. Assign specific deadlines to each task, and make sure that you allocate enough time to complete each task thoroughly.
• Measure progress: As you work on your research project, measure your progress towards your goals. This can help you stay motivated and adjust your timeline if necessary. For example, if you find that you are falling behind schedule on a specific task, you may need to adjust your timeline or allocate more time to that task.

By setting specific goals and breaking down your research project into smaller, manageable tasks, you can effectively manage your research time and stay on track towards achieving your research objectives.

Prioritizing tasks is crucial for effective time management in research projects. With so many tasks to complete, it is essential to focus on the most important tasks first, to make sure that you are making progress towards your research goals.

Here are some tips on how to prioritize tasks for your research project in the computer science domain:

• Use the Eisenhower matrix: The Eisenhower matrix is a popular time management tool that can help you prioritize your tasks based on their importance and urgency. To use this tool, divide your tasks into four categories: urgent and important, important but not urgent, urgent but not important, and neither urgent nor important. Then, prioritize your tasks accordingly.
• Consider the potential impact of each task: Some tasks may have a greater impact on your research project than others. For example, analyzing the data you have collected may be more critical to your project’s success than organizing your notes. By considering the potential impact of each task, you can prioritize your tasks more effectively.
• Identify dependencies: Some tasks may depend on others being completed first. For example, you may need to finish collecting data before you can start analyzing it. By identifying dependencies between tasks, you can prioritize tasks more effectively and make sure that you are not wasting time on tasks that cannot be completed yet.
• Focus on your research goals: Ultimately, your research goals should guide your task prioritization. Make sure that you are focusing on tasks that will help you achieve your research objectives. For example, if your research goal is to develop a new algorithm for analyzing website data, you should prioritize tasks related to algorithm development over administrative tasks like organizing your notes.

By prioritizing tasks effectively, you can make sure that you are making progress towards your research goals and using your time most efficiently.

Breaking tasks into smaller, more manageable pieces is helpful for managing research time because it allows you to focus on one task at a time and avoid feeling overwhelmed. It also makes it easier to measure progress and adjust your timeline if necessary.

Here are some examples of how to break a large research project into smaller, more manageable tasks in the computer science domain:

• Literature review: If your research project involves reviewing existing literature, you can break this task into smaller pieces by focusing on specific subtopics or keywords. For example, you can start by searching for literature related to the specific machine learning algorithm you are investigating, and then narrow your search to include only recent publications or publications from top-tier conferences. I have written an articles on “ How to write a better Survey Paper in 06 easy steps? “. and Top 10 Rules to Identify Keywords for your Research Paper . Thsese articles will be helpful for literature review process.
• Data collection: If your research project involves collecting data, you can break this task into smaller pieces by focusing on specific sources or types of data. For example, you can start by collecting data from a small sample of websites or users, and then gradually increase your sample size as you become more proficient at data collection.
• Algorithm development: If your research project involves developing a new algorithm, you can break this task into smaller pieces by focusing on specific components or features of the algorithm. For example, you can start by developing a prototype of the algorithm and testing it on a small dataset, and then gradually refine the algorithm and test it on larger datasets. You can refer my article on How to Write the Method Section of your Research Paper in 03 Simple Steps? . This article will help you in developing the algorithm.
• Results analysis: If your research project involves analyzing results, you can break this task into smaller pieces by focusing on specific metrics or aspects of the data. For example, you can start by analyzing the accuracy of your algorithm on a small dataset, and then gradually expand your analysis to include other metrics such as precision and recall. Refer my article on How to write Results Section of your Research Paper . This article will take you through the detailed result analysis process.

By breaking large research projects into smaller, more manageable tasks, you can stay focused, measure progress, and adjust your timeline if necessary. It can also help you avoid feeling overwhelmed and make it easier to manage your time effectively.

Creating a schedule is essential for managing research time because it helps you stay organized and accountable. A schedule can help you plan your time effectively and ensure that you are making progress towards your research goals.

Here are some tips on how to create a schedule that works for you in the computer science domain:

• Identify your most productive times: Some people are more productive in the morning, while others work best in the afternoon or evening. Identify your most productive times and schedule your most challenging tasks during those times.
• Block off time for specific tasks: Once you have identified your most productive times, block off time in your schedule for specific tasks. For example, you can schedule time for a literature review in the morning, data collection in the afternoon, and algorithm development in the evening.
• Use a project management tool: There are many project management tools available that can help you create a schedule and track your progress. For example, you can use Trello or Asana to create a project board and add tasks and deadlines.
• Be realistic: When creating a schedule, be realistic about how long each task will take. Consider factors like the complexity of the task and any potential roadblocks. This will help you avoid overloading your schedule and feeling overwhelmed.
• Leave room for unexpected tasks: Research projects often involve unexpected tasks that can throw off your schedule. Leave some buffer time in your schedule to account for these tasks.

By creating a schedule that works for you, you can make sure that you are using your time most efficiently and making progress towards your research goals. It can also help you avoid feeling overwhelmed and ensure that you are staying on track with your project timeline.

Taking breaks is essential for managing research time because it helps prevent burnout, improves productivity, and boosts creativity. When you take breaks, you give your brain a chance to recharge and reset, which can help you stay focused and engaged in your research project.

Here are some tips on how to take effective breaks that will help you recharge and stay productive:

• Schedule breaks into your day: Plan for breaks in your daily schedule and take them regularly. Taking short breaks every hour or so can help you stay focused and avoid burnout.
• Get up and move: Sitting in front of a computer for long periods can be tiring and bad for your health. Get up and move around during your breaks. Take a walk outside, do some stretching, or try some simple exercises to get your blood flowing.
• Do something different: Engage in activities that are different from your research work during your breaks. For example, you could listen to music, read a book, or do a crossword puzzle. Doing something different can help you shift your focus and recharge your brain.
• Disconnect from technology: It’s essential to disconnect from technology during your breaks, especially if you spend a lot of time in front of a computer. Turn off your phone, log out of your email, and take a break from social media.
• Take longer breaks when needed: Sometimes, you may need longer breaks to recharge fully. For example, you could take a weekend off or plan a vacation. Taking longer breaks can help you come back to your research project with renewed energy and focus.

By taking effective breaks, you can manage your research time better, improve your productivity, and avoid burnout. Incorporate these tips into your daily routine to stay focused, engaged, and productive throughout your research project.

Technology can be a valuable tool for managing research time and streamlining the research process. Here are some ways in which technology can be used to your advantage:

• Use project management tools: There are several project management tools available that can help you keep track of your research tasks, deadlines, and progress. Some popular project management tools used in the computer science domain include Trello, Asana, and Jira .
• Use reference management software: Reference management software can help you organize and manage your research sources, citations, and bibliographies. Some popular reference management software tools include Zotero , Mendeley , and EndNote .
• Use collaboration tools: Collaborating with other researchers or team members is a crucial part of research. Using collaboration tools like Slack , Microsoft Teams , or Google Docs can help you communicate and work with others more efficiently.
• Use data analysis tools: If your research involves data analysis, there are several software tools available to help you analyze and visualize your data. Some popular data analysis tools include R , Python , and MATLAB .
• Use automation tools: Automation tools can help you save time by automating repetitive tasks, such as data entry or formatting. For example, you can use tools like Zapier or IFTTT to automate tasks across different software applications.

I have written articles on

• How Mendeley Reference Management Software makes Researcher’s Life Easy? and
• EndNote: The key to streamlining your research and writing process .

These articles will teach you the effective usage of Mendeley and EndNote software.

By using technology to your advantage, you can streamline your research process, save time, and stay organized. Incorporate these tools and resources into your research workflow to help manage your research time more effectively.

Staying organized is crucial for managing research time effectively. Here are some tips on how to stay organized throughout the research process:

• Use a file organization system: Use a consistent file organization system for your research files and documents. Create folders for each project or subproject, and use descriptive file names that make it easy to locate files quickly. I have written an article on How to Effectively Organize your Research Articles on your System . This article will help you to organize your files and folders effectively and optimally.
• Keep track of your references: Keep a record of all your research sources, including articles, books, and websites. Use reference management software to organize your references and citations. Visit my article on How to Write References for your Research Paper in IEEE Format Easily and Quickly .
• Use version control: Use version control software to keep track of different versions of your research documents and code. This can help you avoid confusion and save time when working on collaborative projects.
• Keep a research journal: Use a research journal to document your progress, ideas, and insights throughout the research process. This can help you stay focused and motivated, and can also serve as a valuable reference when writing your final report or paper.
• Use task lists and calendars: Use task lists and calendars to keep track of deadlines, meetings, and important tasks. This can help you prioritize your work and avoid procrastination.

By staying organized, you can minimize the time spent on searching for files or documents and avoid duplication of work, which will help you manage your research time more effectively. Incorporate these tips into your research workflow to help stay organized throughout the research process.

Outsourcing certain tasks can be beneficial for managing research time effectively, whether you’re in academia or part of the industry. Here are some tips on how to outsource certain tasks, including outsourcing tasks to your students in an academic setting or using internships to outsource tasks within the industry:

Benefits of outsourcing: Outsourcing can help you focus on the more important aspects of your research project, while still ensuring that all necessary tasks are completed. This holds true not only in the academic sphere but also within the industry. It can save time and money, especially for tasks that require specialized skills or equipment.

Examples of tasks that can be outsourced: In addition to tasks like data entry, transcription, software development, and data analysis, there are other avenues for outsourcing. If you’re an academic, you can involve your students by assigning them tasks that align with their skills and can contribute to their learning experience. In an industry setting, you can consider outsourcing tasks to interns who are eager to learn and gain practical experience in exchange for their contributions.

Outsourcing to students in academia: In an academic environment, you can leverage the skills and enthusiasm of your students to outsource certain tasks. This not only benefits you by reducing your workload but also provides students with hands-on experience and exposure to real-world research tasks. You can delegate tasks such as literature reviews, preliminary data collection, and even basic coding to your students, allowing them to actively contribute to the research process.

Outsourcing tasks as internships in the industry: If you’re part of the industry, internships can serve as a valuable outsourcing method. By offering internships to students or entry-level professionals, you can delegate tasks like market research, content creation, or prototype testing. Interns can gain practical exposure to the industry while assisting you with tasks that might be time-consuming but necessary for your projects.

Finding a reputable outsourcing partner or intern: Regardless of whether you’re working with students or interns, it’s essential to find individuals who are reliable and enthusiastic about contributing to your research or projects. In academia, you can collaborate with students who demonstrate a keen interest in the subject matter. In the industry, you can recruit interns through university partnerships or industry-specific platforms.

Working with an outsourcing partner or intern: To ensure successful collaboration, clear communication is key. Provide detailed instructions, set expectations, and establish deadlines. Regular check-ins and updates will help you monitor progress and address any concerns. For both students and interns, offering guidance and mentorship can enhance their learning experience and the quality of their contributions.

By outsourcing tasks to students in academia or using internships in the industry, you can free up valuable time to focus on critical aspects of your research or projects. Simultaneously, you empower the next generation of researchers or professionals by providing them with practical opportunities to learn and grow. This collaborative approach benefits everyone involved and contributes to the overall success of the research or industry endeavours.

Managing research time is crucial for the success of any research project. Here are the main points discussed in this post:

• Setting specific goals is important for managing research time effectively.
• Prioritizing tasks can help you stay on track and make the most of your time.
• Breaking tasks into smaller pieces can make them more manageable and less daunting.
• Creating a schedule can help you stay organized and ensure that you are making progress on your project.
• Taking breaks is important for recharging and maintaining productivity.
• Technology can be a powerful tool for streamlining the research process.
• Staying organized is crucial for managing research time effectively.
• Outsourcing certain tasks can save time and resources.

We encourage readers to try out these strategies to manage their research time more effectively. By setting specific goals, prioritizing tasks, breaking tasks into smaller pieces, creating a schedule, taking breaks, using technology, staying organized, and outsourcing certain tasks, researchers can maximize their productivity and achieve their research goals.

Remember, managing research time is an ongoing process, and it is important to regularly assess and adjust your strategies to ensure that you are making the most of your time. We hope that these tips will be helpful in managing your research time effectively.

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Top 6 steps for forming a schedule | social research.

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This article throws light on the six major steps for forming a schedule in social research, i.e, (1) Knowledge About the Different Aspects of Problem, (2) Knowledge About the Information to be Studied, (3) Framing the Actual Questions, (4) Content of Schedule, (5) The Fifth Step is the General Layout of the Schedule, and (6) Testing the Validity of Schedule.

Step 1# Knowledge About the Different Aspects of Problem:

While framing the schedule the first step is to have proper knowledge about the different aspects of the problem. The researcher has to put a great deal of thought into the selected research problem.

However, the following are the some of the necessary factors one should take into consideration before framing a schedule on a particular topic:

(i) The researcher must have interest in the topic of research.

(ii) The nature of the problem or topic must have some social reference.

(iii) The should understand the problem thoroughly.

(iv) The problem must be defined in clear and explicit manner.

(v) The problem must be defined unambiguously, so that it will help to differentiate relevant data from irrelevant ones.

(vi) Existing literature on the subject should be studied.

(vii) The problem under study should be split up into various aspects; the determination of these aspects depends upon the clear understanding of the problem. Thus, for example, if the survey of the effect of family disorganization upon the criminal behaviour of children is too made, then the different aspects of the problem would be the family background of the children, the parental relation, the socialization process, family value, the authority structures etc. The researcher has to study all these aspects in complete details before framing a schedule.

Step 2# Knowledge About the Information to be Studied:

While framing a good schedule the second important step is to decide what information is necessary for a valid generalization on each aspect of the problem. An extensive literature survey usually helps the researcher to get a proper knowledge about different aspects of the research problem. By studying the previous studies in the related field the researcher gets knowledge about relevant information needed for his current study.

He can again subdivide each aspect of the topic. Thus, in the above illustration family value may be further subdivided into respect for morals, tolerance, fear of religion and authority, adjustment with others, learning manners, building character and personality etc. Required information may be collected about each of them.

Step 3# Framing the Actual Questions:

The third step is the framing of the actual questions. This is the most essential part of the schedule and any error in it may invalidate the whole research study by providing biased, incorrect, incomplete or irrelevant information. While framing the actual questions in a schedule the following are the some of sub-steps one must take into consideration.

(a) Nature of Questions to be Given:

For framing a schedule there is no exclusive rules and regulation regarding the selection of nature of questions to be asked. It all depends on the nature of the research topic, the skill of the researcher, kinds of respondents and other factors.

The following points are some of the general guidelines about the nature of questions:

(i) Specific Questions:

A common error is to ask a general question when an answer on a specific issue is wanted. For example, if one is interested specifically in a canteen’s meal prices and the quality of its service, the question “Are you satisfied or dissatisfied with your canteen?” is unsatisfactory. In the above example, the general question was framed because it failed to specify the required frames of references.

But when there are occasions when no required frame of reference is needed, the general question may be appropriate. However, the researcher should try to give specific questions to the respondents as much as possible. One way to make questions more specific is to frame them in terms of the respondent’s personal experience rather than in general terms.

(ii) Simple language:

In choosing the language for a schedule, the population being studied should be kept in mind. The aim in question wording is to communicate with respondents as nearly as possible in their own language. A survey of the members of a particular profession, for instance, can usefully employ the profession’s common technical forms. Not only such terms form a part of the informant’s common language but they also normally have a single precise meaning.

Technical terms and jargons are however obviously to be avoided in surveys of general population. The first principles in wording are that the questions should use the simplest words that will convey the exact meaning and that the phrasing should also be as simple and informal as possible.

It is not indeed enough to know that a word or phrase is commonly used, one must equally be sure that it is used in the same sense by all groups of respondents. Even a common word ‘book’ has different meanings in different parts of the country. A simple case is the ‘book’ which in some parts of the population is taken to include magazines. Hence while forming a schedule an interviewer should ask—”During the past week, roughly how many hours you spent reading books, I mean books, not magazines or papers?”

Clarity can still be further ensured by remembering that a simple question is more readily understood than a long complex one. So rather than relying on a single complex question, a series of simple questions should be asked. The number of such questions depends on the degree of simplicity required. Household composition is generally a complex subject.

To present it in a simple way, a series of descriptive indices are required. The information can usually be best obtained by using a ‘household box’ on the schedule in which the household members are listed together with their relevant characteristics viz. age, sex, marital status, working status, educational status etc.

(iii) Attention To The Given To Questions Involving Memory:

Most factual questions, to some extent, involve the respondent in calling information. His degree of success in presenting this accurately is thus a basic determinant of the quality of his response. With certain questions such as “Are you married, single or widowed?”, there is no such problem, but with a large range of survey questions recalling information does bring a problem, the severity of which depends on what is to be recalled. Two factors of primary importance in memory are the length of time since the event took place and the event’s importance to the respondent.

Even what the respondent considers insignificant are likely to be forgotten almost immediately and even the re-collection of significant events decreases as time elapses. Moreover, for events not forgotten completely, memory acts selectively, retaining some aspects and losing others, thus producing distorted images. For questions dealing with the past, serious attention must therefore be given to the respondent’s ability to recall the required information accurately and to the ways by which they can be helped to do so.

(iv) Questions Must Be Within the Intellectual Capacity of the Respondent:

The questions included in the schedule should be within the respondents’ intellectual capacity to give answer. The researcher should not expect any reply which is beyond his informational scope. For example, an illiterate cannot replay about e-commerce, internet etc.

(v) Inter-Relation of Questions:

Various questions asked by the researcher should be inter-related with each other. They should be asked in a proper order, so that it will be systematic, interesting and continuous one.

(vi) Cross-Checking Questions:

In a schedule the researcher should include certain questions for cross checking. It will provide a scope of verification to the researcher and he can check the incorrect or bias answers of the respondents

(b) Questions to be Avoided:

Following types of questions should be avoided for a better response in schedule:

(i) Ambiguous Questions:

Ambiguous questions are to be avoided at all costs. If an ambiguous word creeps in, different people will understand the questions differently and will in effect be answering differently to the some question. The following example is taken from a University Research Survey.

“Is your work made more difficult because you are expecting a baby?” The question was asked to all women in the survey, irrespective of whether they were expecting a baby or not. What then, did a ‘No’ answer mean? Depending on the respondent, it might have meant—”No, I am not expecting a baby” or “No, my work is not made more difficult by the fact that I am expecting a baby”. Such ambiguity has to be avoided in any social research, otherwise it will minimize the objectivity of research.

(ii) Double Barreled Questions:

Ambiguity may also arise with double barreled questions, such as the following question on public transport, “Do you like travelling on trains or buses?” Respondents liking one and disliking the other would be in a dilemma in answering this question. Clearly it needs to be divided into two separate questions, each concerned with a single idea, in this case with a single mode of transport.

(iii) Vague Words:

Vague questions encourage vague answers. If the respondents are asked whether they go to the cinema regularly or occasionally, the meaning of their answers will be vague. (This common choice of alternatives is strictly illogical. Because the word “occasional” refers to frequency, the word ‘regular’ does not. However this may be the case where logic can give way to common usage).

But the meaning can easily be made more precise, if the researcher will ask “How often these days do you go to the cinema? Would it be nearer to twice a week or more often, once a week, once a fortnight, once a month, three or four times a year, less often, or do you never go these days?”

Vague words and phrases like ‘kind-of, ‘fairly’, ‘generally’, ‘often’, ‘man/, ‘much the same’, ‘on the whole’, etc. should be avoided. If one asks—”What kind of house do you have”? Without specifying a frame of references, some people will answer that is semi detached, others that it is sub-urban, others that it is very pleasant and so on.

A similar type of vagueness occurs in ‘why’ questions. In answering the question “Why did you go to the cinema last night?”. Some respondents will say that they wanted to see that particular film, some that ‘they did not want to stay at home’, others that ‘the wife suggested it’ or that ‘they had not been since last week’. The word ‘why’ in this question—as the phrase ‘Kind of in the previous one—can mean so many different things and thereby produce a useless mixture of answers.

(iv) Leading or Suggestive Questions:

Leading or suggestive type of questions should be avoided as they result in biased answers. A leading question is one which, by its content, structure or wording, leads the respondent in the direction of a certain answer. For example “You don’t think …….. do you?” as obviously leads to a negative answer and the question form like “Should not something be done about ………?” leads to a positive one.

In addition to ‘leading word’, there is the risk that the general context of a question, the control of these preceding it and the tone of the whole schedule or interview can lead the respondent ill a given direction and may bring bias in research. Therefore, while framing a schedule, the interviewer should try to avoid these types of leading questions as far as possible.

(v) Presuming Question:

While forming a schedule, the researcher should not presume anything about the respondent. For example questions like “How many cigarettes you smoke a day?” or “How did you vote in the last election?” are best asked only after a ‘filter question’ has revealed that the respondent does smoke cigarettes and did vote in the last election. Without knowing this the researcher should not presume anything about the respondent. Otherwise the respondent may feel insulted and become reluctant to provide various information on research topic.

(vi) Hypothetical Questions:

Hypothetical question like “Would you like to live in a flat?” one of very limited value. Another kind of hypothetical question is “Would you like a more frequent bus service?” or “Would you like an increase in wages?” Such questions are unlikely to be of any value because the respondent is being asked if he would like something for nothing. It is hard to see how he could possibly say “No”. If he did, it could be because he has taken into account some hidden factors of his own, or because he has failed to understand the question.

(vii) Personal Questions:

Questions regarding personal, private or secret things of a respondent should be avoided unless they are relevant for the inquiry. People are usually reluctant to disclose their personal matters regarding marital or sex life, various diseases etc. to a stranger.

(viii) Embarrassing Questions:

Questions that may put the respondent in an embarrassing position should also be avoided. Subjects which people do not like to discuss in public create a problem to the schedule designer. Respondents are often embarrassed to discuss their personal matters, to give low-prestige answers, and to admit to socially unacceptable behaviour and attitudes. If, for instance, questions on sexual behaviour, frequency of taking bath, cheating in examinations or attitudes to communism were asked in the usual way, many respondents would probably refuse to reply and other would distort their answer.

One method of reducing the threatening nature of a question is to express it through a third person, instead of asking the respondent for his views. Here he can be asked about the views of others. An example from market research of an indirect question of this sort is—”Some women who use this cleanser find a lot of faults with it, I wonder if you can guess what they are objecting to”.

The purpose of this wording was to make the housewives feel free to criticize the product. The aim of such questions is to obtain the respondent’s own views but he may, of course, answer the question asked, and give what he believes to be views of others. For this reason it is often advisable to follow the indirect questions.

There are several other indirect methods which can be useful in dealing with embarrassing topics. The respondent can, for instance, be shown a drawing of two persons in a certain setting with “baloons” containing speech coming from their mouth, as in comic strips and cartoons. One person’s balloon is left, empty and the position of that person and to fill in the missing words.

Another method is that of sentence completion; the respondent is given the beginning of a sentence and is asked to complete it,, usually in a limited time to ensure spontaneity. Beison (1968) describes a study of randomly derived sample of London teenage boys on the sensitive subject of stealing. A variety of procedures were employed in this study to make it easier for the boys to admit that they had stolen things.

On arrival at the interviewing centre a boy chose a false name to the interviewer, who knows him only by that name. After an extended initial phase the interview proceeded to the card-sorting technique by which the information on stealing was to be obtained. The interviewer and the boy sat on either side of a table, with a screen in between so that they could not see each other.

Through a slot in the screen the interviewer passed to the boy a card on which one type of stealing (e.g. I have stolen cigarettes) was recorded. The boy was asked to put the card in a box labeled ‘Yes’ if he had ever done what was recorded on it and in a box labelled “Never” if not. This was repeated for 44 kinds of theft. At the end of this sorting stage, the interviewer went through a procedure which tried, to reduce the force of a boy’s resistances and to strengthen his feeling of willingness, to admitting thefts.

Then the boy was asked to resort all the cards he had put in the ‘never’ box. Finally he was asked for further details or each type of theft he had admitted. This detailed procedure elicited reports of many types of theft from many boys with, for example, 69% of boys admitting “I have stolen something from a shop”, and 58% “I have stolen money” at least once in their life.

(ix) Too Long Questions:

Too long questions are boring and respondents do not follow it easily. If a researcher feels the necessity of giving a long question then he should break it into some interrelated parts, so that it will be easier on the part of the respondent to reply it.

(x) Question Causing Suspicion:

Question which creates suspicion in the mind of the respondent like question about one’s private relation, neighbourhood relations, monthly income, accumulation of wealth etc. should be avoided as far as possible unless they are absolutely necessary.

(xi) Question on Sensitive Issue:

Question creates ill feeling for others or hurt one’s emotion like “Are religious practices unscientific?” “Is Islam religion better than Hinduism?” etc. should be avoided.

(xii) Question Against Universally Accepted Norms:

Every society is having its own accepted normative structure. The members of that particular society always show respect to these norms. In case a schedule contains some questions which go against these accepted norms it creates dissatisfaction among the respondents. So these questions should be avoided by the researcher as far as possible.

(c) Language:

While framing a schedule the researcher should be careful about the proper wording or language.

Following types of word should be avoided as far as possible:

(i) Abbreviation:

In order to reply a question the respondent should understand it clearly. A particular abbreviation given in schedule may be known to the researcher but the respondents may not understand it. Therefore, the researcher should try to avoid such abbreviations. If such abbreviations are used then it’s meaning and full form should be given in the schedule for the better understanding of the respondents.

(ii) Value – Loaded Words :

Words carrying different values viz. good and bad should be avoided as far as possible.

(iii) Native or Unusual Words:

The researcher should try to avoid highly localized languages in his schedule. It is always better to use the words which can be understood by everyone.

(iv) Multi-Meaning Words:

Words carrying different, meanings should be avoided.

(d) Sequence of Questions :

Although no hard and fast rule exists for giving a particular sequence, still in order to get a proper response the sequence of questions in a schedule needs to be planned. A proper sequence of questions may reduce the refusal rate and there is plenty of evidence that it may also influence the answer obtained.

One can take into account the following factors for preparing a perfect sequence of questions:

(i) It is always good to start with a simple, general and broad questions about the topic and then to narrow down to the specific issues, using what is known as n “funner sequence” of question. Thus a general open question on the achievement of the present government may be the beginning of a sequence, then leading to specific questions on the government’s action in the field of labour relations.

(ii) Unambiguous and uncontroversial questions should be included in the initial page of a schedule. Usually the researcher should start from a simple question and then proceed towards complex questions. Because if complex or ambiguous questions are included in the initial pages, the respondent may refuse to give interview.

(iii) At the start of the interview the respondent is unsure of himself and so the opening questions should be one to put him at ease and build up rapport between him and the interviewer. They should be interesting questions which he will have no difficulty in answering. These should not be on sensitive topics otherwise he may refuse to continue with the interview.

(iv) Question seeking the advice of the respondents may be given in the beginning, so that the respondent will feel that his information is valuable and he will be more willing to extend his co-operation for rest of the interview.

(v) It is always better to divide the entire schedule into some sections and each section should deal with a particular topic.

(vi) The entire schedule should be regarded as a coherent unit. There should be a proper co-relation between each question and different sections of schedule. Various parts of the questionnaire should be arranged in such a way that they wouldn’t be different from each other rather would make an entire schedule as an integrated whole.

(vii) The shift from one section to another section should be very natural or smooth. Sudden jumping from one topic to another may badly affect the response of respondents.

(e) Types of Questions:

(i) Open end Question:

The open form, open end or unrestricted type of questions call for a free response in the respondent’s own words. The respondent is having much freedom here to provide his own response. No clues are provided. It probably provides for gathering depth of response. The respondent reveals his mind, provides his frame of reference with the reasons for his responses.

This type of question is sometimes difficult to interpret, tabulate and summarize in the research report. When the respondent is allowed to give free response, his expression may take any unique direction which may not find any uniformity with other responses.

However they are used mostly in pilot studies to get an idea about the research area and the possible replies.

The following are the some of the examples of open end questions:

Example—1: What is your view about the current budget?

Example—2: Is it beneficial for the poor people?

Example—3: Here question 3 (b) is a typical open question not only in its form and content but also in that it opens the interview. It is often desirable to start the interview with an open question to get the respondent talking and to make him feel at ease.

3 (a) I am from the Survey Research Unit and we are trying to find out a few things about what people do in their spare time. Would you mind telling me, are there any things which you would like to spend more time on?

Don’t know—3

3 (b) If answer yes (1) to question 3 (a), what for instance? (Tell in details).

(ii) Closed form of question:

The questions that call for short, limited responses are known as restricted or closed form of questions. They provide for marking a yes or no, a short response, or checking an item out of a list of given responses. It restricts the choice of response for the respondents. He has simply to select a response out of supplied responses and has not to frame responses in his own way. The following are the illustrations of closed form of questions.

Example 1: Are you literate? Yes/No.

Example 2: Are you a housewife? Yes/No.

Many of the questions here are opinion questions, in which the respondents are given choice between ‘good’ and ‘bad’, ‘very bad’, ‘important’, ‘very important’ and ‘not at all important’. Such questions are very common in Opinion Research.

(iii) Factual Question:

George A. Lundberg has mentioned this type of question. It requires certain information of facts from the respondent without any reference to his opinion or attitude about them.

(iv) Opinion Question:

This type of question collects data about one’s opinion, attitude or preferences regarding some phenomena.

(v) Dichotomous Question:

When a question is given with only two possible alternative answers, which is called dichotomous questions. For example. Do you belong to reserve category? Yes/No.

(vi) Multiple Choice Questions:

These questions are otherwise known as cafeteria questions. These are just opposite of previously described dichotomous questions. In these questions the reply is not confined to two alternatives only, but to a number of possible alternatives. For example ‘What, according to you is an important cause of poverty in India? (a) population growth (6) lack of education (c) lack of governmental initiative for its eradication (d) illness of people (e) lack of industry (f) any other (specify).

Step 4# Content of Schedule :

The fourth step in forming a schedule is to prepare the content of a schedule. It is nothing but the systematic structure of a schedule.

The whole schedule may be divided into three parts viz.

(a) Introductory part,

(b) Main schedule and

(c) Instructions to the interviewer/observer.

(a) Introductory Part:

This part includes introductory information about the schedule and its respondents.

In this opening part, the following type of information with regard to inquiry and respondent are sought:

(i) Name of the survey with the name and address of its conducting authority.

(ii) Reference or case number.

(iii) Name of the respondent, his address, age, sex, education, profession etc.

(iv) Place of interview.

(v) Time and date of interview.

(b) Main Schedule:

This is the main and vital portion of the schedule. It has to be prepared with great care. This part of schedule contains with different questions, columns, as well as blank tables where information supplied by the respondent has to be filled.

(c) Instruction to Interviewer:

In this part the field worker (interviewer or observer) who has to present the schedule and collect data is given elaborate instructions regarding the presenting the schedule and the method of interview. The field workers are given detailed instructions about the use of various units, technical terms, general method of fulfilling the schedule and the way in which the interview is to be conducted smoothly. Instructions are given in details in order to ensure uniformity of recording the responses.

Step 5# The Fifth Step is the General Layout of the Schedule:

The layout or physical design of the schedule is very important. If it is planned properly the interview will bring high response. A bad, unsystematic and a schedule without a proper layout may create errors frequently.

The following are some of the steps which may be taken to achieve this objective:

(i) Size of Schedule:

Usually small sized schedule is preferred by the respondents because they can follow a small sized schedule easily. The schedule should not be too long as it may be difficult on the part of the respondents to spend their valuable time in it. Therefore, the length of schedule should be made in such a manner that it will be taking just less than half an hour in filling it up.

(ii) Paper:

The paper used for printing of schedule should be of high quality. The letters printed on it should be visible clearly and must not be broken or the ink should not spread over the paper. If the paper is rough or of low quality, the letters printed will be poor in visibility and are liable to be broken. When the researcher fills it by ink and the ink may spread. Therefore the paper printing must be of excellent quality. Under-economy, in this respect, may cause series of problem of response for schedule.

(iii) Margin:

The margin on the left should be about and on the right it should be 1 ½. This makes the schedule an attractive one. Besides the researcher can take some notes in this marginal space. Absence of margin may create problem for punching. Because punching without any margin may destroy some of words.

(iv) Spacing:

In between the questions, titles, subtitles and columns there should be reasonable space for noting the responses and demarcating one from the other.

(v) Printing:

A printed schedule is obviously more desirable as printing makes a schedule more attractive. But if the number of respondents is small or the researcher wants to reduce the cost of research, he can also use cyclostyled or type written schedule. However, in both these cases the schedule must be neat and free from over writing.

(vi) Use of Picture:

Sometimes the use of pictures in schedule influences the respondent in right manner and the respondent takes greater interest for giving replies. Therefore, it is desirable to insert suitable pictures whenever possible.

Step 6# Testing the Validity of Schedule :

The last step for forming a schedule is testing the validity of schedule. After the schedule has been prepared the investigator should test it on a sample population in order to examine its validity, and to find out any discrepancies in it. Thus various mistakes, unsatisfactory or unnecessary things, can be located only when the schedule has been operated on trial basis.

Thereafter if such things are noticed then the investigator can bring some changes to make the schedule more accurate. If all these steps will be taken into consideration then definitely the researcher can frame a qualitative and accurate schedule. By considering the above steps he can also be able to check problem of response in schedule.

Except all these above discussed steps, according to P.V. Young, the essentials of a good schedule can be divided into two parts.

(a) Accurate communication

(b) Accurate response.

Accurate communication is achieved when the respondents understand the questions clearly without any ambiguity. According to her, the basis of accurate communication or clear understanding is presentation of questions with proper wording. The researcher should try to frame the schedule with those words that will clearly carry the desired sense without any ambiguity.

Accurate response can be achieved when the researcher will get unbiased and true data from the respondents. An adequate length, attractive physical structure, clear wording, right type of questions etc. can be taken into consideration in order to fulfill this objective.

Related Articles:

• 4 Objectives of Schedule – Explained!
• Motivating Factors of Social Research: 6 Factors

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How to Prepare a PhD Research Plan/Schedule?

PhD research plan is a structured schedule for completing different objectives and milestones during a given timeframe. Scholars are usually unaware of it. Let us find out how to prepare it. 

Between March 2021 to 2022, I read almost 15 different research proposals from students (for their projects) and only a single one, I found, with a comprehensive research plan for 3 years. Which is still not, kind of practical, probably copied from other students. 

Such entities are not known to over 90% of students, if some know that because their university asked for but unfortunately, this basic procedure lacks penetration among students. I don’t know the exact reason, but students lack a basic understanding of the research process. 

Meaning, that they don’t know or perhaps don’t complete their course work needly. PhD research requires many documents, SOPs and write-ups, before even starting it. For example, a rough research plan, research proposal, initial interview, competence screening, grant proposal and so on. 

However, the requirement varies among universities and thus knowledge regarding basic procedures often also varies among students. So I’m not blaming students but certainly, it is the fault of the university side, as well.  

When you come up with a research proposal with a research schedule or entire plant, certainly it will create a positive image and good reputation. So it is important. But how to prepare it? 

Hey, there I’m Dr Tushar, a PhD tutor and coach. In this article, we will understand how we can prepare a structured plan for the PhD research and how to execute it. 

So let’s get started.  

How to prepare a PhD research plan/schedule?

A PhD research plan or schedule can be prepared using the GANTT chart which includes a month, semester or year-wise planning of the entire PhD research work. 

First, enlist goals and objectives.

It’s not about your research objective enlisted in your proposal. I’m talking about the objectives of your PhD. Take a look at some of the objectives.

Note that these are all the objectives that should be completed during the PhD, but not limited to a specific subject. Note you have to show how you can complete or achieve each objective during the entire tenure of your work. 

And that is what the plan/schedule is all about. Next, explain the time duration. The time required to complete each goal, roughly. For example, a semester or a year to complete the course work or 4 to 8 months for completion of ethical approval. 

Now two things must be known to you, at this point in time. 

• First, enlist the time required to complete each objective, as aforementioned. 
• Second, what goals would you complete during each semester?

For instance, course work takes a semester to complete, but during the period a scholar can also craft their PhD research title, research proposal, ethical approval and grant proposals. 

Now it is also crucial to know that there is no time bound to complete goals, but it should be completed as you explained. Let’s say you can plant it for 3 years, 4 or even 5 years depending on the weightage of your work. 

In summary, the answer to the question of how to prepare a research plan is, 

• Enlist your goals or objectives. 
• Decide the time required to complete each goal.
• Prepare a GANTT chart.  

Now you have prepared zero-date planning for your research but how to present it? The answer is a GANTT chart.   

GANTT chart for PhD research plan: 

GANTT chart is a task manager and graphical presentation of how and how many tasks are completed or should be completed against a given time duration. Take a look at the image below. 

How can you prepare one?

Open MS Excel (on Windows) or numbers (on Mac).

Enlist goals or objectives in a column. 

Enlist years (duration of PhD) in a row and bifurcate them into individual semesters. You can also prepare a month-wise plan, that’s totally up to you. In my opinion, semester-wise planning is good because research is a lengthy and time-consuming process. So monthly planning would not work. 

To make a chart more attractive and readable use colors, as I used. Now mark a ‘cell’ against a column and row showing the objective which you are going to complete in a semester. Take a look. 

After the end of this, your GANTT chart would look like this. 

You can prepare a month-wise planning, individual semester-wise planning and goal-wise planning etc. I will explain these things in upcoming articles on 5 different types of GANTT charts for PhD.  

Custom writing services: 

If you find difficulties in preparing a research plan, synopsis, proposal or GANTT chart. We can work on behalf of you. Our costume services are, 

• Synopsis writing 
• Project writing 
• Research proposal writing 
• Research planning and GANTT chart preparation. 

You can contact us at [email protected] or [email protected] to get more information. 

Wrapping up: 

Planning and executing a research schedule are two different things. Oftentimes, students just prepare as per the requirements and then do work as per their convenience. Then they are stuck in one place and just work around the time. 

Plan things. Make your own GANTT chart, put it on your work table or stick it on a wall so that you can see it daily. Try to achieve each goal in time. Trust me things will work and you will complete your PhD before anyone else.  

Dr. Tushar Chauhan is a Scientist, Blogger and Scientific-writer. He has completed PhD in Genetics. Dr. Chauhan is a PhD coach and tutor.

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• Interview Schedule: Definition, Types, Templates and Tips

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Turn the television on, and you are very likely to find a celebrity or some other famous personality conversing with a TV news anchor or program show host. Open the newspaper and there’s a chance that you’ll read about the thoughts of a prominent politician about certain issues, written down by a journalist.

As you walk to your office and pass by the Human Resource department, you see a queue of well-dressed young men and women waiting for their turn to go into the room and talk with the HR manager, who is currently trying to fill a vacant position.

These scenarios all involve conversations and exchanges of ideas, accomplished in the form of an interview.

© Shutterstock.com | Rawpixel.com

In this article, we explore 1) what an interview is, 2) the pros and cons of having an interview schedule , 3) the different types of interview schedules , 4) interview schedule templates , and 5) tips and tricks .

INTERVIEW: AN OVERVIEW

Quite possibly, the simplest definition of an “interview” is a “conversation where questions are asked and the corresponding answers are given. The setting and execution of the interview range from casual to semi-formal to formal, and it involves two parties: the interviewer and interviewee. The interviewer’s objective is to collect data and information by asking questions, and probing the answers that are given by the interviewee. It may even be described as the “interviewer’s script”.

An interview may be conducted one-on-one, with one interviewer and one interviewee, or in groups. For example, one interviewer may discuss with multiple interviewees, or more than one interviewers may converse with a single interviewee. Alternatively, it could be a group arrangement, with a panel of interviewers facing a panel of interviewees.

When are interviews conducted? Generally, interviews are used for the following:

• Hiring or Recruitment. A job interview involves a hiring manager or recruiter talking to or discussing with an applicant or candidate in order to assess the latter’s suitability and fit for an open position.
• Research. One way to gather data for research (e.g. marketing, economic, and scientific research) is through what is known as “research interview”, where respondents are sought for answers. In scientific research, for example, questions are formulated for the purpose of testing a hypothesis or assumption.
• Information dissemination. News is the prime example, where a person is asked questions for television, radio, newspaper, or similar media.

How can you tell if an interview is going smoothly? Well, common sense would dictate that an interview is going well if there is a continuous exchange of ideas and information, and this can be attributed to several factors.

• An objective or purpose , revolving around a specific topic or subject. Is it a job interview? Is the interview meant to find out what the interviewee thinks about a certain issue?
• The ability of the interviewer to ask questions and encourage the interviewee to connect with him and open up to him. This also refers to his ability to probe deeper and do follow ups on the questions to gain more information.
• The responsiveness of the interviewee , and his ability to express himself fully in his answers. He should be able to quickly grasp the question and understand what is being asked, so he can provide the answer that the interviewer is looking for.
• The interview setting . This includes the venue or location, the language used, and other external factors that set the overall tone of the interview.

If any of the above are absent (or present but lacking in any way), then you can expect the interview to go downhill from the beginning. However, another huge reason why most interviews fail or do not achieve the desired results is lack of preparation, particularly on the part of the interviewer. An indication of preparedness is an “interview schedule”.

THE INTERVIEW SCHEDULE

As fun as spontaneous or on-the-spot interviews may seem to be, they will still bomb if no preparation was put into it. Those “ambush” interviews you see on television? They are not completely random or “on-the-spot” as they are presented to be. The questions asked have already been prepared beforehand, and they are often contained in an interview schedule.

An interview schedule is basically a list containing a set of structured questions that have been prepared, to serve as a guide for interviewers, researchers and investigators in collecting information or data about a specific topic or issue. The schedule will be used by the interviewer, who will fill in the questions with the answers received during the actual interview.

Advantages of an Interview Schedule

• An interview schedule facilitates the conduct of an interview. Since the questions have already been prepared beforehand, it is easier to carry out and complete the interview.
• It increases the likelihood of collecting accurate information or data. The questions, which were already prepared beforehand, are expected to be well-thought out and have focus, so they target the “heart of the matter”, thereby ensuring that the answers obtained are correct or accurate. According to Lindlof & Taylor, interview schedules can increase the reliability and credibility of data gathered.
• It allows interviewers and researchers to get more information , since they can ask follow-up queries or clarifications to the questions they have prepared. Thus, the information gathered is more relevant and useful.
• The rate and amount of responses are higher. Often, interviews are time-bound. Interviewers are given only a limited amount of time to ask all their questions and get the answers. If he came prepared, then he can utilize that time properly. Otherwise, he will be wasting a lot of time, thinking about what question to ask next. The next thing he knows, time is up, and he barely got anything substantial from the interviewee.
• It offers flexibility and high customization , and may be used when interviewing different types of people. The interviewer can prepare it with the respondents in mind. For example, an interviewer may have prepared a job interview schedule for the recruitment of a construction worker or laborer. When he is tasked to interview candidates for a senior management position, he may also use the same schedule, but with several adjustments.

Disadvantages of an Interview Schedule

• It can be time-consuming. Preparation of the interview schedule can take quite a chunk of the time of an interviewer, especially if it is for an extensive or in-depth interview. Significant amounts of research must be performed in order to be able to craft good questions.
• There is a high risk that the interview and its results may suffer from the bias of the interviewer , as he is the one that will choose the questions to be asked during the interview.
• Variability may be high when the interview schedule is used by multiple interviewers. This may result to unreliable information gathered during the interviews.

TYPES OF INTERVIEW SCHEDULES

There are two major types of interview schedules or guides that are widely used by interviewers.

In-depth interview schedule

This is used for open-ended interviews, which are aimed at obtaining in-depth information, often on serious topics or sensitive issues. The questions are open-ended, with prompts provided for the interviewer to ask for clarification or further information if necessary.

The interviewee is given more room or leeway to talk about all the topics that will crop up during the interview, so he is free to use his own words and let the ideas flow out of him easily. The key characteristics of this interview schedule are listed below.

• The schedule contains indications of the interviewee’s awareness of the purpose of the interview and how long it will take.
• The questions must be crafted to provide answers relevant to the topic or issue . For example, if it is a job interview, the questions should address the matter on whether the applicant being interviewed possesses the qualifications and credentials that make him suitable for the open position. If the interview is for purposes of research or investigation, the questions should answer the main problem or topic of the research or investigation.
• All questions should be relevant , or have an impact on the purpose or objective of the interview. Remove any irrelevant questions, or those with answers that won’t be of any use to you.
• It takes the one-step-at-a-time approach , with each question meant to tackle only one issue, instead of addressing several issues all at one. This has a tendency to confuse not only the interviewee, but also the interviewer, and result in the latter losing control of the direction of the interview.
• Instead of using questions answerable with a Yes or No, the questions are open-ended , which can be used as a starting or reference point for more questions. This way, the interviewer can go deeper in getting information he needs.
• The questions are neutral , avoiding leading questions that have the potential to dictate the answer to the interviewee.

Structured interview schedule

This type of interview schedule is often compared with the format used in survey forms or questionnaires because of their similarities. The difference lies in the usage; obviously, the interview schedule is used by the interviewer during a face-to-face interaction, while the questionnaire is simply filled out by the respondent.

This interview schedule contains the questions that will be asked, and it is also where the interviewer will record the answers to those questions. Essentially, preparing an interview schedule for a structured interview is the same as preparing a questionnaire. It’s just that the questionnaire will be used solely by the interviewer, and the respondent or interviewee will not get to lay their eyes on the contents.

For more flexibility, however, some interviewers combine the features of these two types when they prepare their interview schedule. It would really be up to the interviewer, and what he deems to be most effective in achieving his objectives.

INTERVIEW SCHEDULE TEMPLATES

There is no single standard template for an interview schedule. Generally, the format will depend on the type and purpose of the interview being conducted, as well as the target respondents or interviewees. However, the interview schedule must have three major parts:

Some researchers call this stage the “warm-up”, where the objective is to create an atmosphere that will accommodate the open and free flow of ideas between the interviewer and interviewee, whether it is one-on-one or in a group.

At the start of the interview, the interviewer should welcome the interviewee and make an effort to put him at ease. If the respondent is relaxed, the interview is likely to go smoothly. The interviewer will then proceed to inform the interviewee of the following:

• Objectives of the interview. The interviewee deserves to know why the interview is taking place, and why he is involved. In case of a job interview, the applicant being interviewed already knows why he is in the same room with the HR personnel, but it should still be spelled out to him.
• The topics or points that will be discussed in the course of the interview. This is to further make the interviewee comfortable, since you are giving him something like an ‘advanced warning’ on what will be asked later on in the conversation.
• The estimated length or duration of the interview. The interviewee does not want to be kept guessing throughout the course of the interview when it will end, or if he will have to spend all morning talking to the interviewer.

The interviewee would like to feel that he will benefit in some way from this interview, so it would definitely help if you give him motivation to answer the questions properly and accurately. If you don’t, he may not be inclined to answer the questions, much less give good answers.

This part of the interview schedule may be formatted in such a way that fits the interviewer’s personality, and even that of the interviewee.

We come to the “core discussion”. This contains the meat of the interview schedule: the topics and the questions to be asked. Again, the content will depend on the topic and the type of interview. The main thing that you should never overlook is that the questions should fulfill the objective of the interview.

Instead of an interview outline, which includes only a list of topics and subtopics, a typical interview schedule also contains major questions, as well as follow-up questions designed to probe or clarify the answers to the previously asked major questions.

When preparing the body of the interview schedule, it is important to leave more than enough space where the interviewer may write down the responses or answers of the interviewee.

The interview is about to be wrapped up. The reason that it is included in the interview schedule is to ensure that the interview will not end abruptly, which may come across as rude to the interviewee.

The closing will cover the main points, in summary, that were talked about during the interview, followed by a brief discussion on the next steps that will be taken after the interview.

You may check out this template for an example of an interview schedule to be used in talking with a university classmate. This other template of a simple interview guide also provides cues on what the interviewer should say during the interview, aside from the questions that he will ask.

In some cases, an interview schedule may be so simple as to contain only the salient points, such as the purpose of the interview, the date, time and location of the conduct of the interview, and the names and contact details of both the interviewer and the interviewee. Take a look at this job interview schedule as an example.

Fortunately, there is a wealth of resources of interview schedule templates that you can find online that you can tweak and adapt to your needs.

TIPS IN PREPARING AND USING AN INTERVIEW SCHEDULE

The main concern in the preparation of an interview schedule is on the questions. What should be asked, and how should they be asked? But that is not all. Even the order or sequence of asking the questions also matters, which is why it should also be reflected on the interview schedule.

Remember the following tips when preparing the guide that you will use for the interview.

• Do not start the interview with a question probing into any personal information of the interviewee (unless the purpose of the interview is to talk about his personal life). If it’s a job interview, it would be better to get him to talk about his skills, qualifications and work experiences, since that is his comfort zone. If it is a research interview, you can start things off by asking the interviewee about his expertise in the field that you are interviewing him about. Do not ask him personal questions about his family or similar topics.
• Start with the “lighter” questions , or those that will not immediately put the interviewee or respondent on his guard. The interviewer should be able to answer the question easily, then you can move on gradually to the more sensitive or difficult topics. If you start it with a controversial question, or something that will make the interviewee uncomfortable, that will set a grim tone for the rest of the interview.
• The general rule is for you to group the questions in a logical manner . You can start with general questions, and work your way toward the specific questions later on. Of course, you may have to be flexible at times, especially when a general question must be followed by a specific question in order to clarify something.
• For variety and a more natural flow, if you are using both open-ended and closed questions, it would be a good idea to mix them up , instead of asking all the closed questions first and then the open-ended ones in the latter half of the interview. Another suggestion is to adapt the funnel or inverted funnel sequence. The funnel sequence will have you starting with open-ended questions, and gradually but naturally easing into the close-ended ones. The inverted funnel sequence orders the questions in reverse.
• Keep the respondents or interviewees in mind when preparing the questions. You should know about their background, at least, so you can prepare questions that will resonate with them. If you are going to interview candidates for a supervisory engineering position, you can frame the questions so that the candidates will be able to prove whether they are qualified for the job or not. If you are interviewing a person of interest regarding a recent incident, you should at least find out why he is considered to be a “person of interest”, so you can come up with the proper and relevant questions.
• The wording of the questions must be clear. Avoid using complicated and highly technical terms, unless you are completely sure that the interviewee is familiar with them. Try using simple language and layman’s terms to avoid confusion. Stay away from colloquial terms and jargon, especially when there are better – easier to understand – alternatives that you can use. Sentence structure is also important. Questions structured into long and run-on sentences may confuse you both, and the interviewee may miss the main point that you are asking about. As earlier mentioned, as much as possible, each question should address a single issue. Avoid placing too many questions in a single sentence, to be read in one breath.
• Provide adequate space where you can record or write the answers or responses to each question. There is an option to use a recorder during the interview, in case there are some points that you fail to record on the interview schedule. If you are going to use one, you have to inform the interviewee about it at the start of the interview, and get his consent to record the interview.
• As interviewer, you have to familiarize yourself with the interview schedule. You want the interview to flow naturally, and you definitely don’t want to sound stilted when asking the questions or, worse, as if you rehearsed it. Well, you probably have, but you don’t want to make that apparent to the interviewee. You have to exude confidence; after all, you are the one asking the questions. Once you have prepared the interview schedule, you have to know it inside out.

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Rethinking Work Schedules? Consider These 4 Questions.

• Mark C. Bolino,
• Thomas K. Kelemen,
• Samuel H. Matthews

Based on a review of 153 academic studies.

Researchers recently conducted a review of 153 academic articles examining how working a nonstandard schedule affects employee attitudes, behavior, physical and psychological health, as well as their personal and family life. Their review prompts four questions employers should consider as they begin to rethink their schedules: 1) How does my organization’s scheduling practices affect employee well-being? For example, night shifts are associated with higher absenteeism and lower productivity while flextime schedules are generally associated with reduced absenteeism and turnover; 2) Can we better align our work schedules with the needs of our employees? Person-schedule fit, or finding the right hours for the right person, is an important factor to consider when contemplating a post-pandemic strategy; 3) What are the implications of giving employees more control over their schedules? It is possible to create schedules that are idiosyncratic and customized to meet the needs and desires of individual employees; 4) Can we effectively balance the needs and desires of both the organization and employees? The key will be finding a balance between the long term benefits their scheduling strategy brings to both employees and the organization.

In these difficult times, we’ve made a number of our coronavirus articles free for all readers. To get all of HBR’s content delivered to your inbox, sign up for the Daily Alert newsletter.

The coronavirus has changed the workplace in ways that will permanently transform the future of most organizations. Many leaders have been forced to craft new and improved strategies for successfully running an office remotely, building environments that help — not hurt – our immune systems, and developing guidelines to enforce safety measures like social distancing. Perhaps the most common change designed to address all of these areas is rethinking employee schedules, whether it is to support changes in work-life balance, to minimize social contact, or to meet wavering business demands. The traditional nine-to-five workday is no longer the gold standard.

• Mark C. Bolino is the David L. Boren Professor and the Michael F. Price Chair in International Business at the University of Oklahoma’s Price College of Business. His research focuses on understanding how an organization can inspire its employees to go the extra mile without compromising their personal well-being.
• TK Thomas K. Kelemen is an assistant professor at Kansas State University. He received his Ph.D. in management from the University of Oklahoma. His research interests include leadership, organizational citizenship behavior, and job design.
• SM Samuel H. Matthews is an Assistant Professor of Management at the University of Northern Iowa.

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Top 5 Research Timeline Samples with Templates and Examples

Ashima Monga

When it comes to doing a thesis, project report, or dissertation, you spend lots of time doing research through case studies. It, however, always works best if you planned everything in a given timeline. Thus, a research timeline template is beneficial for writing a research report or project presentation for sponsors or investors.

To address this pain point of business, SlideTech offers you invaluable help in building innovative research timeline templates that give you the outline to create perfect project reports, add or remove new tasks and milestones, and change the deliverable dates of your project with a few clicks. Our templates provide an overview of the project plan’s events, highlight important points in time, break down the project’s agenda and distill important information about your products or services, etc.

In this blog, we are introducing our top-notch research timeline templates that are perfect for telling stories and visualizing the processes of your project. 

Template 1: Projected Research Timeline Milestone PPT PowerPoint Presentation Ideas Backgrounds

If you need to learn how to make a research document and set schedule activities for each step, then use this fantastic research template that encompasses the content of a well-maintained research paper. Organize your activities and map meetings according to project milestones with this expert-curated template. For instance, use this template to mark out when your ‘reading and research starts and mark it as task 1, with the color-coded legend. Then task 2 could be topic presenting that starts, as soon as task 1 ends. Then, topic interpreting can be task 3 with the same start as the work on the topic started. This editable template lets you change font styles and color themes with a few clicks.

Download Now!

Template 2: Projected Research Timeline Elements PPT Presentation Infographic Template Skills

When you introduce your new products and services to the customers, get this template where steps are needed to analyze, plan, design, implement, and evaluate a specific product. Adapt this PPT Template to give a comprehensive overview of your products to target audience that you value. This handy template design guides your project from inception to completion dividing your project research tasks into Elements, Tasks and Actions. 

Template 3: Projected Research Timeline Planning PowerPoint Presentation Icon Backgrounds

Manage your planning with this PPT Template design to complete your project research, enlist tasks or activities with its deadline. You can measure the activities you planned through it by going to the timetable you set and evaluating the work progress. Business owners can easily visualize data with customizable maps, widgets, graphs, and charts. The phases are also listed out in detail in this template.

Template 4: Dissertation Projected Research Timeline Analysis PPT PowerPoint Presentation Professional

Fashionably present your research project through this ready-made Presentation Template and keep track of project deadlines. This goal- oriented template breaks down your project’s events or tasks in chronological order, giving a high-level view of the project's planning and reflecting your business plan. Use color hues for each task that differentiate each task from others on the timeline, schedule prioritize tasks, and make information more visual.

Template 5: Dissertation Projected Research Timeline Research PPT PowerPoint Presentation Topics

Grab this research timeline to illustrate and represent roadmaps for your project and highlight the planning process’s goals and tasks over a specific period. Color-coding of this template makes your design more readable, differentiating tasks, defining specific daily, weekly, or monthly activities, etc. The project manager can visualize processes and their status quo and also create natural flow of information among team members. 

The Final Word

Running a business smoothly is a very tricky job and sometimes may be hard to manage. Our beautifully crafted research timeline templates provide the most solid foundation that builds something genuinely remarkable for your business that will captivate your audience, stakeholders, investors, etc. Our research timeline templates communicate the business’s core message clearly and emphasizes timely project delivery to your potential customers. You can always modify our templates to fit your business’s needs. 

FAQs on Research Timeline

What is a research timeline.

A research timeline is an essential part of any project proposal. It defines the chronological order of events of your project plan that includes aspects such as reading & research, analysis results, milestones, preliminary data results, literature review results, etc. It gives a broad overview of your project’s planned activities at a glance.

How do you write a research timeline?

Writing a research document for any project comes with levels of complexity. You must follow some guidelines while writing a research timeline to keep yourself on track. Write the research timeline of the project in stages and give enough time to complete every step of your work.

• Define research ideas, objectives, and resources and then prepare the research proposal.
• Develop a research design for it
• Capture relevant information to create a sampling plan
• Carry out data collection to write it up 
• Prepare data for analysis and draw conclusions or recommendations
• Write the final draft of the application.
• Again, review it and edit it if required and submit the final research proposal.

How long should a research timeline be?

A research timeline project can be eight weeks, six months, one year, two years, three years, or more, depending on the requirement of the project proposal. But it would help if you remembered to complete it timely while planning these periods.

How do you write a  PhD research timeline?

A PhD Research Timeline is a challenging process that spans across years. Sometimes, researchers can feel quite overwhelmed. Some tips for writing a perfect PhD research timeline are:

• Decide what elements like data collection, fieldwork, experiments, data analysis, writing plan, conferences, publications, coursework, etc., you must include in your PhD research timeline.
• Share or discuss your ideas and thoughts with your guide or PhD supervisor and get their views. Note the discussion points during the meeting and edit your provisional PhD research timeline, accordingly. 
• Think about the design of your PhD research timeline and prepare it across tasks and milestones.
• Track your tasks and update your PhD research timeline to prioritize tasks and set achievable and concrete goals when needed.

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Sleeping hours: what is the ideal number and how does age impact this?

Jean-philippe chaput.

1 Healthy Active Living and Obesity Research Group, Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Institute, Ottawa, ON, Canada, ac.no.oehc@tupahcpj

2 Department of Pediatrics, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON, Canada, ac.no.oehc@tupahcpj

3 School of Human Kinetics, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON, Canada, ac.no.oehc@tupahcpj

4 School of Epidemiology and Public Health, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON, Canada, ac.no.oehc@tupahcpj

Caroline Dutil

Hugues sampasa-kanyinga.

The objective of this narrative review paper is to discuss about sleep duration needed across the lifespan. Sleep duration varies widely across the lifespan and shows an inverse relationship with age. Sleep duration recommendations issued by public health authorities are important for surveillance and help to inform the population of interventions, policies, and healthy sleep behaviors. However, the ideal amount of sleep required each night can vary between different individuals due to genetic factors and other reasons, and it is important to adapt our recommendations on a case-by-case basis. Sleep duration recommendations (public health approach) are well suited to provide guidance at the population-level standpoint, while advice at the individual level (eg, in clinic) should be individualized to the reality of each person. A generally valid assumption is that individuals obtain the right amount of sleep if they wake up feeling well rested and perform well during the day. Beyond sleep quantity, other important sleep characteristics should be considered such as sleep quality and sleep timing (bedtime and wake-up time). In conclusion, the important inter-individual variability in sleep needs across the life cycle implies that there is no “magic number” for the ideal duration of sleep. However, it is important to continue to promote sleep health for all. Sleep is not a waste of time and should receive the same level of attention as nutrition and exercise in the package for good health.

Introduction

Sleep is increasingly recognized as a critical component of healthy development and overall health. 1 – 3 Healthy sleep comprises many dimensions, including adequate duration, good quality, appropriate timing, and the absence of sleep disorders. 4 , 5 Not getting enough sleep at night is generally associated with daytime sleepiness, daytime fatigue, depressed mood, poor daytime functioning, and other health and safety problems. 6 – 9 Chronic insufficient sleep has become a concern in many countries, given its association with morbidity and mortality. 10 , 11 For example, habitual short sleep duration has been associated with adverse health outcomes including obesity, 12 type 2 diabetes, 13 hypertension, 14 cardiovascular disease, 15 depression, 16 and all-cause mortality. 17 Interest in finding ways to improve sleep patterns of individuals at the population-level standpoint is growing, and experts recommend that sleep should be considered more seriously by public health bodies, ie, given as much attention and resources as nutrition and physical activity. 18 – 20

Guidelines on the recommended amount of sleep needed for optimal health exist; they are a vital tool for surveillance, they help inform policies, they can provide a starting point for intervention strategies, and they educate the general public about healthy sleep behaviors. However, sleep needs may vary from one person to another at any given age across the lifespan. Additionally, some age groups and populations are more likely to report insufficient sleep duration and may be at greater risk for detrimental health outcomes. 5 , 6 , 11 The objective of this narrative review article is to discuss whether or not an ideal amount of sleep exists for optimal health and how it is impacted by age.

Insufficient sleep across the lifespan

Insufficient sleep has become widespread over the last decades, especially among adolescents. 11 , 21 Both physiological factors and exogenous exposures come into play in explaining insufficient sleep in this age group. Sleep curtailment is often attributed to extrinsic factors, such as artificial light, caffeine use, lack of physical activity, no bedtime rules in the household, and the increased availability of information and communication technologies. 22 – 25 In adolescence, insufficient sleep has also been attributed to intrinsic factors such as pubertal hormonal changes, which is associated with a shift toward an evening chronotype 26 that may also lead to an asynchrony between the biological clock, characterized by a phase delay, and the social clock. 27 In adolescents, this biological phase delay combined with the social clock, for which the main synchronizer is the fixed and early school start time, contributes to the observed sleep deficits in this population. 27 The conflict between intrinsic and extrinsic factors, biological time and social time, has been indicated to be greater during adolescence than at any other point in our lives. 28

Despite some overlap between factors that could explain insufficient sleep among adolescents and adults, such as exposure to artificial light at night, lack of physical activity, caffeine consumption, and poor sleep hygiene, other factors that could specifically be related to insufficient sleep among adults may include but not be limited to work demands, social commitments, health and/or affective problems, and family dynamics (eg, working mothers and children with full agendas). 10

In the elderly, sleep patterns and distribution undergoes significant quantitative and qualitative changes. Older adults tend to have a harder time falling asleep and more trouble staying asleep. This period of life is often accompanied by a circadian shift to a morning chronotype, as opposed to the evening chronotype change during adolescence, that results in early bedtime and risetime. 29 Research suggests that the need for sleep may not change with age, but it is the ability to get the needed sleep that decreases with age. 10 This decreased ability to sleep in older adults is often secondary to their comorbidities and related medications (polypharmacy) rather than normal aging processes per se. 30 – 32 Furthermore, the increased frequency of sleep-related disorders in the elderly population contribute to much of the sleep deficiencies observed in this population. 33 – 36 Inadequate sleep in the elderly could also be related to other factors, such as life changes (eg, retirement, physical inactivity, decreased social interactions), age-related changes in metabolism, and environmental changes (eg, placement in a nursing home). 37

A systematic review and meta-analysis reported that in the elderly population both short and long sleep are independently associated with increased risk of cardiovascular-related and cancer-related mortality. 38 Additionally, adjustments for health conditions in the studies examining the association between sleep duration and mortality risks did not attenuate the strength of the association between long sleep and increased risk of mortality, which suggests that the mechanisms in these associations may differ between long sleep and short sleep duration. 38 One possible explanation for this association, between long sleep duration and increased risk of non-communicable diseases related mortality, may be related to the increased prevalence of sleep fragmentation in this population. 38 , 39 While older adults may report long sleep duration, other sleep characteristics, namely sleep architecture and quality, are altered by sleep fragmentation. As the relationship between long sleep duration and increased risk of cardiovascular-related and cancer-related mortality is unique to the elderly population, the causality should be further investigated.

Normative sleep duration values across the lifespan

Sleep–wake regulation and sleep states evolve very rapidly during the first year of life. 40 For example, newborns (0–3 months) do not have an established circadian rhythm and therefore their sleep is distributed across the full 24-hour day. 41 At 10–12 weeks, the circadian rhythm emerges and sleep becomes more nocturnal between ages 4 and 12 months. 42 Children continue to take daytime naps between 1 and 4 years of age, and night wakings are common. 43 Daytime naps typically stop by the age of 5 years and overnight sleep duration gradually declines throughout childhood, in part due to a shift to later bedtimes and unchanged wake times. 43

Sleep patterns are explained by a complex interplay between genetic, behavioral, environmental, and social factors. Examples of factors that can determine sleep duration include daycare/school schedules, parenting practices, cultural preferences, family routines, and individual differences in genetic makeup. Despite inter-individual differences in sleep duration, international normative data exist to show the normal distribution of sleep duration for different age groups. However, it is important to keep in mind that normative reference values by no means indicate anything about what the ideal or optimal sleep duration should be, ie, the amount of sleep associated with health benefits. Nevertheless, they tell us about what is normal (or not) in the population and provide a valuable yardstick for practitioners and educators when dealing with sleep-related issues.

A meta-analysis by Galland et al 44 examined the scientific literature with regards to normal sleep patterns in infants and children aged 0–12 years. The review included 69,542 participants from 18 countries and subjective measures were used to determine sleep duration (sleep diary or questionnaire). They calculated mean reference values and ranges (±1.96 SD) for sleep duration of 12.7 h/day (9.0–13.3) for infants (<2 years), 11.9 h/day (9.9–13.8) for toddlers/preschoolers (ages 2–5 years), and 9.2 h/day (7.6–10.8) for children (6–12 years). Normative sleep duration data across age categories are shown in Figure 1 . A strong inverse relationship with age was evident from these data, with the fastest rate of decline observed over the first 6 months of life (10.5 min/month decline in sleep duration). The review also highlighted that Asians had significantly shorter sleep (1 hour less over the 0–12-year range) compared to Caucasians or other ethnic groups. Overall, these reference values should be considered as global norms because the authors combined different countries and cultures.

Normal self-reported sleep durations in children aged 0–12 years.

Note: The mean reference values are from a meta-analysis of 34 studies from 18 countries. 44

Abbreviations: m, months; y, years.

Galland et al 45 also reported in 2018 normative sleep duration values for children aged 3–18 years as measured with actigraphy (objective assessment of sleep duration). Their meta-analysis included 79 articles and involved children from 17 countries. As shown in Figure 2 , pooled mean estimates for overnight sleep duration declined from 9.68 hours (3–5 years age band) to 8.98 hours (6–8 years age band), 8.85 hours (9–11 years age band), 8.05 hours (12–14 years age band), and 7.4 hours (15–18 years age band). These normative sleep duration values may aid in the interpretation of actigraphy measures from nighttime recordings in the pediatric population for any given age.

Normal actigraphy-determined sleep duration values in children aged 3–18 years.

Note: The mean reference values are from a meta-analysis of 79 studies from 17 countries. 45

A meta-analysis of objectively assessed sleep from childhood to adulthood was also published by Ohayon et al 46 in 2004 to determine normative sleep values across the lifespan. A total of 65 studies representing 3,577 healthy individuals aged 5–102 years were included. Polysomnography or actigraphy was used to assess sleep duration in the included studies. They observed that total sleep time significantly decreased with age in adults, while it was the case in children and adolescents only in studies performed on school days. This pattern suggests that, in children and adolescents, the decrease in total sleep time is not related to maturation but to other factors such as earlier school start times.

In summary, normative sleep duration values are helpful in providing information on what constitutes the norm for a given age and what is considered outside the norm. These reference values are impacted by the method used to determine sleep duration (objective vs subjective assessment) and provide norms at the population-level standpoint. Many factors can determine sleep duration at the individual level. Although international normative data provide information about the normal distribution of sleep duration in the population, they do not identify the duration associated with health benefits. For example, having a sleep duration that fits with the average of the population is by no means indicative of either a good or a bad sleep amount. Optimal sleep duration, or the amount of sleep associated with favorable outcomes, is what is used for public health recommendations and is discussed in the next section.

Recommended amount of sleep across the lifespan

In 2015, the National Sleep Foundation in the US released their updated sleep duration recommendations to make scientifically sound and practical recommendations for daily sleep duration across the lifespan. 47 The same year, the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and the Sleep Research Society released a consensus recommendation for the amount of sleep needed to promote optimal health in adults. 48 The year after, they released their recommended amount of sleep for pediatric populations. 49 Both sleep guidelines issued by the US used a similar developmental approach to deliver their sleep duration recommendations, which included a consensus and a voting process with a multidisciplinary expert panel. The sleep duration recommendations can be found in Table 1 .

Sleep duration recommendations in the US and Canada

Note: Papers describing the sleep duration recommendations can be found elsewhere. 47 – 51

Abbreviations: AASM, American Academy of Sleep Medicine; SRS, Sleep Research Society.

Many organizations around the world have their own sleep duration recommendations, and the aim of this article is not to review the different sleep duration guidelines. Overall, they are all very similar, and often reference the recommendations from the US. In Canada, robust and evidence-informed sleep guidelines became available in 2016. 50 , 51 The sleep recommendations in Canada for children of all ages, also known as the 24-hour guidelines, are integrated with physical activity and sedentary behavior recommendations to cover the entire 24-hour period (sleep/wake period). This allows to put more emphasis on the overall “cocktail” of behaviors for a healthier 24-hour day, rather than isolating individual behaviors. This integrated approach to health, with a focus on the interrelationships among sleep, sedentary behavior, and physical activity, is an important advancement in public health messaging. It emphasizes that all of these behaviors matter equally, and balancing all three is required for favorable health outcomes.

The Canadian 24-hour guidelines were the impetus for the development of similar guidelines in Australia, 52 New Zealand, 53 and the initiation of similar global guidelines by the World Health Organization. Similar integrated 24-hour guidelines for adults and older adults are currently being developed in Canada to cover the entire lifespan. The sleep duration recommendations contained within the 24-hour movement guidelines can be found in Table 1 .

Although sleep duration recommendations are based on the best available evidence and expert consensus, they are still largely reliant on observational studies using self-reported sleep duration. More longitudinal studies and sleep restriction/extension experiments are needed to better quantify the upper and lower limits of healthy sleep duration, and the shape of the dose–response curve with a wide range of health outcomes. Current sleep duration recommendations also suggest that a generalized optimum exists for the entire population; however, it is unlikely to be the case and this optimum can vary depending on the health outcome examined. 54 There is also inter-individual variability in sleep needs in that sleeping shorter or longer than the recommended amount may not necessarily result in adverse effects on health. For example, genetic differences between individuals can explain some of the variability in sleep needs. However, intentionally restricting sleep over a prolonged period of time (ie, chronic sleep deprivation) is not a good idea and can impact health and safety. 47 Thus, although sleep recommendations are a good tool for public health surveillance, they need to be adapted on a case-by-case basis in clinic (not a one-size-fits-all recommendation).

Sleep duration recommendations have ranges, or zones of optimal sleep, suggesting that the relationship between sleep duration and adverse health outcomes is U-shaped, with both extremities, sleep durations that are too short or too long, associated with negative effects on health. 47 – 51 There is a large body of evidence providing biological plausibility for short sleep as causally related to a wide range of adverse health outcomes; however, the role of long sleep is less clear. Aside from the elderly population, long sleep is generally associated with other health problems (eg, depression, chronic pain, low socioeconomic status) that can confound the associations. 55 , 56 Reverse causation and residual confounding are thus better mechanisms to explain the associations between long sleep and adverse health outcomes. 55 , 56 This may explain why the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and the Sleep Research Society recommends a threshold value for adults (≥7 hours per night) rather than a range (eg, 7–9 hours per night) ( Table 1 ). However, excessive long sleep duration may be informative as it can be indicative of poor sleep efficiency (ie, spending a lot of time in bed but of low quality).

Self-reported sleep duration is typically used in population health surveillance studies, because it provides several advantages (eg, inexpensive, not invasive, and logistically easy to administer to a large sample of individuals). However, the concession is that sleep duration recommendations are then largely based on self-reported data. It is well-known that self-reported sleep duration overestimates actual sleep duration. 57 Thus, it would be misleading to use an objective measure of sleep duration to report the prevalence of short sleepers in a given sample; this would result in an overestimation of true short sleepers. The growing popularity of actigraphy and wearable technologies for health behavior tracking in epidemiology is nevertheless desirable for providing better sleep estimates and more precise associations with health outcomes. 58 , 59 Sleep duration recommendations are also likely to evolve over time, as more objective measures of sleep are used in future studies. For example, an individual self-reporting 7 hours of sleep per night may actually get 6 hours if assessed objectively with actigraphy, as it can better account for total sleep by accurately measuring sleep onset and episodes of night wakings. 60 Thus, using reliable tools for tracking sleep duration over time is important, and one must keep in mind that the overall sleep duration pattern is more critical to long-term health than one snapshot in time (ie, chronic effect vs acute effect of insufficient sleep on health).

Consumers have also become increasingly interested in using fitness trackers and smartphone applications to assess their sleep. These devices provide information on sleep duration and even sleep quality from in-built accelerometry but the mechanisms and algorithms are propriotery. 61 – 64 The growing body of evidence on consumer sleep tracking devices against polysomnography/actigraphy shows that they tend to underestimate sleep disruptions and overestimate sleep duration and sleep efficiency in healthy individuals. 61 – 64 Although consumer sleep tracking devices are changing the landscape of sleep health and have important advantages, more research is needed to better determine their utility and reduce current shortcomings. 61 – 64

Population statistics in Canada indicate that 16% of preschoolers sleep less than recommended, while 20% of children and one-third of teenagers, adults, and older adults report less-than-recommended sleep durations for optimal health. 65 – 67 These nationally representative surveys use subjective data and are thus comparable to the sleep duration guidelines. As shown in Figure 3 , the average sleep duration of Canadians by age group is situated at the lower border of the sleep duration recommendations. On average, a large proportion of Canadians meet the sleep duration recommendations (eg, two-third of teenagers and adults); however, a large number of individuals fail to meet the guidelines (eg, one-third of teenagers and adults). If we dig deeper, we realize that the teenage group has shown the greatest rate of decline in sleep duration in past decades, especially on school days. 11 Knowing the age groups more likely to experience insufficient sleep is critical to help inform the development of interventions aimed at improving sleep (eg, having school start times not earlier than 8:30 am for high-school students). 68 – 70

Sleep duration estimates of Canadians (dashed line) compared with the sleep duration recommendation ranges (solid lines).

Notes: Sleep duration estimates for the Canadian population have been recently published. 65 – 67 However, they are not available for newborns, infants, or toddlers. Canadians sleeping less than recommended for optimal health is estimated at 16% for preschoolers, 20% for school-aged children, 30% for teenagers, 32% for adults, and 31% for older adults.

Ideal amount of sleep: fact or fiction?

As discussed in this article, there is no magic number for all in terms of the ideal sleep amount to obtain each night. Sleep duration recommendations are meant for public health guidance, but need to be individualized to each patient in the clinic. Sleep needs are determined by a complex set of factors, including our genetic makeup, environmental and behavioral factors. For example, high-performance athletes need more sleep to perform at high level and recover from their intense physical training. Sleep needs in children and adolescents can also be driven by their maturation stage, independent of their chronological age. 46 This means that changes in sleep patterns may happen earlier (at a younger age) for some or at an older age for others. Objectively, our current evidence of sleep need is based on circadian, homeostatic, and ultradian processes of sleep regulation and sleep need.

The notion of “optimal sleep” is complex and poorly understood. 71 The definitions of optimal sleep also vary in the literature. It is very often defined as the amount recommended by public health authorities. It has also been defined as the daily amount of sleep that allows an individual to be fully awake (ie, not sleepy), and able to sustain normal levels of performance during the day. 72 Others have also defined it as the amount of sleep required to feel refreshed in the morning. 73 The notion of a new definition to optimal sleep based on performance is of growing interest in the literature. For example, sleep extension interventions have been shown to improve athletic performance. 74 , 75

However, as discussed in this article and by other sleep experts, 76 there is no magic number for optimal sleep, and sleep is influenced by inter- and intra-individual factors. Similarly, in a context of sleep deprivation, individual differences in sleep homeostatic and circadian rhythm contributions to neurobehavioral impairments have been elegantly documented by Van Dongen. 77 – 79

Optimal sleep should be conceptualized as the amount of sleep needed to optimize outcomes (eg, performance, cognitive function, mental health, physical health, quality of life, etc). This implies that there might be many dose–response curves that may differ in shape between outcomes. 54 Typically, the peaks of each health outcome should fall somewhere within the recommended sleep duration range. However, the exact amount of sleep to get each night for optimizing all relevant health outcomes is not straightforward or ubiquitous as the optimal amount for one outcome may not be the same for another outcome (eg, 9 hours of sleep per night could be the ideal for athletic performance, while 7 hours could be the best for academic achievement). Also, determining the causal effects of sleep need on health is not an easy task and requires experiments (eg, interventional study designs with improved vs reduced sleep, both acutely and chronically applied, and then assessing outcomes on physiology, well-being, health, and behavior).

Although the present article focused on sleep duration, many other dimensions of sleep are important beyond getting a sufficient amount each night. These include aspects of sleep quality such as sleep efficiency (ie, proportion of the time in bed actually asleep), sleep timing (ie, bedtime/wake-up times), sleep architecture (ie, sleep stages), sleep consistency (ie, day-to-day variability in sleep duration), sleep consolidation (ie, organization of sleep across the night), and sleep satisfaction. For example, the National Sleep Foundation recently released evidence-informed sleep quality recommendations for individuals across the lifespan. 80 These included sleep continuity variables such as sleep latency, number of awakenings >5 minutes, wake after sleep onset, and sleep efficiency. Along the same lines, monophasic sleep (ie, sleeping once per day, typically at night) is considered the norm in our society but other sleep patterns (eg, biphasic or polyphasic) are also observed depending on the preference of each person or culture. Napping is increasingly seen as a public health tool and countermeasure for sleep deprivation in terms of reducing accidents and cardiovascular events and improving working performance. 81

In summary, there is no magic number or ideal amount of sleep to get each night that could apply broadly to all. The optimal amount of sleep should be individualized, as it depends on many factors. However, it is a fair assumption to say that the optimal amount of sleep, for most people, should be within the age-appropriate sleep duration recommended ranges. Future studies should try to better inform contemporary sleep duration recommendations by examining dose–response curves with a wide range of health outcomes. In the meantime, promoting the importance of a good night’s sleep should be a priority given its influence on other behaviors and the well-known adverse consequences of insufficient sleep. 82 Important sleep hygiene tips include removing screens from the bedroom, exercising regularly during the day, and having a consistent and relaxing bedtime routine.

Acknowledgments

Jean-Philippe Chaput is a Research Scientist funded by the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Institute (ON, Canada).

The authors report no conflicts of interest in this work.

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UMGC Effective Writing Center The Writing Process: Set a Schedule that Works for You!

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• Writing Resources

Just like any task, writing a paper takes time and patience. Typically, the more time you allow, the stronger your paper will become.

There’s no one size fits all schedule for how quickly to write a paper, but here’s a roughly 7-day long  (one week) strategy to consider:

Early in the Semester

When you start a class, review the syllabus and due dates. Use your personal calendar to track the due dates of major writing assignments. Set a “getting started” date for each assignment that gives you plenty of time to plan, draft, revise, and proofread. 

At least a week in advance of the due date is a good rule of thumb, but you can give yourself more time as needed.  The more you write, the more familiar you'll be with how much time you, personally, need to write well. Just keep in mind that longer papers will likely require more time to draft and revise than shorter papers.

Day 1: Brainstorm

Very carefully read and review your assignment requirements for that paper. Make a brainstorming list or cluster of topic ideas and supporting ideas that you’d likely use in fulfilling that paper’s requirements. A brainstorming list can be as long or as detailed as you want! You can even brainstorm out loud with a friend or family member, just be sure to write down (or type out) the best ideas as they come up.

Once you have a big, healthy list of ideas, narrow it down. Pick the approaches or ideas that sound most interesting and fun to you.

You might want to do some preliminary research before, after, or during the brainstorming process depending on how familiar you are with this topic. If you’re not that familiar, conducting some initial research can help get the ideas flowing.

Day 2: Research & Outline

Make a starter outline. The starter outline should be based on your “best” ideas from your brainstorming session along with some preliminary research (if needed). In your outline, you want to have a good skeletal plan for what you’ll be explaining and supporting in each section of your paper: introduction, body paragraph(s), and conclusion.

Just like the brainstorming phase, you’ll probably be conducting research before, during, or after you make your outline. Once you have an outline, you'll have a better idea of what kind of research to focus on.

Day 3: Outline & Draft

Expand your outline. The more detailed and specific your outline becomes, the easier your job will be when you write the full text of your paper. Detailed outlines can even include specific quotes, ideas, or supporting points from research. It’ll make your job easier later on if you even put the exact citations you plan to use right into your outline. That way you can just copy and paste those accurate citations right into the rough draft of your paper later.

Depending on how you’re feeling about that outline, you might get started on drafting your paper on day three as well. For example, it might be a good time to draft your thesis statement and introduction.

Day 4: Rough Draft

Write the rough draft. Rough drafts do not have to be perfect, and it’s normal for there to be typographical, grammatical, and mechanical errors at this point. Focus more on the ideas and how you are going to explain and support them. Use your outline as a guide. The better your outline has become by this point, the easier it will be to draft your paper.

It’s important to let a rough draft “sit” for twenty-four hours so you can approach it again with fresh eyes and mind the next day.

Although you can certainly submit a draft to the EWC at any point from outlining onward, this might be a good time to submit your draft to the EWC to help make sure you have enough time to receive feedback and incorporate it into your final revisions.

Day 5: Revise for Content

Read your rough draft and be very critical of your ideas. Where are your ideas weak and where are they strong? How might you better improve the organization of that paper? What paragraphs might need more support from research or examples?

How is your thesis holding up? Does it match the content of the body of the paper? Maybe your thesis could use a tweak or two to best establish the topics that have become most important over the course of drafting the paper?

Does each body paragraph have a strong topic sentence that links to the thesis, plenty of supporting ideas and explanations, and a strong concluding remark?

Does the conclusion do a good job of reviewing all those key ideas and reflecting on the significance of the topic at large?

Are there counter-arguments or refutations to address if you are writing a more persuasive paper? How would an “opponent” of your ideas respond to this paper?

Find all those best ways to improve the content of your ideas and the way they are organized on the page.

Day 6: Proofread for Grammar & Mechanics

Proofread, proofread, and proofread some more! Ideally, you have already revised carefully for content. You may continue to find ways to enhance or improve your ideas, but you want to focus more on grammar, mechanics, spelling, and weeding out typos at this stage.

Proofreading out loud with a friend is a terrific way to catch those errors that your eyes tend to overlook. Take a rest between proofreading sessions. Proofread your paper once in the morning, once on your lunch break, and twice in the evening. Give your mind time to recharge between proofreading, and you’ll catch more errors.

Day 7: Polish

Polish up your paper. By now you’ve likely got a very strong draft, but maybe you’ve gotten some good feedback from a test reader or the EWC that you’d like to incorporate. You’re likely to find a few more typographical, grammatical, and mechanical errors in this polishing up phase as well.

Give yourself this last chance to really make your paper as “perfect” as you can. Nobody else can decide when a paper is “done” but you, so make sure you are happy before you submit for grading.

Finally, remember that while a step-by-step schedule like this is a fantastic way to stay on task and avoid waiting until the “last minute,” the process of writing is not always going to be a straight line. Often it’s more of a zig-zag line.

If it feels like you are taking one step forward and two steps back, don't worry. That’s normal!

Sometimes we have to make discoveries and pursue an idea a little bit to realize we need to adjust our topic or approach.

• You might have to go back to brainstorming after you discover that the topic/approach you have outlined doesn’t have enough good research to support it.
• You might have to change your topic after writing a partial draft of your paper and realizing that something about your argument isn’t holding up or ringing true based on what you’re learning from research.
• You might write a whole paragraph that ends up being cut form the final paper because it’s not relevant enough to your thesis.

None of these problems are the end of the world. You are free and encouraged to revisit different stages of the writing process at any point to conduct more research, strengthen your organizational plan, or fine tune your thesis to match the heart of what you are saying in the body of your paper. However, these sorts of challenges are the reason why it’s good to give yourself plenty of time to write.

Some students even like to write “backwards” by writing the body paragraphs first and the introduction and thesis last. It’s up to you, but the more time you give yourself to plan and draft your paper, the more familiar you will become with your own preferences for how to get from point A (an idea) to point Z (a finished, polished final draft).

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Submission and Review

Submitting applications, irb applications.

All IRB applications are completed and submitted electronically through our online system OneAegis (IRBManager).  OneAegis can be accessed through single-sign-on (SSO), or by clicking here .

The IRB application form is configured to support multiple types of submissions.

Initiate a new application for:

• New human subjects research projects
• Establishing a data repository or recruitment registry – a standalone recruitment registry or data/specimen repository. Registries and repositories require standalone protocols and cannot be embedded within an application for a larger project.
• A Preliminary IRB Determination – for a funded project that lacks definite plans for the involvement of human subjects because time is needed after funds are awarded to develop the final protocol and related study materials. A Preliminary IRB Determination is often requested to meet Just-In-Time requirements.
• Request to rely on an external (non-ISU) IRB — for studies involving collaboration between researchers at ISU and another institution, where the other Institution’s IRB will assume oversight responsibilities for both sites. If Iowa State will serve as reviewing IRB, please complete the relevant sections within a regular “Human Subjects Research Project” form.

An amendment is needed for the following actions associated with approved research:

• Modifications (guidance for non-exempt and exempt research )
• Continuing Review ( guidance )
• Closing the study ( guidance )

See OneAegis (IRBManager) How-To’s for instructional guidance for initiating various types of forms.

Exempt Review Wizard

The Exempt Review Wizard is an online form in the IRB’s online system (OneAegis, formerly IRBManager). The Wizard automates certification of exemption for certain types of research.  Please review the following document’s information about eligibility, using the Wizard, and the automated review process.

Step-by-step instructions are available here .

Reporting Adverse Events or Unanticipated Problems

Serious adverse events or unanticipated problems involving risk to participants or others are reported through a form in OneAegis (IRBManager).  See related IRB guidance for detailed reporting requirements and timelines.

Incidents that pose an immediate risk of serious harm to participants or others must be reported immediately to [email protected] or by phone ( staff directory ).

OneAegis (formerly called IRBManager)

OneAegis is the electronic system for IRB application submission and management of IRB-related study records. OneAegis was formerly called IRBManager—the system itself has not changed

OneAegis supports an online IRB application and review process with conditioned questions, automated CITI training verification for study personnel, electronic signatures and routing, and email notifications for actions needed. It also allows for collaboration between researchers when completing the IRB application, as well as collaboration with the IRB office during IRB review. All IRB-related study materials and records are contained within the application and the online study record.

Entering Study Personnel

ISU-Affiliated personnel:  Personnel are identified by their ISU email address. If an ISU-affiliated individual is not recognized when their email address is entered, they must log into OneAegis using their ISU credentials one time to establish themselves as a contact in the system. After this one-time log in, personnel can be added to the IRB application.

We strongly advise having all study personnel log into IRBManager before you complete the IRB application.

Non-ISU-Affiliated:  Persons who do not have an ISU email address can be added using the form “Add Non-ISU Contact” in the Key Personnel section of the IRB application.

Signatures and Routing

IRB applications must be signed by the PI and Supervising Investigator (if applicable).  Applications for new studies must also be reviewed and signed by the Chair of the Department overseeing the research.  Individuals are notified by email when an IRB application needs review and signature.  Signing the form involves entering username and password.  After the form is signed, it will automatically route to the next stage in the submission or review process.

During the review process, IRB staff may send the form back with questions or revisions.  Those who need to take action (e.g., submitter, PI, etc.) are notified via email.

OneAegis FAQ’s

The IRB application shows that my CITI training is “Missing.”  What do I do?

OneAegis verifies CITI training completion by connecting with CITI databases overnight each day.  Successful verification requires that the individual’s CITI account documents their affiliation with ISU and lists their ISU email address as the Primary Email Address in CITI.

If you have taken the training and your training is listed as “Missing” in the IRB application, please do the following:

• Check your CITI account and ensure you are affiliated with ISU and your ISU email address is listed as your primary email address.
• Check OneAegis the next day (after an overnight update).

If after the training still shows as “Missing” after both of the above steps are completed, please contact the IRB office ([email protected]).

The system does not find an ISU-affiliated individual when I enter their email address. What do I do?

If you see a message indicating contact not found after entering an ISU email address, that means the individual is not established as a contact in OneAegis.

All personnel must log into OneAegis using their ISU credentials (email address and password) one time to establish themselves as a contact in the system before they can be added to IRB applications. Individuals will be automatically established as a contact after logging into the system once—there are no additional forms to complete for ISU-affiliated persons.

We strongly advise having all study personnel log into IRBManager once, if they have not done so already, before you complete the IRB application.

OneAegis How-To’s

Review process & timelines.

IRB applications undergo a pre-review process to ensure that all materials and information needed for review are included and to determine the level of review necessary for the study (i.e., exempt review, expedited review, or review by the full committee). The terms exempt and expedited refer to categories of research that do not require review by the full committee. At ISU, expedited reviews are conducted by IRB Chair(s) or designated IRB members.  Exempt reviews are conducted by qualified IRB staff.

Following IRB approval, the approved application, the IRB-stamped supporting documents, and the IRB approval letter are available to the PI and Supervising Investigator (SI) in OneAegis (IRBManager). PIs/SIs should read the approval letter carefully as it contains important information. Also, the IRB-stamped informed consent document should be used when enrolling study participants.

Review timelines depend on three primary factors:

• Review volume – IRB review load is typically highest mid-semester.
• Application quality – clear, complete, and internally consistent applications require much less communication between the PI and IRB staff, and therefore, less review time.
• Project complexity – complex, novel, or risky research typically requires more review time.  In some instances, consultation with outside experts, legal counsel, or other campus departments is needed. Those processes take extra time.

PIs are advised to submit their applications well in advance of the proposed start date or the continuing review date of the study. Although a review often takes less time than shown in the table below, it’s wise to allow for the longer time frame, especially during peak periods such as the middle of fall and spring semesters.

IRB Meeting Schedule/Application Submission Deadlines

IRB meetings are normally held on the first and third Tuesdays of each month, including over the summer.*  Completed applications must be submitted two full weeks in advance of the meeting.  The two-week period is needed to prepare applications for the board and ensure IRB members have sufficient time for review.

Please note:  The application due date applies only to applications to be reviewed by the convened IRB.  Applications for exempt research or research that will be reviewed by a designated IRB member (i.e., “expedited review”) do not have submission deadlines; instead, these applications are placed in a queue for review in the order received.

*Changes in this schedule sometimes occur due to members’ absences, particularly during the summer and breaks or near University holidays.

IRB Approval Criteria

Federal regulations established the following criteria that must be satisfied for the IRB to approve non-exempt research.  IRB application questions are designed to obtain the information reviewers need to assess whether project plans align with these criteria.

Risks to subjects are minimized – sound scientific design, no unnecessary procedures, adequate plans to prevent harm (when possible), researchers are qualified, etc.

Risks are reasonable in relation to anticipated benefits of the research – in other words, there must be adequate scientific justification for exposing research participants to any risks associated with the study.

Subject selection is equitable – participant selection should be justified by the research question(s); not solely due to ease of access (particularly if they may be vulnerable).

The research plan includes adequate provisions to protect the privacy of subjects and to maintain confidentiality of the data collected – the IRB considers both privacy and confidentiality at all parts of the study (recruitment, during data collection, security of the data, when reporting results or sharing data, etc.).

Informed consent will be obtained from each participant prior to their inclusion in the study and in accordance with regulatory requirements , unless waived by the IRB .

Informed consent will be documented (by handwritten or electronic signature), unless this requirement is waived by the IRB.  If the documentation requirement is waived, the IRB may require written information to be provided to research participants.

When appropriate, additional safeguards are in place to protect the rights and welfare of subjects who may be vulnerable to coercion or undue influence (children, educationally or economically disadvantaged, individuals with impaired decision-making capacity, prisoners, students or employees—in some cases).

When appropriate (i.e., clinical trials, high risk research, etc.), the research plan includes adequate provisions for monitoring the data collected to ensure the safety of subjects.

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A Fed Interest Rate Cut (0.25%) Is (Probably) Coming in September 2024 -- Here's What It Means for Your Bank Account

Published on Aug. 26, 2024

By: Ben Gran

• The Fed Reserve is likely to cut interest rates by 25 basis points (0.25%) in September 2024. 
• Lower interest rates mean lower borrowing costs for consumers and companies -- and lower yields on savings accounts. 
• Opening a high-yield CD before the Fed cuts interest rates could be a smart move -- but only if you have plenty of emergency cash in a savings account.

According to the latest announcements from the Federal Reserve, it looks as if interest rate cuts are starting soon. At the end of July, Fed Chair Jerome Powell announced the Fed is likely to cut interest rates as soon as September and a 50 basis point (0.50%) cut is "not on the table." As recently as Aug. 23, Fed Chair Powell said that "the time has come" for interest rate cuts. 

How much will the Fed cut interest rates in September 2024? 

Based on the overall economic data we've seen in recent months and the Fed's own public statements, we're likely to see a 25 basis point (0.25%) interest rate cut in September 2024. Fed Chair Jerome Powell said in July that a 50 basis point rate cut was unlikely for September. 

Why the Fed will (probably) only cut interest rates by 25 basis points

Our picks for the best high-yield savings accounts of 2024.

Stable prices

Inflation has already slowed significantly during 2024. If consumer price increases stay low, the Fed might decide it's done fighting inflation, and start to cut interest rates more aggressively after September 2024. 

Promote maximum employment

The Fed isn't only trying to fight inflation; it's trying to keep interest rates at a low enough level to keep people employed, so the economy won't suffer. If interest rates are too high, companies will stop investing and hiring. This could throw millions of Americans out of work.  

Promote moderate long-term interest rates

The Fed doesn't want America's national debt to get too expensive; higher interest rates also cause the U.S. government's borrowing costs to go up. By managing America's money smartly and effectively, the Fed is (hopefully) showing the world's bond market that the U.S. government is a stable, reliable borrower -- kind of like maintaining a good credit score, but for an entire country.

The Fed has to tread lightly when cutting interest rates. The Fed's interest rate moves can't be seen as overreacting or panicking. For example, if the Fed cuts interest rates by 50 basis points (or more) in September 2024, that might send a signal to the stock and bond markets that the U.S. economy is weaker than expected. This could cause financial panic and market selloffs.

What a 25 basis point rate cut will do to savings accounts  

Bank savings account APYs are not fixed. They go up and down based on the bank's decisions and can fluctuate along with the Fed's interest rate cuts (or hikes). So if the Fed cuts interest rates by 25 basis points in September 2024, the best savings account APYs will likely go down by about 25 basis points. 

For example, instead of 5.31% APY that you can get with the best bank savings account (as of Aug. 24, 2024), a 25 basis rate cut would reduce that yield to 5.06% APY in September 2024. Think of it this way: after a reduction of 25 basis points, every $1,000 of savings will earn $2.50 less per year.

What a 25 basis point rate cut will mean for the best CDs 

Some of the best CDs (as of Aug. 24, 2024) are paying 5.00% APY for a one-year term. If you want to earn the highest yield on your savings, right now, before rate cuts, could be the best time to lock in a 1-year CD. 

Unlike savings accounts, CD rates are fixed. If you can get 5.00% APY for one year, you'll keep earning that 5% yield for the full 12 months of your CD's term -- even if the Fed cuts interest rates during that time. 

But here's a big downside of even the best CDs: You have to lock up your cash. You can't take your deposits out of a CD until the term is up or you'll likely face an early withdrawal penalty.

Unless you have lots of cash and are in no danger of spending your emergency fund, don't open a CD based on Fed interest rate cuts. Don't keep emergency cash in a CD. The best savings accounts and money market accounts -- even after possible rate cuts -- are the best places to keep cash that you might need next month, next week, tomorrow, or today. 

Bottom line 

The Fed is likely to cut interest rates by 25 basis points in September 2024. But that doesn't mean you should hurry to open a CD and lock in a higher APY. The best savings accounts are still a good deal -- and likely the best place to keep your cash -- even after a small rate cut. 

Two of our top online savings account picks:

Our Research Expert

Ben Gran is a freelance writer based in Des Moines, Iowa. He has written for regional banks, fintechs, and major financial services companies. Ben is a graduate of Rice University.

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Democrats Court Blue-Collar Voters With Campaign Trail to Themselves: Election Updates

Vice President Kamala Harris campaigned in Detroit and was joined by President Biden in Pittsburgh, while Donald J. Trump and JD Vance have no public events planned.

• Share full article

Maggie Astor

Here’s the latest on the 2024 race.

President Biden made his first campaign appearance with Vice President Kamala Harris since he ceded the Democratic nomination to her, joining her in Pittsburgh as she courted working-class voters on Labor Day. The holiday is the symbolic starting line of the final stretch of presidential races, and Ms. Harris and her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, made a swing through three crucial states.

“I’ll be on the sidelines,” Mr. Biden said at a local union hall as he rallied the labor movement in support of Ms. Harris, “but I’ll do everything I can to help.”

Before her Pittsburgh stop, Ms. Harris gave a speech in Detroit, another union stronghold. Mr. Walz spoke at Laborfest, a festival in Milwaukee organized by local unions. They had the campaign trail to themselves, as former President Donald J. Trump and his running mate, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, had no public events planned until later in the week.

“We celebrate unions because unions help build America,” Ms. Harris said at Northwestern High School in Detroit. In Milwaukee, Mr. Walz delivered much of his familiar stump speech, suggesting that a Trump administration would seek to cut overtime pay and repeal the Affordable Care Act.

Mr. Trump’s schedule for the first half of the week is not clear. He will speak remotely to the annual meeting of the Republican Jewish Coalition in Las Vegas on Thursday and to the national board of the Fraternal Order of Police in Charlotte, N.C., on Friday. Mr. Vance will campaign on Wednesday in Arizona and then attend fund-raisers in Arizona and California.

When asked if they had any events scheduled for Monday — after Ms. Harris’s campaign put out a statement calling Mr. Trump “M.I.A.” — Karoline Leavitt, a campaign spokeswoman, said, “President Trump is working like he always does.”

Election Day is 64 days away, and early voting begins in some states in just two weeks. Here’s what else to know:

Motorcade crash : Mr. Walz was en route to his campaign event in Milwaukee this afternoon when several cars in his motorcade crashed, causing some injuries. Walz later took the stage as planned. After his speech, he stopped at a Milwaukee hospital to check on his staff members involved in the crash.

State fair homecoming: Mr. Walz visited the Minnesota State Fair on Sunday, sampling a pork chop on a stick and handing out ice cream. The fair is a favorite stop for Mr. Walz — but this time he came with a much higher profile.

No new Trump strategy: Corey Lewandowski, a senior adviser to Mr. Trump, told Fox News on Sunday that Mr. Trump would not change his campaign strategy as polls showed him losing ground. He suggested that Ms. Harris was actually an easier opponent than Mr. Biden — the opposite of what polls show — and denied that Mr. Trump had spent the past few weeks frequently digressing from the policy-focused message allies wished he would deliver.

A postponed gala: A gala event to raise money for rioters who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, which had been scheduled for Tuesday at Mr. Trump’s golf club in New Jersey, has been postponed . The main planner of the event, Sarah McAbee, who runs an organization that supports Jan. 6 defendants, said she would try to reschedule it for after the election, according to text messages obtained by The New York Times.

Nicholas Nehamas

At their first joint campaign appearance, Biden spoke for more than 24 minutes. Harris, the Democratic nominee, spoke for roughly 16.

Harris just said she opposes the takeover of U.S. Steel by a Japanese company, adopting a position already taken by Biden. “I couldn’t agree more with President Biden: U.S. Steel should remain American-owned and American-operated,” Harris said.

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“Folks, we’ve made a lot of progress, and she’s going to build on it,” Biden said at a cramped event at a local union hall meant to rally the labor movement in support of Harris, who stood behind him leading the crowd in applause as he spoke. “I’ll be on the sidelines, but I’ll do everything I can to help.”

Folks, we’ve made a lot of progress, and Kamala and I are going to build on that progress, and she’s going to build on it. I’ll be on the sidelines, but I’ll do everything I can to help. She’ll be a historic pro-union president. So folks, we’ve got one more job to do together. Let me ask you: Are you ready to fight? Are you ready to win? Are you ready to elect Kamala Harris our next president of the United States of America? [crowd cheers]

President Biden is introducing Vice President Kamala Harris at a campaign event with union members in Pittsburgh. It’s a clear sign that the torch has passed in the Democratic Party from Biden to Harris, the new and unexpected Democratic nominee.

Jazmine Ulloa

In Milwaukee, Tim Walz delivered much of his familiar stump speech, casting dire projections for union workers and labor organizations should Donald Trump return to the White House. He suggested Trump's administration would seek to cut overtime pay, raise the age on social security and Medicare and repeal the Affordable Care Act.

The Walz motorcade has now stopped at a Milwaukee hospital on its way out of the state. A Walz campaign official said Walz wanted to check on his staff members involved in the motorcade crash.

Walz, speaking to hundreds gathered on a sunny afternoon at 2024 LaborFest in downtown Milwaukee, addressed the motorcade crash at the top of his remarks: “First off, let me say — some you might have heard — some of my staff and members of the press that were traveling up with us were involved in a traffic accident on the way here today. We’ve spoken with the staff. I’m relieved to say that with a few minor injuries, everybody’s going to be okay.”

Walz said President Biden and Vice President Harris called to check in. “We certainly appreciate their concern,” he said, thanking the Secret Service and all the local first responders for their quick response.

Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota was en route to his campaign event in Milwaukee this afternoon when several cars in his motorcade crashed, causing some injuries. Uninjured people continued on to the event after paramedics responded, and Walz later took the stage as planned. The cause of the crash has not been confirmed.

Jonathan Weisman and Nicholas Nehamas

Jonathan Weisman reported from Detroit and Nicholas Nehamas from Washington.

Biden plays second fiddle to Harris as they rally for union support.

President Biden gave a demonstration on Monday that the Democratic Party now belongs to Vice President Kamala Harris, stepping to the microphone at a campaign event in Pittsburgh to introduce his No. 2 rather than taking the speaking slot of honor for himself.

“Folks, we’ve made a lot of progress, and Kamala and I are going to build on that progress, and she’s going to build on it,” Mr. Biden said at a local union hall as he rallied the labor movement in support of Ms. Harris, who stood behind him leading the crowd in applause. “I’ll be on the sidelines, but I’ll do everything I can to help.”

But while the atmosphere between Ms. Harris and Mr. Biden was warm at their first joint campaign appearance, the president hardly seemed eager to take the supporting role. He spoke for more than 24 minutes, roughly eight minutes longer than the vice president’s remarks. And he talked far more about the accomplishments of his administration than Ms. Harris’s role in them or an upcoming election against former President Donald J. Trump that is expected to be razor thin.

When Mr. Biden finally invited the Democratic nominee up to speak, the crowd chanted “Kamala” as they clasped hands before he planted a kiss on her forehead.

“Can we please give it up again for our president, Joe Biden,” Ms. Harris said before delivering a speech that served as a paean both to organized labor and to the Biden administration’s support of unions.

“We are so proud to be the most pro-union administration in America’s history,” she said.

Ms. Harris’s stop in Pittsburgh capped a Labor Day spent seeking to press her advantage with union voters. Earlier in the day, she held an event in Detroit while her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, appeared in Milwaukee.

All told, Ms. Harris and Mr. Walz managed to visit each of the so-called blue wall states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, appealing to union voters as the ground troops of a campaign that has barely two months left. Still, the events were far smaller than the rallies Ms. Harris has held in recent weeks that have filled up basketball arenas with thousands of supporters.

At Northwestern High School in Detroit, the vice president was greeted onstage by the presidents of unions representing autoworkers, laborers, utility workers and teachers.

“I tell people, you may not be a union member, but you better thank a union member,” Ms. Harris told a crowd of nearly 450 people, attributing union action for paid leave, vacation time, higher wages and safer work conditions.

The question hanging over the flurry of campaign events, however, was just how important unions remain in an American labor force where they represent 1 in 10 workers, half the percentage they once represented in the 1980s. It is also not clear whether union members, especially in the old-line industrial and laborer unions, will side with the Democratic ticket as overwhelmingly as they once did, as Mr. Trump continues his courtship of the working class.`

In Detroit, Michigan’s Democratic luminaries — Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Senator Debbie Stabenow, and hopefuls like Representative Elissa Slotkin, who is running for Ms. Stabenow’s Senate seat — shared the stage with Shawn Fain, president of the United Automobile Workers; Brent Booker, general president of the Laborers’ International Union of North America; and Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, among others.

In Pittsburgh, Ms. Harris was joined by Gov. Josh Shapiro and Senator Bob Casey, both Democrats of Pennsylvania, as well as Liz Shuler of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. and Kenny Cooper of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. In Milwaukee, Mr. Walz appeared alongside Gov. Tony Evers and Senator Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin.

All three Democratic governors of the blue wall states are popular with voters and are expected to play key roles in whipping up enthusiasm for Ms. Harris. Mr. Casey and Ms. Baldwin are both seeking re-election.

“This is when you labor leaders, y’all got to go knock on your colleagues’ doors,” Mr. Shapiro said in Pittsburgh. “You got to text them. You got to call them.”

In contrast to the busy day for Democrats, Mr. Trump appeared at least publicly to take the day off. He released a statement praising American workers without mentioning unions.

“We were an Economic Powerhouse, all because of the American Worker!” Mr. Trump wrote. “But Kamala and Biden have undone all of that.”

Even as she moves out of the president’s shadow, Ms. Harris is still following Mr. Biden carefully on policy.

During her remarks in Pittsburgh, the vice president announced that she would oppose the takeover of U.S. Steel by a Japanese company, prompting cheers from a crowd of roughly 600 people. Mr. Biden had taken the same position in March, shortly before he was endorsed by the United Steelworkers, an influential union based in Pittsburgh. (Mr. Trump has also said he opposes the deal.)

“I couldn’t agree more with President Biden: U.S. Steel should remain American-owned and American-operated,” Ms. Harris said.

And their first joint campaign appearance seemed to reinforce why the vice president is now leading the Democratic ticket. It was hard not to notice the difference between their clarity as orators. Mr. Biden told war stories of political campaigns and union leaders from decades ago, his voice fluctuating from a nearly inaudible whisper to a shout as he emphasized his points. Ms. Harris stuck to a cleaner and more streamlined message, arguing that she would fight for workers while Mr. Trump offered a return to a past of union-busting.

The president had suggested that he speak first, volunteering himself for an auxiliary performance, according to three people briefed on the event.

Ms. Harris’s day of travel also underscored a major division still fracturing the Democratic coalition: the war in Gaza. Unions have been some of the loudest voices calling for an immediate cease-fire and the halting of military aid to Israel.

In Detroit, an area where many Arab and Muslim Americans live, Ms. Harris was greeted by about 30 protesters with bullhorns outside her event. In Milwaukee, some attendees silently held up kaffiyehs as Mr. Walz spoke. Several were asked to leave by security.

The busy day did suffer one notable hiccup: In Wisconsin, several cars in Mr. Walz’s motorcade crashed en route to his event in Milwaukee, with staff members and members of the press suffering minor injuries.

The dynamics of union support have been shifting. Mr. Biden won over union voters by 22 percentage points in 2020, according to a Harvard University study , considerably better than Hillary Clinton had done in 2016, when she narrowly lost the presidential election. But even Mr. Biden’s performance was an erosion from when Bill Clinton won union voters by 31 points in 1992.

Union leaders have promised on-the-ground muscle to get out the vote for Ms. Harris, rally their members and pull in groups that have slid toward Mr. Trump, especially white, male workers in and out of organized labor. Counting family members and retirees, one in five voters in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin are affiliated with unions, said Steve Smith, a spokesman for the A.F.L.-C.I.O.

But even union officials were not all that certain their ground efforts were breaking through. Terrell Garner, a training instructor for the laborers union’s 5,000-strong local in Detroit, spoke at length of the education efforts the union is making with members and their families and friends, the phone banking and door knocking on weekends in pivotal Michigan.

But when asked how it’s looking for Ms. Harris, he held out a hand and rocked it back and forth: “Eh, 50-50,” he said with a sigh.

“As they become more educated, they do find themselves on our side of the fence,” he added, but time is running short for that effort. Mail-in voting in Michigan begins in just over three weeks.

Union leaders were far more positive. In an interview, Ms. Weingarten said her union’s footprint in Michigan was growing as the A.F.T. unionizes higher-education employees, health care workers, librarians and even some doctors.

“What we’ve learned is that people really trust teachers and nurses,” she said.

But Mr. Trump’s appeal to working-class voters is undeniable. The one union leader not aboard Ms. Harris’s campaign, Sean O’Brien, president of the Teamsters, has continued his dalliance with the former president, resisting pressure from the main Black teamsters organization and some large locals that have shattered precedent by endorsing Ms. Harris on their own.

Appearing on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday, Mr. O’Brien continued to move the goal posts on an endorsement. He had once said it would come after both parties held their conventions. Now he said the Teamsters cannot endorse until their leadership sits down for an interview with the vice president.

“We represent 1.3 million members,” he said. “Half of our members are Republicans, half of our members are Democrats. So we have to serve all of our membership equally.”

Jazmine Ulloa contributed reporting from Milwaukee and Simon J. Levien from Minneapolis.

Kamala Harris’s campaign is trying to capitalize on Donald Trump’s apparent absence from the trail today. “For a candidate that claims to be rallying the support of workers,” it said in a statement, “why is Donald Trump M.I.A. on Labor Day?” Asked whether he had any campaign events scheduled, Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for Trump, said only that “President Trump is working like he always does.”

Jonathan Weisman

Harris spoke for less than 20 minutes in Detroit, then greeted union workers before heading off to Pittsburgh, where she will be joined by President Biden at her final Labor Day appearance.

Wary of even a hint of overconfidence, Harris urged, “Let’s not pay too much attention to the polls.” She added, “We are out here running like we are the underdog in this race.”

Kamala Harris took the stage at Northwestern High School and was greeted by the presidents of the unions representing laborers, auto workers, teachers and utility workers, making it clear that her Labor Day rally in Detroit was a rally for organized labor. “We celebrate unions because unions help build America,” she said.

Former President Donald J. Trump, in a Fox News interview last night, described his political opponents as “the enemy from within.” He has used that and similar descriptions before, comparing people who oppose him to foreign enemies in ways that his critics and some historians say echo the language of dictators. “We have the enemy outside, which would be the very standard countries,” he said. “And we have the enemy from within. We have some very sick people from within.”

Simon J. Levien

I’m here at the Minneapolis-Saint Paul airport where Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota is set to soon greet local labor leaders, his first campaign stop this Labor Day. The event is set against the backdrop of a campaign-chartered plane with interesting livery. “A new way forward” is written on the side and the tail wing bears red stripes reminiscent of an American flag. Today’s trip is the first for Walz and his wife, Gwen, since getting the new plane.

Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, went after Senator JD Vance of Ohio for a newly surfaced video in which he suggested that teachers without children were brainwashing their students. “How dare he at the beginning of the school year?” she said in an interview. “Every parent in America and every teacher in America knows that right now is that moment that you try to ensure that kids have a welcoming, safe environment and that they’re engaged in school.”

Reporting from Montgomery County, Pa.

Nikki Haley’s voters size up a scrambled presidential race.

Nikki Haley had been out of the Republicans’ presidential race for over a month when Linda Kapralick and Cathleen Barone cast their ballots for her in Pennsylvania’s primary, so eager were they for an alternative to former President Donald J. Trump.

With Mr. Trump as the nominee, now is Ms. Haley’s voters’ time for choosing, as she was so fond of saying on the campaign trail, echoing a Ronald Reagan line.

Many of Ms. Haley’s most ardent supporters in her losing bid — moderate, college-educated Republicans and independents skeptical of Mr. Trump — fell into what pollsters called the “double haters” camp: people dreading having to cast a ballot for Mr. Trump or President Biden, before he ended his re-election campaign. Vice President Kamala Harris’s acceptance of the Democratic nomination last month has changed the math.

“Neither one of these candidates is exactly a perfect fit for those voters,” Whit Ayres, a veteran Republican pollster, said of Ms. Harris and Mr. Trump. “The Haley voters, I think, are examining the Harris candidacy, and they are going to decide where they fall eventually.”

Ms. Haley, the former governor of South Carolina and the United Nations ambassador under Mr. Trump, formally endorsed him in July at the party’s nominating convention, urging her supporters to set aside their disagreements and stand united as Republicans. That same month, lawyers representing her presidential campaign sent a cease-and-desist letter to a political action committee that called itself Haley Voters for Harris . In a statement, she said that any attempt to use her name to support Ms. Harris was “deceptive and wrong.”

Yet many of those who supported her in the race tend to be anti-Trump, and saw her candidacy as a principled stand against the former president and his transformation of his party. Though she herself never embraced the anti-Trump label, she sharply criticized him as “unhinged” while she was still running, and once said of him that she felt “ no need to kiss the ring .” Even after Ms. Haley suspended her campaign in March , she drew notable percentages of independents, Republicans and moderate Democrats in primary contests.

In the Republican primary in April in Pennsylvania, 25 percent of voters in Montgomery County, just north of Philadelphia, cast their ballots for Ms. Haley, including Ms. Kapralick and Ms. Barone. Both said they appreciated Ms. Haley for her more traditional Republican tone. Now, their divergent November plans capture the split that could help sway the results in their state and other battlegrounds.

Ms. Barone, 57, a real estate agent, is planning to support Mr. Trump, prioritizing her desire for conservative policies on the border, law enforcement and military issues.

“I don’t like either candidate, so I think you have to take out the person,” Ms. Barone said, adding that she did not trust Ms. Harris’s appeals to centrists.

Ms. Kapralick, 62, on the other hand, said she did not want Mr. Trump anywhere near the Oval Office again. She admired former Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming for standing up to him and had watched the speeches from prominent Republicans , including former Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, at the Democratic National Convention. She said she had been swayed by their message that a vote for Ms. Harris was a vote to protect democracy and did not make them Democrats.

“I’m too nervous about what he might do to our country,” she said of Mr. Trump. “I have three children. I want them to grow up in a democracy like we did.”

Ms. Haley’s voters were not all double haters, pollsters and strategists said. Surveys of her supporters from the Monmouth University Polling Institute found that on average one in five had a favorable opinion of Mr. Trump — and about one in 10 approved of Mr. Biden’s job performance.

Still, there is overlap between the two camps, and recent polling suggests the new presidential field has greatly reduced the number of double haters, with Ms. Harris seeing some significant early advantages. A New York Times/Siena College poll in July found Ms. Harris and Mr. Trump receiving boosts as the number of voters who disliked both candidates plunged to 8 percent, down from 20 percent in earlier Times/Siena polls.

Harris campaign officials and allies said they were under no illusions that they could win the majority of Haley supporters, many of whom consider themselves Republicans first and have never voted for a Democrat. But they said they were nonetheless heavily courting the swing bloc , knowing that any difference could matter at the margins.

Olivia Troye, a former top homeland security aide to Vice President Mike Pence who was among the Republicans to speak at the Democrats’ convention, said she had voted for Ms. Haley in the Virginia primary. She is now working with Republicans for Harris coalitions, she said, to help create a “permission structure” for other Haley voters and Trump-skeptical Republicans to cross the political aisle.

“A lot of them are people who align with the more conservative values that I align with as a lifelong conservative,” Ms. Troye said. “While party identity is certainly very real, I think part of this moment is to take a stand with our traditional Republican vote.”

The fight for Haley voters is especially heated in Pennsylvania, which candidates and surrogates from both campaigns have been crisscrossing in recent weeks. The Harris camp opened its 50th Pennsylvania office over Labor Day weekend. Sixteen of those 50 offices are in rural counties that Mr. Trump won by double digits in 2020.

In Montgomery County, Andrea Fellerman Kesack, a clinical pathologist, longtime Republican and volunteer with the Harris campaign, said it had been “a hard slog” to sway members of her party. But she sees her mission as critical to preserving reproductive rights and to stopping the erosion of democratic norms and the promotion of xenophobia.

Ms. Haley “was not dealing in racist epithets, she was not lying, she was presenting cogent, thoughtful arguments for the way forward and not airing past grievances,” said Dr. Fellerman Kesack, contending that she found Ms. Harris — and not Mr. Trump — now in line with those values.

Trump campaign officials and allies describe their movement as unified. And they cite endorsements from Ms. Haley; former Representative Tulsi Gabbard, a onetime Democrat; and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who dropped his independent presidential bid last month, as evidence that they are picking up supporters.

Outside a grocery store in Lansdale, Pa., John Kohr, 73, a mechanical designer, accused Ms. Harris of “flip-flopping” between progressive and centrist stances, saying he did not believe she could do the job of president.

“I can’t say I particularly like Trump that much either, but I am a Republican, so I am going to vote for somebody who is a Republican,” he said.

Grilling hot dogs at his home in Hanover, Pa., Harold Mack, who retired as a corporate officer of a seed company and now manages a honeybee operation and a winery, said that, as a longtime fiscal conservative, he planned to vote for Ms. Harris.

Angered over the trillions Mr. Trump added to the national debt, Mr. Mack said that he would never again vote for him — nor for Ms. Haley, in light of her recent endorsement of the former president. “Right now, the Democrats have more conservative policies, and that is a sad state,” he said.

I'm at the Kamala Harris Labor Day rally at Northwestern High School in Detroit. Union members are lined up to get in. But about 30 demonstrators with bullhorns are loudly protesting the Biden-Harris administration’s policies in Israel, a near-constant reminder of the rift that remains in the Democratic coalition.

In an interview with the right-wing radio host Mark Levin that aired last night, former President Donald J. Trump suggested he had “every right” to try to overturn the 2020 election. “Who ever heard you get indicted for interfering with a presidential election, where you have every right to do it, you get indicted and your poll numbers go up,” he said during an exchange about the recently revised indictment against him .

Vice President Kamala Harris will announce at a campaign stop in Pittsburgh today that she opposes the proposed sale of U.S. Steel to a Japanese company, her campaign said. The deal is also opposed by President Biden and former President Donald Trump, as well as the influential United Steelworkers union, which is based in Pittsburgh.

Kellen Browning

While speaking with reporters at the Minnesota State Fair on Sunday, Gov. Tim Walz did not answer a reporter’s shouted question about the hostages found dead in Gaza over the weekend, prompting outrage in conservative circles. “Thanks, folks,” Walz’s spokesman said mid-question, ending the brief press availability. “All right, thanks everybody,” Walz said as he walked away. (It was unclear whether he had heard the full question.) On Sunday evening he posted on social media, condemning Hamas and sending “deepest condolences” to the family of the Israeli-American citizen who was killed.

Reporting from Washington

Harris and Biden will make a Labor Day pitch to union voters.

President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris will appear together on Monday in Pittsburgh to celebrate labor unions, a crucial mobilizing force for Democrats, at their first joint campaign event since Ms. Harris replaced Mr. Biden at the top of the ticket in July.

Mr. Biden has called himself the most pro-union president in history, and last year he became the first sitting president to visit a picket line.

Now Ms. Harris is hoping to adopt that pro-worker mantle for herself. As vice president, she led a task force examining the ways that the government could help expand union membership. But business leaders generally see her as friendlier to their interests and more flexible on policy than Mr. Biden.

In Pittsburgh, Ms. Harris and Mr. Biden will attend an event at a local union hall alongside Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania and Senator Bob Casey, who is up for re-election. The Harris campaign said local and national leaders of major unions including the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, the A.F.L.-C.I.O. and the United Steelworkers will attend.

Earlier in the day, Ms. Harris is set to hold an event in Detroit, another union stronghold in a battleground state. She will be joined by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, as well as two of the nation’s most prominent labor leaders, Randi Weingarten of the American Federation of Teachers and Shawn Fain of the United Automobile Workers. Her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, will appear in Milwaukee.

Although Ms. Harris and Mr. Walz will reach voters in three of the top swing states, the events themselves will be smaller than the rallies Ms. Harris has held in recent weeks that have drawn thousands of attendees. She and Mr. Biden are expected to deliver “informal remarks” rather than full speeches, according to the Harris campaign.

Even as union leaders overwhelmingly throw their support behind Democrats, former President Donald J. Trump maintains the loyalty of many of their members. He is also courting the endorsement of the Teamsters, whose leader, Sean O’Brien, spoke at the Republican National Convention. Winning over the most committed union members is not easy for Republicans, however, as their policies tend to favor corporations.

On Thursday, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, Mr. Trump’s running mate, was heckled at a meeting of the International Association of Fire Fighters after declaring that he was part of “the most pro-worker Republican ticket in history.”

While Ms. Harris is almost certain to receive a warmer welcome on Monday, the war in Gaza continues to alienate some progressives, and unions have been some of the most vocal groups calling for a cease-fire in Gaza and the halting of military aid to Israel. When Ms. Harris addressed a convention of the Service Employees International Union in May, roughly three dozen union members protesting the Gaza war chanted and held signs for nearly her entire speech. S.E.I.U. leadership allowed the protest to go on.

And the U.A.W. delayed its endorsement of Ms. Harris after Mr. Biden left the race until it could assess her position on Gaza and other issues.

Before dropping out, Mr. Biden had struggled in the polls with union members, along with other core groups of Democratic-leaning voters. In May, 47 percent of union members across six of the top battleground states said they supported Mr. Trump, compared with 42 percent for Mr. Biden, a New York Times/Siena College/Philadelphia Inquirer poll found. Other surveys showed Mr. Biden ahead with union households, but not by wide margins.

Since stepping aside after intense pressure from Democrats, Mr. Biden has shown nothing but warmth for his vice president. During his speech at the party’s national convention in Chicago last month, he said that picking her as his running mate was the finest decision he had made in his career and promised to be her campaign’s “best volunteer.” For her part, Ms. Harris has led chants of “Thank you, Joe” at her rallies and embraced many of his accomplishments.

In an interview with CNN on Thursday — her first since becoming the new face of the Democratic Party — Ms. Harris said that she did not regret defending Mr. Biden against claims that he had declined mentally.

“He is so smart and loyal to the American people,” she said.

Labor Day is traditionally when presidential campaigns move into high gear. Ms. Harris has visited each of the battleground states at least once since July, and Mr. Biden is now set to hit the trail as one of her surrogates .

They are not expected to campaign together frequently however. Ms. Harris is trying to forge her own political identity separate from Mr. Biden, without disrespecting him or his administration’s achievements. Over the next few weeks, Mr. Biden will travel mostly to the key battleground states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, where he still holds appeal to the white, working-class voters who could help decide the election but who have not shown much enthusiasm for Ms. Harris.

This week could provide a preview of how the Harris campaign plans to deploy Mr. Biden.

After meeting Ms. Harris in Pittsburgh on Monday, the president will travel on Thursday to Wisconsin and on Friday to Michigan to highlight his efforts to finance major infrastructure projects and create manufacturing jobs.

Chris Cameron contributed reporting from Boston.

Chris Cameron

Reporting from Washington.

The Trump campaign uses statements from Gold Star families to attack Harris.

The partisan dispute over Arlington National Cemetery escalated on Sunday when the campaign of former President Donald J. Trump published statements from family members of slain U.S. troops attacking Vice President Kamala Harris after she criticized Mr. Trump for politicizing the cemetery.

It was the latest effort by the Trump campaign to defend itself after a physical altercation between a Trump aide and a cemetery official that was triggered by the campaign defying a ban on political campaigning at the cemetery in Virginia during Mr. Trump’s visit last week. Most of the family members who were with Mr. Trump for that visit signed onto the statement promoted by the Trump campaign.

The Army said in a statement on Thursday that an official at Arlington National Cemetery was physically pushed by a Trump campaign aide after she tried to stop the campaign from filming in a heavily restricted area of the cemetery. Trump campaign officials then insulted the cemetery worker, insisting that there was no physical altercation and that they were prepared to release footage to prove it, but the campaign has not done so.

In her first public comments on the situation, Ms. Harris said in a statement on Saturday that Mr. Trump had desecrated the cemetery — considered to be among the most sacred of American institutions. Ms. Harris said that the Arlington cemetery was a solemn place that should be free of politics, describing the campaign’s filming in Section 60 — largely reserved for service members killed in recent wars overseas — as “a political stunt.”

The Trump campaign then released the statement signed by family members of 7 of the 13 U.S. troops killed by a suicide bombing at Abbey Gate at the Kabul airport during the withdrawal from Afghanistan three years ago.

The statement spoke of the heroism of those killed at Abbey Gate, and the grief that the family members have felt in the three years since they lost their loved ones. But it also sought to blame Ms. Harris for the politicization of the cemetery, asserting that it was the vice president who had “disgracefully twisted” Mr. Trump’s visit “into a political ploy,” and it effusively praised Mr. Trump’s leadership, with the family members of the troops asserting that “if he were still commander in chief, our children would be alive today.”

It made no reference to the altercation with the cemetery official, nor the insults directed against her afterward. It also made no mention of concerns by the family of a Green Beret — as well as the Green Beret Foundation , a veterans’ charity — about the Trump campaign filming his gravesite. Master Sgt. Andrew Marckesano, who earned Silver and Bronze Stars during his service, died by suicide in 2020. Other family members of troops buried in Section 60 at Arlington have expressed outrage at the incident.

Mr. Trump and his campaign also posted videos from the family members on social media that similarly attacked Ms. Harris and praised Mr. Trump, and on Sunday evening published a campaign ad that included those remarks. Some of those family members had defended Mr. Trump’s visit to Arlington in previous statements last week, and some family members were also given speaking roles at the Republican National Convention in July where they criticized the Biden administration’s handling of the withdrawal from Afghanistan.

The former president and his aides have given contradictory explanations for why they filmed at the cemetery. Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesman, had initially said that the campaign had permission to take photos and video — a notion that statements by the cemetery and the Army had rejected because that would be prohibited by law.

The Trump campaign then highlighted that some of the family members who had appeared alongside Mr. Trump at the cemetery had given the campaign aides permission to film the event themselves — even though the cemetery said officials had repeatedly told the Trump team that it would violate federal law.

Mr. Trump has also repeatedly said that he had posed for photos at the graves spontaneously at the request of family members. He has frequently brought up the incident during his campaign rallies, insisting that he was not campaigning because “I don’t need the publicity.”

“Thank you for saying you wanted me to stand with you at Arlington National Ceremony, and take pictures, that it was your request, not mine, but it was my great honor to do so,” Mr. Trump said of the troops’ families in a post on his social media site, Truth Social, on Sunday.

The Trump campaign and some family members of the troops killed at Abbey Gate have also suggested that Ms. Harris and Mr. Biden had been invited to the Arlington ceremony along with Mr. Trump. An aide with the Harris campaign said that the vice president had not been invited and pointed to a statement from Ms. Harris that mourned the slain troops on the third anniversary of the bombing last week. A White House official also said that Mr. Biden was not invited.

Neil Vigdor contributed reporting.

A fund-raiser for Jan. 6 rioters at Trump’s golf club is postponed.

A gala event to raise money for some of the rioters who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, set to take place on Thursday at former President Donald J. Trump’s golf club in New Jersey, has been postponed, according to the event website .

While Mr. Trump had not been planning to attend the soiree — billed as the J6 Awards Gala — the event attracted attention for the way it reinforced the strong connections he has maintained with those who stormed the Capitol on his behalf at an awkward moment: just as his campaign to return to the White House enters its final stages.

The event’s website did not provide a reason for the delay or mention a new date when it might take place. But the primary planner, Sarah McAbee, who runs a nonprofit organization called the Stand in the Gap Foundation, which supports Jan. 6 defendants, said she would try to reschedule it for after the November election, perhaps in February, according to text messages obtained by The New York Times.

“I want you to know that we fought until the absolute last minute to have the event,” the text messages said, “but there were multiple issues outside of our control, the main one being safety concerns of attendees and staff.”

Ms. McAbee is the wife of Ronald Colton McAbee, a former deputy sheriff from Tennessee who is serving five years in prison after being convicted of attacking police officers at the Capitol on Jan. 6. The event’s location, Mr. Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, N.J., highlighted the former president’s attempts to normalize the events of Jan. 6 , including by often praising those who took part in the Capitol attack.

Gala attendees were asked to shell out $2,500 for a single ticket (or $50,000 for a “platinum table” of 12) for the chance to mingle with the families of indicted rioters and to win a custom plaque commemorating “Justice for All,” a song featuring a choir of some of the most violent riot defendants who are now locked up in Washington’s local jail, along with Mr. Trump reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.

The featured guests were expected to include top former Trump aides like Rudolph W. Giuliani, who is under indictment in both Phoenix and Atlanta on charges of trying to help Mr. Trump overturn the 2020 election, and Peter Navarro, a onetime White House trade adviser who recently completed a four-month stint in prison for ignoring a subpoena from the House committee that investigated Jan. 6.

Even though the future of the event is now in doubt, it was in keeping with Mr. Trump’s persistent efforts to rewrite the history of Jan. 6.

He has often appeared with Jan. 6 defendants at private events at some of his properties and has repeatedly described them as “hostages” and “political prisoners.” Mr. Trump has also promised several times to pardon those charged in connection with the Capitol attack, including those who assaulted police officers.

The subject has helped him to strengthen the bonds he shares with his supporters by painting them the way he likes to paint himself — as victims of a federal law enforcement system run amok. But his decision to not distance himself from the events of Jan. 6 is likely to be a riskier proposition in the general election than in the primaries if he aims to attract independent voters, who might be put off by attempts to lionize rioters who violently disrupted the normal transfer of presidential power.

Mr. Trump himself is, of course, facing multiple conspiracy charges in connection with the events of Jan. 6. He was re-indicted on new charges brought last week by federal prosecutors who sought to reframe their allegations to comport with the Supreme Court’s recent ruling granting former presidents a broad form of immunity for official acts taken in office.

In fact, the same day that the fund-raiser in Bedminster had been set to take place, a hearing will be held in Federal District Court in Washington to determine how to assess the effect the Supreme Court’s decision will have on Mr. Trump’s case.