developing questions before the interview takes place and during the interview questions

are asked in a specific order. "The structure is provided to obtain consistency from one

situation to the next" (Sommer & Sommer, 1986, p. 115).

 The interview included questions that addressed all variables under study and used

scalar response questions and open-response format questions. I took procedural steps to

ensure that the interview instruments were valid measurements of the conceptual

constructs and that they provided accurate information (M.E. Swisher, personal

communications, March, 2006). I began by stating my research hypotheses and included

subsections related to each variable understudy explicitly. I then listed the appropriate

interview topics for each hypothesis and subsection. I developed several questions for

each topic with the help of colleagues and past research related to the topics. I reviewed

these questions extensively to eliminate the unnecessary ones. A panel of two experts

reviewed the instruments. The experts included a University of Florida professor, with

expertise in research design and methods, and Cherokee Nation Natural Resources

Department's Agriculture Liaison, who has expertise in local and Cherokee agriculture

(Appendix B, Table 14).

 The benefits of structured interviews include better reliability and validity than

semi-structured or unstructured interviews (Bartels, Nordstrom & Koski, 2006). I

increased the reliability by providing written instructions to develop consistency in how

the interview was administered and that all participants received the same information

(Fowler, 1993). Further, I solely administered the interviews. This contributed to the

fairly consistent delivery of the interview questions.

 I developed multiple instruments to measure the same construct, such as scales,

indices and interviews. This increased concurrent validity and the overall validity of the