Questions to ask experts

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LewsTherin
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Posts: 1
Joined: Wed Jul 16, 2008 9:53 am

Questions to ask experts

Post by LewsTherin »

Hello,

At this moment I am bussy with my Master Assignment. With this assignment I want to further explore total market demand. Especially what causes demand in the fire sprinkler market. To investigate this I want to ask experts and after the interviews make a System Dynamic model.

My problem is: what do I ask these experts? Which questions should I ask to be able to construct a SD model?

I cannot really find the questions asked by writers of articles (f.e. Lyneis). And I am affrait I will forget half or important things when I am in an interview when not structuring these questions.

Can anybody help me, maybe with an article, to get questions?

Sorry for my English I am not a native speaker.

With kind regards,

LT
Barry
Member
Posts: 39
Joined: Mon Oct 01, 2007 12:42 am

Post by Barry »

I haven't read much about interviewing. You may have to make them up.
LAUJJL
Senior Member
Posts: 1434
Joined: Fri May 23, 2003 10:09 am
Vensim version: DSS

Post by LAUJJL »

Hi

What is the interest of structuring your questions to the experts? Just ask them to talk about what causes the demand of fire sprinklers and write down exactly what they say, forgetting everything about SD or modelling.
Once you have interviewed enough people, you write down in plain english a resume of all the inteviews that represents the structural chain of causes that explain the demand, translate the resume into a qualitative diagram at first, veryfying that the diagram and the english written text express the same thing, and then transform the qualitative diagram into a quantitative one. Then eventually if you have enough data, make the model run with past data and verify that it reproduces roughly the same behaviour as the reality.
It it better to start with a very simple model at first to get understanding and eventually making it more complicated if needed later on.
Regards.
JJ
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